Dragonfly acquires Modern Data Stack: the community that mapped the data era joins the company mapping the AI era

• Dragonfly, the technology intelligence platform, has acquired Modern Data Stack (moderndatastack.xyz), the online community and knowledge hub followed by data practitioners and investors worldwide
• MDS’s directory of 500+ data tools and its content archive will strengthen Dragonfly’s knowledge graph of more than 300,000 software vendors, while its community of 25,000 followers and subscribers joins the Dragonfly community
• The acquisition brings the community that mapped the data tooling era into the company building the intelligence layer between organisations and the technology they use to operate in the AI era

London, UK, September 2nd 2026, 10:00 BST:

Dragonfly, the technology intelligence platform helping organisations make technology decisions with confidence, today announced it has acquired Modern Data Stack (MDS), the online community and knowledge hub that documented the rise of the modern data stack.

MDS grew into a reference point for the data industry: a directory of more than 500 data tools, company-by-company breakdowns of real data stacks, interviews with practitioners, a weekly newsletter that ran beyond 100 editions, a podcast and the community’s RocketShip Awards. The community grew to 25,000 followers and subscribers, and its coverage is followed closely by founders, operators and investors across the data ecosystem.

The movement MDS chronicled didn’t fade, it quietly won: the modern data stack became simply how companies work with data, and the industry moved on to a bigger question, AI. MDS’s lesson has never mattered more. The modern data stack era showed what happens when one function’s tooling gets mapped, benchmarked and chosen deliberately. Businesses now face that challenge everywhere at once, and the questions have multiplied: which tools exist, what they cost, who actually uses them, how they connect, what risks they carry, and what better ways of working the market has just made possible. Dragonfly was founded to answer them: an AI-powered intelligence layer that understands how a business operates on the inside, tracks how the technology market is moving on the outside, and turns the two into decisions and the automated work that follows, drawing on a knowledge graph of more than 300,000 software vendors, free of vendor bias.

Under the acquisition, Dragonfly takes ownership of all of MDS’s assets: the moderndatastack.xyz domain and site, its content archive, its newsletter, and its social channels and community. MDS’s newsletter subscribers will continue to receive a newsletter as part of Dragonfly’s, broadened from data tooling to the whole technology stack, and moderndatastack.xyz will redirect to Dragonfly. This is the first step in a bigger plan: Dragonfly is building a new community section on its platform, where MDS’s spirit and its map of the tooling landscape will live on and grow, with more to be announced in the coming months.

For MDS’s readers, that means more to resources and insights, not less. Dragonfly is building out a resource hub in the same tradition: white papers, articles and real-world stack breakdowns, and podcasts that examine the whole technology stack the way MDS examined the data stack, written for the practitioners who run that technology.

Sean King, co-founder and co-CEO at Dragonfly, said:

“The modern data stack era taught a generation of companies to take their tooling choices seriously, and MDS was where that conversation happened: professionals sharing real technology stacks, honestly, with no vendor agenda. That’s exactly how we believe technology decisions should be made everywhere in the business, and it’s what Dragonfly exists to do at full scale. Bringing MDS into Dragonfly means that community and everything it mapped becomes part of the intelligence layer we’re building for the AI era.”

Sven Sabas, co-founder and co-CEO at Dragonfly, said:

“The data stack was the first part of the business stack to get properly mapped, categorised and benchmarked, and it changed how a whole generation of companies used their data. The AI era demands that same rigour across every function, because you don’t become AI-ready by buying AI tools. You become AI-ready by changing how work flows through your company. MDS’s depth makes our map of that terrain stronger from day one.”

The acquisition is Dragonfly’s second major announcement in three weeks and follows a strong first year for the company. Dragonfly launched publicly in October 2025 alongside a £2.6M pre-seed round led by Episode 1, has since published its AI Readiness Framework and the first two of its three AI readiness papers, and in August 2026 was awarded Innovate UK funding with UCL School of Management to build the world’s first machine-queryable trust layer for software.

To find out more, visit www.askdragonfly.com.

Notes to editors

About Dragonfly: Dragonfly is the AI-powered intelligence layer between an organisation and the technology it uses to operate: it understands what is happening across a company’s technology stack (which tools are in use, who uses them, what they cost, how they connect and what risks they carry), reasons about what in the stack should change next, and helps carry out the work that follows. Founded in December 2024 and headquartered in London, Dragonfly combines a knowledge graph of more than 300,000 software vendors with AI-powered analysis.

About Modern Data Stack: Modern Data Stack (moderndatastack.xyz) is an online community and knowledge platform for data practitioners, featuring a directory of 500+ data tools, real-world company data stacks, practitioner stories, a weekly newsletter, a podcast and the MDS RocketShip Awards.

Sean King and Sven Sabas are available for interview.

Media contact: Sean King, [email protected]