Hybrid AI Is Inevitable: Bringing Intelligence To The Data
theCUBE research, Wednesday, August 13th, 2025
Why banks and regulated industries are building on‑prem/hybrid AI stacks - In conversation with Starburst CEO Justin Borgman
We believe hybrid AI is the enterprise base case - i.e. keep data in place and move intelligence to it.
Today most high‑visibility AI runs in public clouds and neo‑clouds (e.g., CoreWeave); hybrid enables inference, fine‑tuning, and RAG/agent proximity to governed data for latency, cost, and compliance.
Starburst is an example of a firm that provides governed, federated access to data where it lives (Trino), avoiding mass ETL and re‑platforming.
Dell Lakehouse (powered by Starburst) plus Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA forms a validated on‑prem pattern, with burst lanes to cloud/neo‑cloud for training spikes.
NVIDIA leads on ecosystem/software; AMD - and eventually Intel - offer credible alternatives as buyers tune TCO and diversify supply chains; specialists (Groq, Cerebras, etc.) fit specific SLA niches.
Consistent with our Jamie Dimon vs. Sam Altman thesis - proprietary enterprise context is the real moat; hybrid AI operationalizes that advantage.