Alation is an enterprise data catalog and governance platform founded in 2012 by Satyen Sangani, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, and Venky Ganti, headquartered in Redwood City, California; the company launched its first product, the Alation Data Catalog, in 2015 and has since become one of the category's established vendors.
The platform indexes an organization's data assets, including tables, dashboards, reports, and now AI models and agents, so data consumers can search for enterprise data in natural language, see who else has used it, and check its lineage and quality before building on it. Nearly 600 global enterprises, including 40% of the Fortune 100, use it, and Alation has extended the catalog toward what it calls a trust layer for enterprise data and AI.
Alation is built for large enterprises with data-governance and compliance needs, not small teams wanting a lightweight catalog. The company doesn't publish pricing; deployments are quoted per customer based on user count and access tier, with third-party estimates placing real-world contracts in the six-figure annual range.
