Ep.02 — Industry Perspective: Why is Context so Important? (ft. Sanjeev Mohan, SanjMo)

Gartner declared 2026 the year of context. MIT said most AI failures are context problems. The LangChain CEO called context engineering the defining skill of the agentic era. Why is everyone landing here at the same time — and what does it actually mean? In Episode 2 of WTF is the Context Layer, Austin Kronz sits down with Sanjeev Mohan — former Gartner VP of Research and founder of SanjMo Consulting — to break down why context became the most critical layer in enterprise AI. Sanjeev spent years studying technology cycles before they had names. He's watched more data trends rise, get declared inevitable, and quietly disappear than almost anyone in this space. His take on context is honest, practical, and vendor-neutral. What we cover: 00:00 Intro 08:25 Semantics vs. Context 13:52 Extract. Context. Link. 20:07 One Layer or Many? 26:08 The 6-Layer Stack 35:20 Build vs. Buy & Begin WTF is the Context Layer is a bi-weekly live series for AI leaders and builders. One burning question per episode, an open AMA floor, and guests who've actually built context infrastructure. 🔗 Series landing page: https://atlan.com/wtf-context-layer/ 🔗 Episode 1 recording: https://atlan.com/wtf-context-layer/w... 📅 Next episode: July 15 — "Is Semantic Layer = Context Layer?" with Dave Mariani, Co-founder & CTO of AtScale #ContextLayer #EnterpriseAI #AIAgents #DataAndAI #ContextEngineering #SemanticLayer #KnowledgeGraph #Atlan #Gartner #WTFIsTheContextLayer