Rillβs GTM team is growing π
Jay Stevens is our new CRO. Jay has earned a reputation as a commercial leader who transforms businesses of all sizes for growth.
Devan Kane joins Rill as Fractional CMO, reuniting with Mike Driscoll to help spearhead the companyβs growth strategy.
The Rill GTM team got together in Park City to strategize for 2026! π
We reviewed the product roadmap and had meaningful conversations on how Rill can really make an impact for our customers. And we had some fun too π₯³
PS - weβre hiring! Join us in building the worldβs fastest AI-native BI tool!
PS - we added support if Gemini is youβre preferred AI provider. Create a Gemini connector, set up your API key and you are good to go!
Check out the release notes to learn more:
docs.rilldata.com/notes/0.82
Check out what's new in Rill 0.82:
ππ AI feedback - give thumbs up or thumbs down to score your conversations with Rill's AI agent
βΉοΈ New status project page - we overhauled the status page so you can easily search, filter & find resources
π¨ New in Canvas dashboards - AI functionality & scatter plots
ICYMI the latest Data Talks on the Rocks episode - Wes McKinney, creator of Pandas, explains his unexpected switch from Python to Go for new projects. His reason: AI coding agents fundamentally changed the trade-offs that made Python dominant for the last 15 years.
Learn more
datatalks.rilldata.com
ICYMI - Simon Spati interviewed Coinbase & Fresha and shares a common pattern - choose @starrocks.bsky.social when joins are key to your analytics.
If you want a real-time BI tool designed to benefit from StarRocksβ real-time query performance, check out Rill.
www.rilldata.com/blog/why-coi...
Our friends at Twing Data built a lightweight dashboard for AWS cost monitoring using Rill for AWS CUR data. A few key Rill features do most of the heavy lifting:
1. Automatic ingestion from S3:
2. Partition-aware updates:
3. ClickHouse under the hood
Learn more:
blog.twingdata.com/p/aws-cost-m...
ICYMI - on a recent Joe Reis podcast, Mike Driscoll shares insights on the "shape" of analytics, debating whether conversational interfaces will replace dashboards or simply complement them.
Links below:
YouTube -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEIQ...
Spotify - creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...
Top Takeaways:
π Why Go beats Python for agent-generated code
π€ π§π€ππ€π§ππ«: using adversarial agents for continuous code review
π οΈ Live demo of building his Spicy Takes app with coding agents
ποΈ Why the next generation of developers must study architecture, not syntax
datatalks.rilldata.com
Are LLMs really a breakthrough?
Wes McKinney says he didnβt see it at first.
Now he says if your code isnβt automatically reviewed by adversarial agents, youβre doomed.
In the latest episode of Data Talks on the Rocks, Mike and Wes talk about how AI is transforming the way he builds software.
Many users have requested the ability to share AI conversations with others.
With Rill 0.81, now you can send a secure link and other users can see exactly what you saw and pick up where you left off.
We've also added support for Claude as your preferred AI provider.
docs.rilldata.com/notes/0.81
Today, I dig into the details of StarRocks and how it is gaining traction in the real-time database world.
DWH-like #joins and fast retrieval from a #Lakehouse-native data architecture, without additional data engineering work to persist and ingest data. www.ssp.sh/blog/starro...
Amazing talk about AI and the future of data visualization. @medriscoll.com argues why dashboards won't go away (can condense so much information you'd need 10 prompts) and also certain numbers you don't want to constantly prompt.
E.g. speed on your car, you don't want to ask every 10 seconds π
π§Listen now on your favorite platformπ§
Apple:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
Spotify: creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...
YouTube:
youtu.be/tEIQGgS4Zus
.@medriscoll.com was on The Joe Reis podcast to discuss the evolving landscape of business intelligence and data engineering. They explore why the industry keeps "rediscovering" old concepts like the semantic layer and how the rise of AI agents is forcing us to rethink how we structure data.
Our friends at Twing Data set out to build something simple: point a dashboard at S3, automatically ingest AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) files, and instantly get a useful set of dashboards.
The whole thing is open source.
Post: blog.twingdata.com/p/aws-cost-m...
Repo: github.com/Twing-Data/a...
Another big feature in Rill 0.80 is the AI Developer Agent in Rill Developer πͺ
The AI agent is your developer assistant, helping you model data, create and edit Rill project files, and build Rill projects. Give it a try and let us know your experiences!
Learn more:
docs.rilldata.com/notes/0.80
What if your entire data stack could be expressed as a single function?
run_stack(serve(transform(ingest)))
Declarative data stacks: declare what you want, let the system figure out how. Same shift we saw with Terraform.
Thanks to the ~50 founders and execs who gathered last night for a live reading and candid Q&A of Ari Paparoβs book on Google. It was great to hear insights directly from folks who know how modern advertising really works.
aripaparo.com/yield-the-book
Head to the docs to learn more:
docs.rilldata.com/notes/0.80
In the latest Rill 0.80 release, we introduce dark mode to the entire product. We first launched dark mode in Rill Developer a few months ago, but now you can easily switch between light & dark mode everywhere!
PS - if you are embedding Rill you can toggle dark mode on/off as part of the Embed API.
In our updated Data Talks on the Rocks episode, Alexey Milovidov β co-founder & CTO of @clickhouse.com β joins @medriscoll.com to break down why ClickHouse has become one of the fastest-growing databases in the world.
The link to our full conversation is below.
datatalks.rilldata.com
"I'm a ClickHouse user & a really bad user. I notice when anything is slightly not right." - Alexey Milovidov
His lesson: "It's not about technology. It's about attention to details."
If something annoys you, it's annoying thousands of users. Fix it.
TLDR: Build what you'd actually want to use.
Top Takeaways:
- The fatal flaw most semantic layers miss: treating it as a UI problem instead of a developer tools problem
- How Malloy preserves data as graphs instead of flattening to rectangles
- Why data stacks will stay bespoke: privacy, access control, and the myth of one-size-fits-all
ICYMI - our episode with Lloyd Tabb is one of the most technically grounded conversations on the future of data tooling.
See full episode here:
datatalks.rilldata.com
Head to the docs to learn more:
docs.rilldata.com/build/connec...
ICYMI - we've added support for @starrocks.bsky.social. Connect directly to your StarRocks and query data in real-time without ingesting it into Rill first. This expands our support for enterprise data warehouses alongside ClickHouse, Druid, & Pinot. A big thank you to our community contributor!
Check out the new features in Rill 0.79:
β
Comparison views to spot trends in Canvas charts
β
Support for geospatial dimensions (mapping and regional analysis)
β
StarRocks live connector
β
New CLI command allows you to validate a project
β
Metrics SQL enhancements
docs.rilldata.com/notes/0.79
If you're on the market for new BI or analytics tools in 2026, take a look at Hoyt's first run experience with Rill Data.
youtube.com/watch?v=lPef...
Since this video, we've shipped a ton of new AI features!
If you haven't tried it yet, here's a quickstart guide:
docs.rilldata.com/get-started/...
"Data's such a bespoke art. Every company I've worked with has a completely different data stack; all assembling from whatever cloth we have."
To kick off 2026, check out our updated episode with @lloydtabb.bsky.social. Lloyd's insight goes deeper than infrastructure chaos.
datatalks.rilldata.com
