Hex

Business Intelligence
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Hex is a San Francisco-based collaborative data analytics platform founded in 2019 by Barry McCardel, Caitlin Colgrove, and Glen Takahashi—all engineers who met at Palantir and built the company out of frustration with fragmented data tools.

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Unified data analytics workspace combining SQL, Python, interactive notebooks, and AI agents for data exploration, visualization, and business intelligence.

Hex is a San Francisco-based collaborative data analytics platform founded in 2019 by Barry McCardel, Caitlin Colgrove, and Glen Takahashi—all engineers who met at Palantir and built the company out of frustration with fragmented data tools. The platform consolidates notebooks, business intelligence, Python/SQL execution, and AI-powered analysis into a single workspace, targeting both technical analysts and business users seeking to close the gap between exploratory analysis and decision-making.

The founding team raised $16 million in Series A funding (October 2021), followed by $52 million in Series B (March 2022) backed by Snowflake and Databricks as strategic investors. On May 28, 2025, Hex announced a $70 million Series C round led by Avra Capital, bringing total funding to $172 million and attracting a16z, Amplify, Box Group, Redpoint, Sequoia, and Snowflake Ventures. CEO McCardel has positioned the company's evolution around what he calls "agentic analytics," arguing that traditional dashboards answer only 10% to 20% of business questions that actually drive decisions.

In April 2025, Hex acquired Hashboard, a semantic modeling and data visualization platform, to bolster its self-serve BI and visualization capabilities. The acquisition was quickly followed by a major October 2025 product launch introducing Threads (a conversational interface for non-technical users to query data) and significant upgrades to the Notebook Agent running on Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5. The company claims over 2,000 organizations as customers, with publicly named clients including Reddit, Notion, Figma, Brex, Cisco, NBA, HubSpot, Anthropic, Rivian, Duolingo, and Ramp.

Hex competes in a $37 billion analytics market projected to reach $116 billion by 2033. Its positioning as a unified platform aims to displace point solutions like Tableau, Looker, and traditional Jupyter-based workflows. The company reached "major customer and revenue milestones" by its Series C announcement, though financial details remain private.

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Products by Hex

Who buys this

  • Enterprise data teams using Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks seeking unified analytics workflows
  • Cross-functional teams (product, finance, business ops) requiring self-serve data access without SQL expertise
  • Data science teams building models and interactive applications for stakeholder consumption
  • Organizations standardizing on agentic/AI-native analytics tools for faster insight generation
  • Mid-market to large companies consolidating Jupyter, Tableau, and Looker into a single platform

Publicly disclosed clients

  • Reddit
  • Notion
  • Figma
  • Brex
  • Cisco
  • NBA
  • HubSpot
  • Anthropic
  • Rivian
  • Duolingo
  • Ramp

Strengths and what to watch

Strengths

  • Unified platform eliminates context-switching between notebooks, dashboards, and BI tools—a key friction point in modern analytics workflows
  • AI-native architecture with Claude Sonnet integration reduces drudgery in visualization, debugging, and iterative analysis
  • Strategic partnerships with Snowflake and Databricks ensure tight integrations with the modern data stack and reduce vendor risk

Watch for

  • Execution risk on 'agentic analytics' positioning—ambition is high; product delivery must outpace faster-moving competitors like Databricks and Snowflake adding BI features
  • Customer concentration and churn dynamics unclear; enterprise BI deals are long sales cycles and customer stickiness is unproven at scale
  • Integration complexity with heterogeneous data stacks; Hex's value proposition depends on seamless support across Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, and others

Recent moves

Key Information

Industry
Business Intelligence
Founded
2019
Employees
51-200
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is Hex?

Hex is a unified data analytics workspace that combines SQL, Python, interactive notebooks, BI dashboards, and AI agents in one platform. Founded in 2019 and based in San Francisco, it targets both technical analysts and non-technical business users seeking to close the gap between exploration and decision-making.

Who founded Hex and how much has it raised?

Hex was founded in 2019 by Barry McCardel, Caitlin Colgrove, and Glen Takahashi, three engineers from Palantir. The company raised $172 million total: $16 million in Series A (October 2021), $52 million in Series B (March 2022), and $70 million in Series C (May 2025), led by Avra Capital.

What is agentic analytics and how does Hex use it?

Agentic analytics refers to AI-powered data analysis that automates exploration and insight generation. CEO Barry McCardel argues traditional dashboards answer only 10–20% of business questions that drive decisions. Hex's AI agents, running on Claude Sonnet 4.5, accelerate visualization, debugging, and iterative analysis to address this gap.

What major customers use Hex?

Hex serves over 2,000 organizations including Reddit, Notion, Figma, Brex, Cisco, NBA, HubSpot, Anthropic, Rivian, Duolingo, and Ramp. The platform targets enterprise data teams using Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks, as well as cross-functional teams requiring self-serve data access without SQL expertise.

What is Threads in Hex?

Threads is a conversational interface Hex launched in October 2025 that allows non-technical business users to query data through natural language. It runs on Claude Sonnet 4.5 and enables self-serve BI capabilities without requiring SQL knowledge, democratizing data access across organizations.

How is Hex different from Tableau, Looker, and Jupyter?

Hex aims to displace traditional point solutions by unifying notebooks, dashboards, BI, and AI agents in one workspace. Tableau and Looker excel at visualization but require separate analytics environments. Hex targets teams seeking integrated workflows that eliminate context-switching between exploration, coding, and decision-making tools.

How Hex compares

Direct head-to-head against 2 competitors. Picked by 7wData.

This company

Hex

Positioning
Unified data analytics workspace combining SQL, Python, interactive notebooks, and AI agents for data exploration, visualization, and business intelligence.
Customer segments
Enterprise data teams using Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks seeking unified analytics workflows
Strengths
Unified platform eliminates context-switching between notebooks, dashboards, and BI tools—a key friction point in modern analytics workflows
Watch for
Execution risk on 'agentic analytics' positioning—ambition is high; product delivery must outpace faster-moving competitors like Databricks and Snowflake adding BI features
Recent moves
Hex raises $70 million Series C led by Avra Capital to expand AI-powered analytics platform

Databricks

Positioning
Unified lakehouse platform for data, ML, and BI. Competes with traditional BI vendors and cloud data warehouses.
Customer segments
Enterprise data engineering and ML teams. Buyer is data platform lead or CTO at Fortune 500 firms.
Strengths
DBSQL Serverless delivered 5x performance gains with native AI query functions on a single unified lakehouse runtime.
Watch for
High compute costs from idle cluster waste, steep learning curve, and vendor lock-in are recurring objections from customers.
Recent moves
Acquired Neon for $1B (June 2025), adding serverless Postgres to the lakehouse to target operational workloads.

Sigma Computing

Positioning
Spreadsheet-style cloud BI on top of Snowflake and Databricks, targeting enterprise teams that avoid SQL coding.
Customer segments
Mid-market to Fortune 500 in finance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing. Buyer: analytics or BI team lead.
Strengths
Warehouse writeback with real-time collaboration in a spreadsheet interface, removing the SQL barrier for business users.
Watch for
Hidden compute costs often match licensing fees, and recent sudden licensing increases create unpredictable total spend for customers.
Recent moves
Raised $80M Series E at $3B valuation (May 2026), reaching $200M ARR milestone.

Sources

  1. hex.tech — Company overview, product portfolio (Notebooks, Threads, App Builder, Hex Magic), customer logos
  2. fortune.com — Series C funding ($70M), investors, CEO McCardel quotes on agentic analytics and addressable market, founding story and Palantir connection
  3. techcrunch.com — Series B funding ($52M, March 2022), founder names and roles, growth metrics, investor participation
  4. siliconangle.com — Series C funding details, investor roster, customer list including HubSpot, Anthropic, Rivian, Duolingo
  5. hex.tech — Series C announcement, agentic analytics positioning, customer traction (1,500+ teams), Hashboard acquisition, total funding of $172M
  6. hex.tech — Hashboard acquisition (April 30, 2025), strategic rationale, team integration, complementary strengths
  7. hex.tech — October 2025 product launch (Threads, agent upgrades), feature enhancements, competitive positioning
  8. learn.hex.tech — October 2025 Notebook Agent upgrades, Claude Sonnet 4.5 integration, Databricks semantic model support