Hex rebuilt for AI agents, raises $100 million at $1.2 billion

Hex's decision to rebuild rather than layer AI on top of its existing product reflects a broader challenge in enterprise software. The original product required hundreds of tools to teach agents how to use it, and external agents could only interact via MCP, a protocol for connecting AI models to tools and data. That architecture wasn't suited for agents that need to run calculations quickly and repeatedly. Meanwhile, employees were already building their own dashboards and reports with tools like Cursor and Claude, often sharing them without proper permissions or provenance controls.

Hex 4.0 treats every analysis as code, aiming to let teams define data models, specify trusted data, and provide guidance for AI so that any analysis—wherever it was created—carries consistent context and permission controls. The company says users analyzing in Cursor or Claude Code can publish results back to Hex through its command-line tool. With more than 2,500 customers including Notion, Ramp, and Lovable, Hex is betting that this agent-first foundation will be what data teams need next.