Tableau plans to add generative artificial intelligence to its data visualization platform, using AI to automatically identify and describe key trends in interactive charts and graphs, and answer free-form questions about the underlying data.
The new “Tableau GPT” is set to be shown publicly for the first time Tuesday morning at the Tableau Conference in Las Vegas. It’s shaping up as one of the most significant changes in Tableau’s core product since the Seattle-based company was acquired by San Francisco-based Salesforce for $15.7 billion four years ago.
Tableau GPT is slated for release as a pilot later this year along with an initial application called Tableau Pulse, which includes features for sharing AI insights via email and Slack, the Salesforce-owned collaboration platform.
The move comes at a pivotal moment in the larger market. Tableau faces tough competition in the growing field of data visualization and business intelligence — perhaps most notably from Power BI maker Microsoft, which is steadily adding AI “copilot” features to its business productivity apps under its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
“For years, people have talked about data democratization, and analytics democratization. Now, we can finally do that,” said newly named Tableau CEO Ryan Aytay in an interview with GeekWire in advance of the Tableau GPT unveiling. “In my mind, generative AI is the future, and really just accelerates that.”
Aytay joined Salesforce in 2007, initially building the Salesforce Ventures team before working in a variety of business and corporate development leadership roles. After two years as Tableau’s president and chief revenue officer, he was named CEO last week, succeeding Mark Nelson, who stepped down as CEO at the end of last year.
Losing its identity? The latest changes come at a pivotal moment in Tableau’s history, 20 years after it was founded in Seattle based on technology spun out of Stanford University. Cutbacks by Salesforce have rippled through Tableau’s workforce in recent months, accompanied by significant turnover in Tableau’s executive leadership team.
In the Seattle region, which Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff once said would become the San Francisco company’s “HQ2” with the Tableau deal, the company is shedding more than 200,000 square feet of Tableau office space. Some longtime Tableau employees and partners worry that the company is losing its identity under Salesforce.
Aytay pushed back against that notion.
“Salesforce wouldn’t have put a CEO in place if they didn’t want to maintain the Tableau identity,” he said via phone Monday afternoon. “I feel excited and fired up to bring together product and sales, and have an identity even more than we had in the last one-and-a-half to two years that I’ve been working in the CRO function.”
As many as 8,000 people are expected at the Tableau Conference this week, about twice as many as last year, but still well below the 20,000 people who attended in 2019, prior to the pandemic-driven shutdowns.
“It hasn’t been an easy world for anybody lately with regards to the economy and the headwinds. … But I think, right now, we’re in a great space,” Aytay said, shortly before addressing a group of the company’s partners in advance of the Tableau Conference. “There’s a lot of energy here. People are extremely excited.”
Tableau’s future in Seattle: Tableau had grown to about 4,200 employees worldwide before it was acquired in 2019, about half of them in the Seattle region. Prior to its recent cuts, Salesforce employed about 4,000 people in the Seattle area, including Tableau employees. The company has not provided an updated regional headcount.
Aytay, who is based in San Francisco, was in Seattle last week, and said he expects to spend a significant amount of time in the region, joking that he probably lives “more on United Airlines than anywhere else.”
“We’re very excited about Seattle,” he said, describing it as “a great spot for talent.”
Tableau generated revenue of $623 million in the most recent quarter, up 6% year-over-year, accounting for about 7% of Salesforce’s overall revenue.
On the technology front, Aytay described Tableau’s move into AI as a “second horizon” beyond its core data visualization technologies, likening it to Salesforce’s expansion beyond its core CRM platform.
Tableau GPT is based on Salesforce’s Einstein GPT, which integrates with an enterprise-grade version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT conversational chatbot. The company says Tableau GPT uses proprietary AI models from Salesforce and large language models from the company’s partners, with built-in security protections for sensitive corporate data.
In a media briefing prior to the conference, Tableau executives showed how a retail manager, for example, could get an AI-generated summary of an unexpected change in appliance sales in Tableau Pulse, a Tableau GPT application.
In this hypothetical example, a manager would be able to ask a question or choose from suggested questions to understand the reasons for the change, and then share the results with a colleague in Slack or email.
“It is no longer just about expressing yourself through visualizations. It’s also about language,” said Pedro Arellano, Tableau general manager and head of product, in the advance briefing with reporters. “It’s not just primarily for analysts, it’s for consumers, it’s for everybody. It’s sort of a personal guide for your data, where it knows your data, it knows the goals you’re trying to achieve, and it helps you reach those goals.”
The Tableau Conference runs from Tuesday through Thursday this week in Las Vegas.
