2026 UPDATE: I studied 20 years of the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Here's what I found from the last 2 Magic Quadrants
Last year I broke down 20 years of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics & Business Intelligence. Two more Magic Quadrants have dropped since - 2025 and 2026 (published this week) - so I updated the data, checked my predictions, and wrote about some new observations.
1. EVERY VENDOR, YEAR BY YEAR (UPDATE)
Here’s an update to the list of every vendor on the Analytics & Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant since 2000.
One thing to call out for this year: Nearly half (9) of the players this year are in the Visionary quadrant (the most ever). My guess: That’s the AI impact. The industry is in this weird place where AI is changing everything, but we’re just at the beginning of the change and Gartner’s guessing at what the full impact will be. A lot of AI capabilities that these vendors offer are new or half-baked. “Visionary” probably makes sense for most of these tools until they really prove out their AI story.
2. ENTRY IS… LESS ROUGH?
Last time I did this analysis I wrote about how vendors always get their start in or near the Niche Player quadrant.
In the last 2 years we’ve seen 2 new vendors added to the Magic Quadrant: Sigma in 2025 and Databricks in 2026. Sigma entered on the Niche Player quadrant but made some waves as the “Highest debut since Tableau in 2010.” Not a bad showing, and matched my observation that every vendor starts in or near Niche Player.
But then… Databricks, wow. Databricks debuted on the Magic Quadrant this year (2 years after launching their BI product) far to the right in the Visionary quadrant. They’re not “near Niche Player” like Tellius (the only other Visionary debut) was in 2022. They are the vendor with the 2nd-highest completeness of vision on the entire Magic Quadrant (following Pyramid Analytics/ServiceNow).
Can’t help but wonder how Microsoft feels. 20+ years building a BI product but then on a first-time entry, Databricks gets higher marks for “completeness of vision” in the eyes of the analysts.
3. MEGA-VENDOR DOMINATION
It’s tough out there for the independent players. In the 2026 Magic Quadrant, 15 of the 20 products are part of an enterprise cloud ecosystem. One of the few independent players from last year (Pyramid Analytics) got acquired by ServiceNow. And Sisense got the boot in place of Databricks this year.
The remaining independent players on the Magic Quadrant (Incorta, Sigma, Tellius, GoodData, ThoughtSpot) are mostly stuck below the 50% line on the “ability to execute” axis. The one exception is ThoughtSpot in the Leader quadrant.
4. WHO’S NEXT TO FALL?
Last year I predicted Sisense, Spotfire, and Incorta would exit the Magic Quadrant next. Well, Spotfire got dropped in 2025 and Sisense got dropped this year. Incorta (debuted on the Magic Quadrant in 2022) looks like it’s next on the chopping block. And probably Domo too.
5. DOES THE MAGIC QUADRANT EXIST IN TWO YEARS? WHO JOINS NEXT YEAR?
Will the Analytics & BI Magic Quadrant even exist in 2 years? Gartner analysts themselves are divided about whether AI will kill BI and every vendor seems to be figuring out their story “against Claude” or “With Claude”.
You’ve got to assume Snowflake figures out a way. They have Cortex which isn’t exactly something that scales but it’s a bit of egg on their face that Databricks showed up and they didn’t.
What do you think? Plzzz share your hot takes below! I loved reading all of the comments last year. HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT! Fire awayyyyy