Why Apache Iceberg & Open Lakehouse is the Foundation for Data & AI Workloads

In this discussion, Dipankar - Cloudera’s Director of Developer Relations sits with Navita - Director of Product Marketing to unpack why Apache Iceberg has emerged as the foundation of the open lakehouse - and why it’s increasingly essential for modern Data & AI workloads.

Dipankar & Navita walks through how Iceberg became the de facto standard among open table formats, what it's design enables (interoperability, engine-agnostic access, reliable metadata), and why openness matters as organizations move toward multi-engine, hybrid data architectures.

They also connect these ideas to the next phase of GenAI: retrieval pipelines, feature engineering, model feedback loops, and the need for consistent, high-quality data across systems and runtimes.

If you're exploring the future of lakehouse systems, this conversation breaks down why Iceberg and open table formats sit at the core of that evolution.