The startup Blackstone just backed to turn any exec’s data question into instant answers

Ethan Ding sees the last decade of SaaS as a historical glitch. 

“In 30 years, we’re going to look back and say ‘oh, remember that period of time where those crazy software companies were selling seats for 90 to 95% margins?’” he said. “We’ll look back on that the same way we look back on mercantilism. ‘Remember when the East India Trading Company could move spice?’”

Ding—who went from growing up in a fishing village in China to spending years as a venture capital data junkie—has a unique vantage point on the so-called SaaSpocalypse. Ding is the CEO and cofounder of TextQL, a startup using AI agents to replace the laggard, consultant‑driven process of analytics with a speedy, plain language‑based interface. Data has long been at the center of the rise of enterprise software—and internal company data has always been difficult to wrangle in a way that AI is changing rapidly. 

On one hand, AI is about to clean up messy enterprise data, says Ding. On the other hand, that means more people than ever are going to be asking questions about that data. 

“Analytics is about to experience probably the most violent Jevons paradox anybody’s seen in a very long time,” said Ding, referencing the 161-year-old theory that more technological efficiency leads to more usage, not less. “Today, the cost of asking a question to seeing a chart that tells you what to do… is two weeks, a person, maybe $5,000–$10,000 of salary spent chasing those numbers down. With language models, with what we’ve built… you’re looking at an increase of five to six orders of magnitude, all‑in.”

Ding cofounded TextQL in 2022 with Mark Hay, and just closed $17 million in strategic investment led by Blackstone’s early-stage investment arm, Blackstone Innovations Investments, Fortune has exclusively learned. There’s a natural question here: Does Ding worry that what he’s doing........

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