2023 – what a year! The world continued to face major challenges and we all felt the impact of ongoing headwinds in the tech sector. At the same time, a little thing called ChatGPT entered the world and completely changed the game. 

DataStax was in a perfect position to make it easier for developers to participate in the generative AI revolution. We have a history of helping leading companies and developers be effective and get their applications into production. We added vector capabilities to help unlock companies' data to empower their GenAI aspirations. Why? Because DATA = AI.

A big THANK YOU to our customers and communities for your continued trust and partnership. Here’s a quick look back at some of the highlights of 2023.

Powering GenAI apps: Vector, a RAG stack, and more  

At the beginning of the year, we welcomed the phenomenal Kaskada team. Their expertise helped us move up the AI stack and make it easy for developers and companies to build AI-driven apps.

Then in June, we launched Vector Search for Astra DB. We've found that customers who are delivering GenAI apps want a single database with vector as a feature versus having different databases for different types of data. 

People have been loving Astra DB and the advancements we’ve built around it. Here are a few highlights:

• Astra DB Vector Enables customers to build awesome GenAI apps and experiences with their proprietary datasets. Only Astra DB makes vectorized data available instantly with zero delay. In December, GigaOm found that Astra DB beats Pinecone across key performance metrics like relevance, throughput, latency, and total cost of ownership (TCO).

• RAG stack Brings together an LLM and Astra DB vector, combining content and context to reduce hallucinations, improve accuracy and relevancy, and deliver cost savings.

• Partnerships, integrations, and innovations Partnering and integrating with ecosystem players makes it much easier and faster for developers to build GenAI apps because we’re integrated with the existing parts of their stack. We’re doing this with Google (Vertex AI), LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vercel, Amazon Bedrock, OpenAI (with the Astra Assistants API), Github Copilot, and more.

Developers = Changemakers

Developers are experimenting with everything and building the future with GenAI. There is no CIO that's making a decision on GenAI without asking their developers how to do it. So it’s critical to set developers up for success.

An awesome developer experience comes down to a few things: ease of use, relevance, and getting apps into production fast. Astra DB delivers all of this (and more) with Cassandra-level performance and scale.  

Key takeaway (like I said on stage at the recent Cassandra Summit): Astra DB is the best f***ing database for GenAI!!!

GenAI in production

DataStax has many customers and interesting use cases already in production. A few of my favorites: 

• Physics Wallah India's unicorn edtech platform serving 6 million students. They built a multimodal AI bot on Astra DB, going from zero to production in just 55 days!
• Skypoint Delivers GenAI healthcare solutions for seniors and care providers. Skypoint tells us that Astra DB helps free up 10+ hours per week for care providers, so doctors can focus on patient care.
• Hornet An LGBTQ+ social network with 35 million members that’s using GenAI to create a personalized matchmaking experience. Hornet is also developing an AI-driven "wingman" feature. 

Customers like these and the 650+ more make me extremely grateful for the past year, and even more pumped for 2024. I’ve never been more excited about the future than I am now!