Tableau’s new AI agents aim to bridge a data confidence gap

A new Salesforce survey released today reveals that most U.S. business leaders feel increased pressure to back their arguments with data — but their trust in that very data has declined dramatically since 2023. Salesforce is using the survey findings to pitch its recently announced Tableau Next product as an “agentic analytics” solution that aims to bridge this reported data confidence gap. Tableau Next, previously known as Tableau Einstein, leverages AI agents to help users interact with data via natural language. The platform features three specialized AI assistants designed to address different aspects of the data confidence problem: Confidence in data accuracy… Read More

Apr 15, 2025 - 13:30
 0
Tableau’s new AI agents aim to bridge a data confidence gap

A new Salesforce survey released today reveals that most U.S. business leaders feel increased pressure to back their arguments with data — but their trust in that very data has declined dramatically since 2023.

Salesforce is using the survey findings to pitch its recently announced Tableau Next product as an “agentic analytics” solution that aims to bridge this reported data confidence gap.

Tableau Next, previously known as Tableau Einstein, leverages AI agents to help users interact with data via natural language. The platform features three specialized AI assistants designed to address different aspects of the data confidence problem:

  1. Data Pro: An intelligent data preparation assistant that helps transform raw data into business-ready information through automated cleaning and transformation. (Available June 2025)
  2. Concierge: Allows users to ask questions about their data in natural language and receive immediate, contextual answers with relevant visualizations. (Available June 2025)
  3. Inspector: Proactively monitors data for important patterns and insights without requiring users to know what questions to ask, alerting them to trends they might otherwise miss. (Available later in 2025)

Confidence in data accuracy is down 27% from 2023, according to the survey, taken by more than 500 respondents. More than half of leaders aren’t confident in their ability to find, analyze, and interpret data themselves.

At the same time, 85% of leaders say they need insights within 30 minutes to make critical decisions.

“That need to have the [data] in real-time is part of why their confidence is dropping,” said Southard Jones, chief product officer at Tableau, on a call with reporters.

More than three-fourths of respondents said the rise of AI increases their need to be data-driven.

Tableau Next integrates with Agentforce, the “digital labor platform” from Salesforce focused on AI agents.

“We’re shifting from basic reports to a world where AI is a collaborative decision-making partner,” Tableau CEO Ryan Aytay said in a statement. “By combining AI agents with trusted data and easy-to-use tools, we’re making data accessible to everyone and transforming the data-to-action process into an automated, proactive, and insight-driven cycle.”

The new agents are the latest development at Tableau under Salesforce, which acquired the Seattle-based data visualization giant for $15.7 billion in 2019.

Tableau’s revenue grew by 3% year-over-year in the most recent quarter, compared to a 20% growth rate in the year-ago period. Salesforce in February reported full-year revenue growth of 9%.