Research

The Future of Compute: How AI Agents Are Reshaping Infrastructure (Part 2)

This is the second part of our series examining how AI's computational patterns are forcing a fundamental rethinking of resource architecture and management.

Priyanka Somrah & Diego Oppenheimer

Apr 15, 2025

The Future of Compute: How AI Agents Are Reshaping Infrastructure (Part 1)

As AI agents evolve from experimental prototypes to mission-critical systems we believe there will be a critical mismatch between their unique demands and our current computing infrastructure.

Priyanka Somrah & Diego Oppenheimer

Apr 15, 2025

Open Source Playbook: Proven Monetization Strategies

This post was originally published on The Data Source, my monthly newsletter covering the top innovation in data infrastructure, engineering and developer-first tooling.

Priyanka Somrah

Mar 13, 2025

Engineering BYOC: Enterprise Startups Share Their Playbooks

In this interview series, we dive into how enterprise software companies approach Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) deployments.

Priyanka Somrah

Feb 20, 2025

Opportunities in Data Centers & Next-Gen Networking

Recently, Zac and I have been exploring areas where venture scale opportunities could emerge in next-gen networking and infrastructure. So, we brought together a group of founders, data center developers, energy brokers, server providers, and Fortune 500 customers to discuss ideas and trends shaping the industry.

Daniel Chesley

Oct 18, 2024

Transforming Data Manipulation in Python Through the Convergence of SQL and DataFrames

This post was originally published on The Data Source, my monthly newsletter covering the top innovation in data infrastructure, engineering and developer-first tooling.

Priyanka Somrah

Jun 17, 2024

Platform Engineering – An Idea Whose Time Has Come In Enterprise Data Operations

“CIO Perspectives” is a white paper series by Mark Settle that explores top-of-mind technical issues confronting today’s IT leaders. Mark is a seven-time CIO, a three-time CIO 100 award winner, and a two-time book author.

Work-Bench

Jun 17, 2024

Learnings from Building & Investing in Business Process Automation

Over the past few years at Work-Bench, I’ve spent a lot of time working with early-stage founders building across AI and Machine Learning Infrastructure, many of whom are aiming to build in Applied AI, RPA, and adjacent industries.

Daniel Chesley

Jun 13, 2024

Distilling The Composable Data Management System Manifesto

This post was originally published on The Data Source on April 18th, 2024, my monthly newsletter covering the top innovation in data infrastructure, engineering and developer-first tooling. Subscribe here!

Priyanka Somrah

Apr 18, 2024

Applied AI and the LLM Adoption Curve

There are two ongoing, but divergent trends afoot in enterprise software that are taking up a lot of airspace for companies building in Applied AI, and while these trends might not be so different from how software companies have historically been founded, they feel more palpable today than ever before.

Daniel Chesley

Apr 12, 2024

Apache Arrow DataFusion - A Primer

Apache Arrow DataFusion is a query engine built by Andy Grove, designed for building robust data-centric systems. Developed in Rust, a language known for its performance and memory safety, DataFusion serves as a foundational component for processing extensive datasets.

Priyanka Somrah

Apr 8, 2024

Digital Wake Management

‍Digital Wake Management (DWM) is a concerted effort to discover and delete personal information (PI) scattered across the Internet. It’s an ongoing exercise in digital hygiene designed to eliminate information that no longer serves a useful purpose or is inaccurate, whether such information was knowingly shared or created by third parties without an individual’s consent.

Work-Bench

Mar 14, 2024

The Future of Cloud Networking - A Primer

This post was originally published on The Data Source on February 29th, 2024, my monthly newsletter covering the top innovation in data infrastructure, engineering and developer-first tooling.

Priyanka Somrah

Feb 29, 2024

Transforming Development Across Frontend & Backend with WebAssembly

This post was originally published on The Data Source on January 18th, 2024, my monthly newsletter covering the top innovation in data infrastructure, engineering and developer-first tooling. Subscribe here!

Priyanka Somrah

Jan 22, 2024

The State of FSI Compliance

Over the past few years, Financial Services Institutions (FSIs) have undergone a significant transformation in compliance and risk management.

Daniel Chesley

Jan 8, 2024

Cloud Infrastructure: Articles I'm Reading This Week

In this post, GitHub embraces Copilot, a move that acknowledges AI's transformative impact on developer workflows. AWS introduces S3 Express One Zone, targeting startups with promises of reduced latency over costs.

Priyanka Somrah

Dec 2, 2023

Data & Distributed Ecosystems: Articles I’m Reading This Week

This post was originally published on The Data Source on November 17th, 2023, my monthly newsletter covering the top innovation in data infrastructure, engineering and developer-first tooling. Subscribe here!

Priyanka Somrah

Nov 22, 2023

What’s New In Edge Computing?

Like cloud computing, edge computing is a significant paradigm shift that’s poised to be the next platform shift. This shift stems from the fundamental way in how data is processed and managed.

Priyanka Somrah

Oct 16, 2023

What Consumers Can Teach Us About The Future Of Employee Identity Management

“CIO Perspectives” is a white paper series by Mark Settle that explores top-of-mind technical issues confronting today’s CIOs and IT leaders.

Work-Bench

Sep 18, 2023

Application Automation: The Past, Present and Future

The world of automation is rapidly evolving. Recent advancements in AI are fundamentally changing the way we work, and have already instilled new behaviors and expectations for enterprise-grade products.

Daniel Chesley

Jul 19, 2023

A Primer on Detection Engineering

Security has always been top of mind for infrastructure leaders and 2023 is no different. Cyber threats are becoming more complex and sophisticated, with an increasing number of attack vectors.

Priyanka Somrah

Jul 7, 2023

Optimizing Log Costs

With growing concern around conserving budget, tech teams are identifying their largest areas of spend and how best to optimize their stack.

Rani Kubersky

Jul 5, 2023

NextGen Collaboration Tools: Where Are the NextGen Tools?

There was rampant speculation during the Covid crisis about the ways in which knowledge work would be performed in a post-Covid world. Now we know the answer.

Work-Bench

Jun 6, 2023

Trino: A Distributed Query Engine

Here at Work-Bench, we strongly believe that great businesses can be built by commercializing open source projects that target an acute pain point and cultivate developer love.

Daniel Chesley

Jun 2, 2023

Trends in Serverless Databases

Despite the many databases available on the market, developers still confront a host of challenges when interacting with them like issues with data capacity or cost management.

Rani Kubersky

May 12, 2023

Foundation Models & the Path to Enterprise Adoption

One of the investment themes I’ve been researching has been around the applicability of foundation models for a wide variety of tasks and the opportunity that it represents for the enterprise.

Priyanka Somrah

May 12, 2023

Software Observability and Debugging

The market for software observability and debugging continues to evolve owing to the range of tools and modern technologies that are re-thinking how it can be done reliably.

Priyanka Somrah

May 12, 2023

Work-Bench Snapshot: A Primer on Nix - Reproducible Builds and Deployments

On a recent call with an engineer at a unicorn startup, he said that he wouldn’t work at a company that doesn’t use Nix. At the same time, he’s seen developers leave companies because they use Nix.

Rani Kubersky

May 9, 2023

Programmable Compute, the Next Big Thing in ML Infrastructure?

The data and machine learning landscape has transformed over the past five years. With cloud data warehouses like Snowflake and Databricks revolutionizing the management of data across distributed systems...

Priyanka Somrah

Apr 14, 2023

Re-Imagining PAM: From Privileged Access Management to Privileged Action Management

Conventional PAM solutions are based on the flawed premise that the management controls used to create, configure and administer IT resources can be neatly packaged in a limited number of privileged accounts and that access to these accounts can be restricted to a limited number of privileged users.

Work-Bench

Feb 6, 2023

Security Dashboards For Everyone Else

As ransomware and major vulnerabilities run rampant, security has remained a high priority for organizations even during the recent downturn.

Kelley Mak

Aug 9, 2022

Modern Data Warehouses Expanding Horizons for New Data Architectures

The movement towards real-time streaming infrastructures is finally crystalizing. In the last 3 years alone, I’ve observed a growing number of startups and products...

Priyanka Somrah

Aug 4, 2022

Building with Serverless: A 2022 Review

For this article, we’re defining “serverless” as an application built using a suite of managed deployment and infrastructure services from a cloud provider like AWS, GCP, or Azure. Our focus is on truly serverless deployments that use some combination of the following.

Ayush Kapur

Jul 6, 2022

Re-Imagining the Next Generation of Workplace Collaboration Tools

“CIO Perspectives” is a white paper series by Mark Settle that explores the top-of-mind technical issues confronting today’s CIOs and IT leaders.

Work-Bench

Feb 24, 2022

PLG & the Evolving SaaS Billing & Pricing Infrastructure 🌊

This post was originally published on The Data Source, my monthly newsletter covering the top innovation in data infrastructure, engineering and developer-first tooling. Subscribe here and never miss an issue!

Priyanka Somrah

Sep 30, 2021

Work-Bench Security Perspectives 2021 Report

In 2020, the acceleration of digital transformation initiatives and rise of distributed workforces created wide open gaps in enterprises’ security defenses.

Kelley Mak

Jun 23, 2021

Data Science Notebooks & the Opportunity Ahead 📓

Priyanka Somrah

May 20, 2021

Work-Bench Snapshot: Areas Primed for Opportunity in Procurement

The Work-Bench Snapshot Series explores a particular topic we’re digging into from an investment standpoint.

Jessica Lin

Mar 29, 2021

The State of Data Infrastructure & Analytics Report 2021

As an early stage investor at Work-Bench, I’ve been keeping an active pulse on the data ecosystem by speaking with data practitioners, startup founders, and corporate executives from our network.

Priyanka Somrah

Mar 17, 2021

Is There Still Room in the Cloud Security Market?

While the initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided for businesses, one of its main legacies is how it ushered in a tidal wave of accelerated digital transformation.

Kelley Mak

Jan 20, 2021

Work-Bench Snapshot: Augmenting Streaming and Batch Processing Workflows

The Work-Bench Snapshot Series explores the top people, blogs, videos, and more, shaping the enterprise on a particular topic we’re looking at from an investment standpoint.

Priyanka Somrah

Dec 1, 2020

Uncovering the Top Challenges and Opportunities in CI/CD

A core area that we track at Work-Bench is the adoption of DevOps and what the transition looks like in practice for large enterprises.

Priyanka Somrah