Data is Back: MongoDB, Databricks, Snowflake

CJ Desai, CEO of MongoDB, joins Sourcery at the RAISE Summit in Paris. We cover why data is the downstream winner of the AI cycle, how hyperscaler capacity limits are pushing workloads back on-prem, the return of data sovereignty, & what a bank's real agentic architecture actually looks like.

"Data is the unsung hero and data is back. You cannot create an AI application without a great data layer, and your AI application is as good as your data."

"You see these hyperscalers, some of them are running out of capacity. And the hyperscaler said, 'Sorry, we don't have a capacity.' And they are one of the top 50 customers for that hyperscaler."

CJ took over MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB) in November 2025 after Dev Ittycheria's 11-year run, with a mandate to reposition the company as the default modern database for AI applications. MongoDB carries a market cap of roughly ~$25 billion. CJ runs on a cadence of speaking to 10 to 12 customers a week, and in this conversation he brings that view straight from frontier labs, AI-native startups, and Global 2000 enterprises.

Plus prediction markets under World Cup load, the open vs closed source model debate, data centers in space, and the mentors who shaped him.

We cover:

› The 3 classes of AI customers MongoDB serves

› Why hyperscalers are telling top-50 accounts "no capacity"

› On-prem, sovereign AI, and the data-center comeback

› ElevenLabs running 50M+ agents on MongoDB

› MongoDB (OLTP) vs Snowflake and Databricks (OLAP)

› Why there is no standardization in enterprise AI models

› Auto-scaling and the death of the expensive DBA

CJ Desai: https://x.com/cj_mongodb

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

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YouTube: ⁠https://youtu.be/Ts-f5ZBwDFw

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 

• MongoDB–Millions of developers and more than 65,200+ customers across industries, including ~75% of the Fortune 100, rely on MongoDB for their most important applications. With integrated capabilities for operational data, search, real-time analytics, & AI-powered data retrieval, MongoDB helps organizations everywhere move faster, innovate more efficiently, & simplify complex architectures. https://mongodb.com/ai

• AssemblyAI–Millions of developers use AssemblyAI to power their voice ai applications and features. One API gives you access to best-in-class speech-to-text, voice agent, and speech understanding models for both pre-recorded and real-time audio.  Granola, ClickUp & HeyGen are scaling with AssemblyAI - get $50 of free credits today at http://AssemblyAI.com/sourcery

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) CJ Desai, CEO at MongoDB

(01:12) Top CEOs at the Raise AI Summit

(03:24) The 3 types of companies powering the AI boom

(07:25) Why on-prem is making a shocking comeback

(09:01) Hyperscalers are quietly running out of capacity

(11:06) What actually separates MongoDB from Snowflake and Databricks

(13:18) Why Frontier Labs treat MongoDB as their memory layer

(15:23) The truth about data labeling companies

(16:22) From Oracle intern to first-time CEO

(19:19) Becoming CEO during the AI chaos

(23:53) The World Cup crisis that tested MongoDB's scale

(28:19) The real complexity behind simple AI agents

(31:22) Open source vs. closed models: what customers actually pick

(34:36) CJ's honest take on data centers in space

(36:50) The mentors who shaped a first-time CEO

(40:32) MongoDB's next big bets

(41:36) Data is back?