Ryft Publishes New Industry Study Finding Apache Iceberg Now Core to Modern Enterprise Data Platforms

Audio By Carbonatix

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 19, 2026--

A new independent survey of 252 senior data leaders finds Apache Iceberg has become a foundational component of enterprise data platforms, now powering business-critical analytics and AI workloads at scale.

The State of Apache Iceberg in the Enterprise (2026) is based on a January 2026 survey of 252 senior data and IT leaders operating Apache Iceberg in production. The research was commissioned by Ryft and conducted by TrendCandy, an independent B2B technology research firm. It examines operational maturity, reliability, cost dynamics, and performance as Iceberg-managed data environments scale.

The study finds that organizations rely on Apache Iceberg as a foundational table format within their enterprise data architecture, supporting large-scale analytics, AI, and machine learning workloads. Nearly all respondents report improved query performance after migrating to Iceberg, and most say it has enabled new use cases and broader access to trusted data across teams.

Key findings include:

• 58% are using Iceberg for business-critical analytics
• 95% are using or planning to use Iceberg to run AI or ML workloads
• 93% report that Iceberg adoption unlocked new use cases
• 79% are moving or plan to move their remaining data to Iceberg in the next 12 months

At the same time, the research highlights a growing operational gap. While satisfaction with Apache Iceberg is high, most organizations report relying on custom scripts and internal tooling to manage optimization, access controls, compliance, and disaster recovery. As environments scale to thousands of tables and petabytes of data, these approaches increase operational risk and introduce inconsistency across multi-engine environments.

“Iceberg has entered its next chapter, powering the industry's largest data lakes and most demanding AI workloads. We’re moving past the 'getting started' phase and into the era of operational excellence.” said Yossi Reitblat, CEO of Ryft. “Success now depends on how well you can operationalize the stack to guarantee security and performance at scale.”

Survey respondents hold executive, VP, director, and manager-level roles across data-intensive industries, and most organizations manage between hundreds of terabytes and multiple petabytes of data in Iceberg. The majority are already using Iceberg for business-critical analytics, and nearly all plan to migrate additional data and workloads to Iceberg over the next 12 months.

The survey was conducted in January 2026 among 252 data and IT leaders across North America and Europe. Respondents work in organizations managing Iceberg environments ranging from hundreds of terabytes to multiple petabytes.

The full report, The State of Apache Iceberg in the Enterprise (2026), is available at:
https://ryft.io/the-state-of-apache-iceberg

About Ryft

Ryft ( ryft.io ) is the AI Data Lake built for Apache Iceberg. Ryft helps companies build a fully autonomous Iceberg data lake for ML & AI workloads, optimizing data in real time based on usage patterns, automating compliance, managing access controls from a single place, and ensuring data access is efficient, reliable, and secure.

Ryft is used by data-intensive companies, including Unity, Sonos, and Voodoo, to maintain operational consistency as Iceberg environments scale. Ryft is backed by Index Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260219501242/en/

CONTACT: Media Contact:

Name: Yossi Reitblat

Title: CEO

Email:[email protected]

Phone: +1 (914)-510-5647

KEYWORD: NEW YORK UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: SOFTWARE NETWORKS INTERNET ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DATA MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY APPS/APPLICATIONS SECURITY

SOURCE: Ryft

Copyright Business Wire 2026.

PUB: 02/19/2026 09:06 AM/DISC: 02/19/2026 09:06 AM

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260219501242/en