As AI transforms the enterprise, the old model of managing data in application-controlled silos is breaking down. The companies that will win in the AI era are those that embrace data primacy by treating data, rather than the applications sitting on top of it, as the primary asset.

That shift was on full display at Pure Accelerate 2026, where Everpure Inc., the company formerly known as Pure Storage, made clear that its ambitions now extend well beyond flash storage into intelligent data management. The central thesis of the conference is that data must become universal, contextual and governed to serve AI at scale, according to Christophe Bertrand (pictured, left), principal analyst for cyber resiliency and data management at theCUBE Research.

“This is not about storage anymore. It’s about data,” he said. “That was very clear in the [chief executive officer’s] address. There’s a new data dynamic — which makes data sort of primary — and they call it data primacy. I think it’s a very good term, where data is really central to everything.”

Bertrand and co-host Alison Kosik (right) analyzed the keynote at Pure Accelerate 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Everpure’s architectural pivot, the company’s business momentum and how organizations can prepare their data for AI at scale. (* Disclosure below.)

Data primacy and the end of application-centric architectures

Everpure’s keynote landed against a backdrop of strong business fundamentals. CEO Charles Giancarlo highlighted first-quarter revenue of $1 billion, annual recurring revenue of $2.04 billion, and a net promoter score of 84 across nearly 15,000 customers, Bertrand noted.

But the strategic story carried more weight than the financial results. The core problem Everpure is targeting is the fragmentation that was created when every application vendor pulled data into its own silo — leaving enterprises unable to build a coherent picture of what their data actually means across systems, Bertrand explained.

“In the age of AI, you can’t go talk to 25 different systems to figure out what a customer means,” he said. “You want to have that universal truth about the actual data and relate it back to the business. In the age of AI, it becomes very, very critical to have that.”

Everpure’s answer spans three layers: a unified data plane with improvements to the FlashArray, an intelligent control plane with automation and mobility capabilities, and the universal data intelligence layer — enabled by its acquisition of 1touch — to provide discovery, context and governance across datasets. Without all three in place, AI models risk consuming bad, incomplete or non-compliant data, according to Bertrand.

“You can’t have access to enough of the data you need for the actual results you want to get out of your AI endeavors,” he said. “It’s really having that data primacy at the center of the conversation — not just storage of data anymore, not just this application versus that application.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Pure Accelerate 2026:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Pure Accelerate 2026. Sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE