Jason Cui and Jennifer Li — a16z - Your Data Agents Need Context - March 2026

This article by Jason Cui and Jennifer Li, published on a16z.news in March 2026, examines why data and analytics agents fail without proper context. It traces the evolution from the modern data stack through the agent frenzy to the realization that agents hit a wall due to messy, disparate enterprise data and lack of contextual understanding. The piece argues that context layers and graphs are emerging as essential infrastructure for agents to handle vague questions, business definitions, and cross-source reasoning.