Practical AI adoption insight, every week. Subscribe to aiblBRIEF
aibl
  • Practical AI Insights
    • The research
      • Benchmark your AI ROI (Beta)
      • State of UK AI Adoption 2026
      • What our research says
      • AI analysis
      • Leadership Series report
      • Newsletter archive
    • Learn and apply
      • AI explained
      • AI case studies
      • AI build stories
      • AI playbooks
      • AI workshop guides
      • Boardroom findings
      • AI leader interviews
  • aiblLIVE
    • 2026 session library
    • aiblLIVE 2027
  • Find AI enablement partners
    • AI Enablement Directory
      • Search the directory
      • Register your business
    • By Category
      • AI Strategy & Readiness
      • AI Implementation & Deployment
      • AI Training & Capability Building
      • AI Agents & Agentic Workflows
      • AI Governance & Risk
      • Generative AI Applications
      • Data & Analytics
      • Process & Document Automation
  • Partner with aibl
    • For enablement partners
    • For AI platforms and vendors
    • Insights for vendors
    • Market insights reports
  • About
    • About Us
    • AI For business leaders
Subscribe to aiblBRIEF
  • Practical AI Insights
    • The research
      • Benchmark your AI ROI (Beta)
      • State of UK AI Adoption 2026
      • What our research says
      • AI analysis
      • Leadership Series report
      • Newsletter archive
    • Learn and apply
      • AI explained
      • AI case studies
      • AI build stories
      • AI playbooks
      • AI workshop guides
      • Boardroom findings
      • AI leader interviews
  • aiblLIVE
    • 2026 session library
    • aiblLIVE 2027
  • Find AI enablement partners
    • AI Enablement Directory
      • Search the directory
      • Register your business
    • By Category
      • AI Strategy & Readiness
      • AI Implementation & Deployment
      • AI Training & Capability Building
      • AI Agents & Agentic Workflows
      • AI Governance & Risk
      • Generative AI Applications
      • Data & Analytics
      • Process & Document Automation
  • Partner with aibl
    • For enablement partners
    • For AI platforms and vendors
    • Insights for vendors
    • Market insights reports
  • About
    • About Us
    • AI For business leaders
  • Subscribe to aiblBRIEF

Company brain: how Rig built one for a school software company

Downloads | AI case studies

Build a company brain in a strict order: data in one place first, then shared definitions, then access rules, and agents last. Toby Mather, Co-Founder of Rig, showed how a US school software company did it, with a live demo at aiblLIVE London 2026.

The customer’s data sat across seven systems. Once it was unified, the company built one view of each account, a renewal agent in Teams and an app inside Salesforce. Here is how it worked.

Rig’s approach in numbers

  • 3 foundations come before any agent: centralised data, a context layer and role-based access.
  • 48 hours without a reply, and the renewal agent sends a stronger message tagging the manager.
  • 72 hours without action, and it asks the team channel to take the account.

All figures as stated on stage by Toby Mather.

What is a company brain?

A company brain is an access gateway that people and AI agents plug into to do work. Mather contrasts it with the common setup where each person has their own AI assistant and their own set of MCP connectors. That leaves data scattered, access ungoverned and metrics defined differently by every agent.

This is the sort of boring bit that no one wants to vibe code, but it has to happen.

Toby Mather, Co-Founder, Rig

How do you build a company brain?

Follow four steps in order. Put all your data in one place, in a warehouse such as Snowflake. Build a context layer of definitions, connections and terminology. Set role-based access so each agent sees only what it should. Only then build agents and apps. Keep the layers separate so any one can be swapped.

What is a context layer?

It is a detailed dictionary of your data: what it means, how it connects and who may see it. It holds shared metric definitions such as win rate and ARR, links old and new product names, and carries usage rules for agents. In Rig, it updates itself when tools or data change.

It’s basically a really detailed dictionary of all your data, what it means, how it connects together, and who’s allowed what.

Toby Mather, Co-Founder, Rig

Why not just connect AI to your tools with MCPs?

At scale, direct connections cost more and control less. Mather says vendors such as Salesforce and HubSpot limit or charge for heavy API use. APIs cannot enforce one metric definition, and they return limited history. A warehouse copy also lets agents query far larger volumes. For a small startup, ten MCPs is basically fine.

Key takeaways

  • Centralise all your data first. Most warehouses are missing half the tools.
  • Define metrics once. Every agent should get the same win rate.
  • Govern agent access. Mask sensitive fields by default.
  • Work where people already are. Agents in Teams, apps inside Salesforce.

About the speaker

Rig logo

Toby Mather is Co-Founder of Rig, an AI-native data platform that helps companies build company brains across fragmented data. He spoke on the AI Infrastructure track at aiblLIVE London on 20 October 2026.

What’s in the full case study

If your AI agents keep getting different answers from the same data, start here. The full PDF goes deeper than this page, in the speaker’s own words.

  • The four-step build order, and why agents come last.
  • The live demo, from warehouse and LLM to a self-updating context layer.
  • Three use cases: an account timeline, a renewal agent and an app inside Salesforce.
  • Five actions to take back to your own organisation.

For CTOs, CDOs, RevOps and data leads planning AI agents across many systems. Five pages, about a seven-minute read.

Get your data ready for AI agents

Company brain: how Rig built one for a school software company
aibl
Subscribe to aiblBRIEF

Explore

  • For business leaders
  • For AI platforms and vendors
  • About
  • Contact

AI Insights

  • All articles
  • AI case studies
  • Interviews
  • UK AI adoption research

Events

  • aiblLIVE 2026 session library
  • aiblLIVE 2027

More

  • aiblCONNECT
  • AI Enablement Directory
  • aibl Information Pack for AI’s
  • The State of AI Adoption Key Findings
© 2026 AIBL MEDIA LIMITED (DBA: aibl | AI for business leaders), Company registration number: 16634894 - The organisers of aiblLIVE do not, under any circumstances make attendee data available to third parties for resale. Should you receive an email offering data purporting to be from aiblLIVE – or any other event organised by aibl media limited – please delete the message, block the sender, and do not respond or interact in any way.
  • Privacy Policy