Analysts can now build, explore, and validate models leveraging the power of dbt
PHILADELPHIA, May 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — dbt Labs, the leader in standards for AI-ready structured data, today announced a powerful new suite of AI-enhanced features that give data analysts a fast and governed way to explore data and deliver insights within dbt’s workflows. These new capabilities empower analysts across a range of technical backgrounds to lean on natural language or visual interfaces to build, explore and validate data in the same version-controlled environment trusted by data teams. This release includes dbt Canvas (a visual, drag-and-drop interface for model development), dbt Insights (an AI-powered query tool for quick analysis and sharing), and an enhanced dbt Catalog (for global asset discovery). Additionally, organizations can now use the new cost management dashboard to optimize their data warehouse spend.
Bridging the gap between self-service and governance
Gartner® predicts that, “by 2027, 60% of organizations will fail to realize the full value of their AI use cases due to fragmented data governance frameworks.”* One contributing factor is the rise of ungoverned data workflows, often driven by analysts working around limited engineering support. To get the insights they need, data analysts rely on unsupported, disconnected tools and un-tested, bespoke logic to build, query, and explore data, leading to compliance risks, increased costs, and poor data quality that undermine organizational decision making. dbt’s new AI-powered capabilities are purpose-built to solve this issue by giving analysts greater autonomy while ensuring every action remains governed, version-controlled and aligned with organizational data standards.
“Data teams today face a fundamental tension – analysts need speed and independence, while organizations require strong governance and security,” said Tristan Handy, founder and CEO of dbt Labs. “Our new AI-powered solutions break down these traditional barriers for data analysts across any skill level and collaborate with developers in the same platform, which will have a significant, positive impact throughout the business.”
Unlocking trusted self-service for analysts with dbt
The Analytics Development Lifecycle (ADLC) is a vendor-agnostic framework that helps organizations mature how they build, maintain, and scale trusted data products. As the data control plane for the modern enterprise, dbt brings the ADLC to life, enabling version-controlled, governed workflows that power analytics across teams. dbt Labs is now making it easy for downstream analysts to participate in the ADLC with the following new capabilities:
- dbt Canvas, a new visual editing environment in dbt, enables users more comfortable with drag-and-drop tooling to build and edit data models. Analysts can describe what they want to build in natural language using dbt Copilot, allowing teams with limited SQL knowledge to build effective data models using context-rich AI. It automatically maintains governance and quality standards, while reducing reliance on data engineers, boosting collaboration and improving productivity. dbt Canvas is now GA.
- dbt Insights, a new AI-powered query interface that helps analysts ask questions and get answers faster, all within dbt. With full awareness of an organization’s models, lineage and governance rules, it enables users to query, validate, visualize, and share findings using SQL or natural language in one seamless, governed workspace. This eliminates the need to wait on central data teams to process requests or switch tabs to get answers. dbt Insights is available in preview.
- An expanded dbt Catalog (formerly dbt Explorer) includes a unified discovery experience that enables global search and exploration for overall Snowflake assets not managed by dbt, offering analysts a comprehensive view of their data landscape. Analysts can easily discover, understand and trust the assets they use, without switching tools. dbt Catalog is now generally available, with the ability to explore Snowflake data assets currently in preview. Integrations for additional data platforms are coming soon.
“Lowering the technical barrier to entry for data analysts has been important to Tableau from the beginning of the company,” said Dan Jewett, Senior Vice President, Product Management at Tableau. “dbt’s expanded offering is a game changer for customers that are looking to reduce the sizable burden on their data engineering teams, while simultaneously enabling analysts across the business in a meaningful way. It’s a massive step forward for the future of data teams and one we’re thrilled to continue to partner on.”
dbt Labs customer WHOOP is eager to boost self-service for its analysts, while leaning on easy workflows.
“As our data needs evolve, empowering analysts with seamless self-exploration becomes increasingly critical,” said William Tsu, Senior Analytics Engineer at WHOOP. “By keeping them within the familiar dbt Catalog they already use daily, dbt’s new analyst offerings enhance discoverability and enable faster, more intuitive, and governed self-service.”
For dbt systems integrator InterWorks, dbt Canvas is poised to remove bottlenecks and power trusted self-service analytics across the organization.
“dbt Canvas is unlocking a future where analysts can build confidently alongside engineers within the same trusted and governed workflows,” said James Wright, Chief Strategy Officer at InterWorks. “We’re excited about how this new development environment will help our customers unlock true self-service while maintaining the standards, security, and collaboration required to scale analytics responsibly.”
Empowering Organizations to Manage Data Warehouse Spend
dbt Labs is also providing new features that allow organizations to optimize data platform costs and ensure the long-term flexibility of their data investments. This includes a cost management dashboard that helps organizations understand data platform costs from their dbt workloads, and also view consumption and realized savings from standardizing on dbt. Powered by the dbt Fusion engine, the cost management dashboard offers visibility into costs at the project, environment, model, and test level, helping users identify and resolve cost inefficiencies. No other vendor owns the transformation workflow from development to production, allowing dbt to embed cost optimization natively rather than as an add-on. The cost management dashboard is in preview for Snowflake customers ahead of the 2025 Snowflake Summit, June 2-5 in San Francisco.
A Better-than-ever Developer Experience
Announced earlier today, dbt Labs launched the new dbt Fusion engine, incorporating the technology from its acquisition of SDF Labs this year. Fusion delivers massive performance improvements and introduces features that significantly enhance the developer experience. These include next-gen data transformation capabilities that improve code quality by providing real-time feedback, lower costs by avoiding unnecessary warehouse compute, and make dbt 30x faster than dbt Core. For more information on the future of the dbt platform, visit https://getdbt.com/blog/dbt-launch-showcase-2025-recap.
For more information on the new dbt features for analysts, visit https://www.getdbt.com/product/analyst.
*Gartner Insights, Adopt a Data Governance Approach That Enables Business Outcomes, https://www.gartner.com/en/data-analytics/topics/data-governance.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
About dbt Labs
Since 2016, dbt Labs has been on a mission to help data practitioners create and disseminate organizational knowledge. dbt is the standard for AI-ready structured data. Powered by the dbt Fusion engine, it unlocks the performance, context, and trust that organizations need to scale analytics in the era of AI. Globally, more than 60,000 data teams use dbt, including those at Siemens, Roche and Condé Nast.
Learn more at getdbt.com, and follow dbt Labs on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
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