EP 23: Your AI Is Broken Because Your Data Is with Gabi Steele, Preql

About this episode

The episode discusses the importance of a solid data foundation for AI and the challenges faced in the industry with guest Gabi Steele.

In Episode 23 of AI in NYC, hosts Rob May, Anna Kirk, and Ryan Eppley sit down with Gabi Steele, co-founder and CEO of Preql AI, to tackle one of the most overlooked problems in the AI gold rush: your data foundation is probably broken, and that's why your AI agents aren't working. Gabi brings a unique perspective — she went from building data visualizations at the Washington Post during Trump's first term to teaching at Columbia and Parsons, then dove deep into data engineering after watching her co-founder's experience at WeWork, where a 100-person data engineering team still couldn't wrangle the company's spiraling data infrastructure. The episode kicks off with a deep dive into the bombshell WSJ report that OpenAI is missing key revenue and user targets ahead of its IPO. The panel debates whether this signals a real inflection point for the AI industry or just healthy competitive pressure from open-source models, DeepSeek, and a rapidly shifting market where agentic coding has overtaken conversational search as the killer app. Gabi weighs in with a grounded take from the data trenches — she talks to CFOs every day who tell her LLMs are too slow and they still want dashboards…

People in this episode

Hosts: Rob May, Anna Kirk, Ryan Eppley

Guest: Gabi Steele

Topics covered

• AI data foundation
• data engineering
• AI industry challenges
• enterprise AI
• user experience
• data visualization

Keywords

• AI
• data
• engineering
• OpenAI
• enterprise
• dashboards
• user experience
• data visualization
• Wall Street Journal
• WeWork

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Preql, Washington Post, Columbia, Parsons, WeWork, OpenAI, Wall Street Journal, DeepSeek

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