dbt Labs Expands Its Fusion Engine Ecosystem
In a significant development announced on November 18, 2025, dbt Labs has expanded its dbt Fusion engine ecosystem by integrating it with Microsoft Fabric. This pivotal move aims to enhance the capabilities of data teams by facilitating more efficient data transformation for analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. The integration, based on a lasting collaboration with Microsoft, is set to streamline the processes of building, testing, and orchestrating dbt transformations directly within the Fabric framework.
As organizations increasingly gravitate towards analytics and AI, the demand for rapid yet governed data transformation has become crucial. Ryan Segar, the Chief Product Officer at dbt Labs, emphasized the impact of this integration: “The speed and complexity of modern analytics and AI projects demand that teams can transform and serve data seamlessly across their stack.” With dbt Fusion now embedded into Microsoft Fabric, organizations can rely on this extended functionality to provide trustworthy and high-quality data, which is essential for scaling analytics responsibly.
The dbt Fusion engine represents a substantial technological advance for dbt, built using Rust and featuring advanced SQL comprehension. This engine improves the developer experience dramatically, while empowering teams to operate with precise and relevant data on a large scale. Notably, the new engine boasts parse times that can be up to 30 times faster than its predecessor, dbt Core, allowing users to execute large dbt projects in mere milliseconds rather than minutes.
Furthermore, the integration simplifies the workflow for data teams, as they can now author, test, and deploy dbt models directly through Microsoft Fabric without the complexities of Command Line Interface (CLI) setups or the need for external orchestration tools. This seamless transition is reinforced by the automatic application of enterprise security controls via Fabric during every transformation, ensuring governance at scale.
Faisal Mohamood, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, acknowledged the collaborative effort by stating, “With Microsoft Fabric, teams are building the data products required to deliver trustworthy AI to their organizations.” The synergy of Microsoft’s extensive cloud capabilities combined with dbt’s robust transformation framework equips customers with the tools necessary to establish a solid data foundation, which is vital for successful AI initiatives.
This announcement was made at Microsoft Ignite 2025, where it was revealed that the dbt job within Microsoft Fabric is currently available as a public preview, utilizing dbt Core initially with plans for future integration of the dbt Fusion engine expected in 2026. dbt Labs, a frontrunner since its inception in 2016, has continuously aimed to assist data practitioners in creating and sharing organizational knowledge. As a standard for AI-ready structured data, dbt helps unlock the performance, contextuality, and reliability required to scale analytics in today’s AI-driven era. Currently, over 80,000 data teams worldwide, including notable organizations like Siemens, Roche, and Condé Nast, utilize dbt's offerings.
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