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semalayer.com
What it is
Sema is a semantic layer for enterprise AI that connects databases and answers business questions in plain English, with governance controls. It maps tables, joins, metrics, and business terms into a typed graph; verified inferred joins can be reused in later answers. It can ask clarifying questions, show the SQL and graph nodes behind an answer, and select a chart. Users can save and schedule reports for email delivery and set metric alerts for thresholds or deviations. Available connectors include PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and SQLAlchemy URIs; ClickHouse and Amazon Redshift are in beta, while SQL Server, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, and dbt metadata are on the roadmap. Sema can run in a customer VPC or its own environment; self-hosting uses Kubernetes and Helm with customer-provided Postgres and object storage. The free Sandbox costs nothing and limits use to one connector, one user, 100 monthly chat queries, and five saved reports, without scheduled delivery or alerts. Pro costs $49 a month per user, with a three-seat minimum and a 14-day trial.
Spec sheet
- What it does
- Sema is a governed semantic layer that connects databases, models business meaning and answers questions in plain English with audit evidence.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Product
- Sema is a semantic layer for enterprise AI that connects databases, infers data meaning, and answers business questions in plain English with governance.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Audience
- Sema describes itself as built for enterprise and regulated teams, and its About page says it is designed for warehouses with thousands of tables.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Deployment
- Sema says it can run in the customer’s VPC or its own environment; its self-hosted Kubernetes deployment uses a Helm chart and customer-provided Postgres and object storage.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- API
- The roadmap lists a developers API using workspace-scoped keys, and the product states that governed definitions resolve through an API.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Integrations
- Sema describes its capabilities as MCP tools for use with Claude, Cursor, or an in-house agent, and supports OAuth2/OIDC identity providers including Okta, Entra, Auth0, and Google Workspace.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Security
- Sema says it uses TLS in transit and encryption at rest, role-based access, restricted-column masking, workspace isolation, and an append-only log of queries, plans, and configuration changes.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Compliance
- Sema’s trust page says SOC 2 Type II is in progress, GDPR-ready data processing terms are available, and HIPAA support with a BAA is available for eligible plans on request.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Support
- The Pro plan includes email support, Business includes priority support, and Enterprise includes a named customer success manager.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Founded
- 2025Read 28 Sep 2026 · semalayer.com
- Company
- Sema says it was founded in 2025 and is remote-first.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Alerts
- Threshold and deviation rules can monitor metrics on a schedule and route breaches to owners with frozen evidence.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Audit logging
- Mutations, questions, plans and answers are recorded in an append-only log that can be filtered and exported to CSV.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Auto-glossary
- The system drafts business definitions for tables and columns, adds synonyms, sensitivity and lifecycle metadata, and lets people confirm them.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Company founding
- Sema's about page states that it was founded in 2025 and is remote-first.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Company size and headquarters on LinkedIn
- LinkedIn lists Sema as privately held, headquartered in San Francisco, founded in 2017, with 11–50 employees.Read 15 Oct 2026 · linkedin.com
- Compliance status
- The company describes DPDP Act alignment, GDPR readiness and a SOC 2 program; its trust page says SOC 2 Type II is still in progress and HIPAA support is available on request.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Connector status limits
- ClickHouse and Amazon Redshift are beta; SQL Server, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks and dbt metadata are listed for the roadmap.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Connectors
- The connectors page lists PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and any SQLAlchemy URI as available; ClickHouse and Amazon Redshift are in beta, while SQL Server, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, and dbt metadata are on the roadmap.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Connectors available
- PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite and arbitrary SQLAlchemy URIs are listed as available connectors.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Conversational query
- Users ask natural-language questions; Sema can clarify, generate read-only SQL, show the SQL and graph path, and select a chart automatically.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Documentation
- The documentation includes a quickstart, sector quickstarts, connector guidance, feature guides, administration, security overview and troubleshooting.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Evidence packs
- Each answer can include question, SQL, lineage and access context signed with Ed25519, with expiring read-only audit links.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Funding
- Crunchbase shows one private funding round backed by Nimble Ventures, with the amount undisclosed.Read 15 Oct 2026 · crunchbase.com
- Identity integrations
- OAuth2/OIDC is designed to work with Okta, Microsoft Entra, Auth0 and Google Workspace, mapping groups to roles.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Independent founder profile
- M&A Science describes Matt Van Itallie as Sema's founder and CEO and says the company assesses code quality, technical risk and AI-generated code for software assets.Read 15 Oct 2026 · mascience.com
- Independent product case study
- Andersen's case study describes an earlier Sema code-review web app with GitHub synchronization, a Chrome extension, reusable snippet search, automatic summaries and tagging.Read 15 Oct 2026 · andersenlab.de
- Independent startup profile
- Wellfound describes Sema as an early-stage B2B startup with 11–50 employees and locations in Baltimore and Detroit.Read 15 Oct 2026 · wellfound.com
- Legal name and founders
- Crunchbase identifies the legal entity as Sema Technologies, Inc., names Matt Van Itallie and Sanjay Khunger as founders, and lists Matt Van Itallie as CEO.Read 15 Oct 2026 · crunchbase.com
- Licence
- The EULA grants a limited, non-exclusive internal-use subscription licence and prohibits copying, modification, redistribution and reverse engineering; it is not an open-source licence.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Limit: compliance maturity
- SOC 2 Type II certification is not complete; the trust page describes the program as in progress.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Limit: connector maturity
- Several major warehouse connectors are roadmap items or beta rather than generally available.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Limits
- The free Sandbox includes one connector, one user, 100 chat queries per month, five saved reports, and no scheduled delivery, alerts, or signals.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- MCP integration
- Sema says every capability is exposed as an MCP tool for Claude, Cursor and in-house agents.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Querying
- Sema asks clarifying questions, shows the SQL it ran and graph nodes traversed, and automatically selects a chart for the answer.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- RBAC
- Viewer, analyst, admin and owner roles are enforced in code, with restricted columns masked or refused before query execution.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Reports
- Answers can be saved as versioned reports and delivered on a recurring email schedule.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Reports and alerts
- Users can save and schedule reports for email delivery, and create scheduled threshold or deviation alerts on metrics.Read 2 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Review coverage: G2
- G2's October 2026 semantic-layer grid highlights eight other products; Sema is not among the highlighted products shown on that page.Read 15 Oct 2026 · g2.com
- Review coverage: TrustRadius
- TrustRadius lists a Semantic Layer category, but the opened category directory does not show a Sema product rating or review count.Read 15 Oct 2026 · trustradius.com
- Schema introspection
- On connection, Sema profiles tables, columns, types and keys and tracks schema drift with snapshots.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Security claims
- Sema states TLS 1.2 or later in transit, AES-256 at rest, Fernet-encrypted workspace LLM keys and secrets excluded from clients.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Self-hosting
- The architecture describes Kubernetes deployment with a Helm chart, customer-provided PostgreSQL and object storage, and a control plane that holds the graph rather than warehouse rows.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Semantic graph
- Tables, joins, metrics and business terms are represented in a typed graph; verified joins are reused by later answers.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- Signals registry
- Reviewed alert breaches become provenance-bearing immutable registry entries.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
- System and deployment requirement
- Self-hosted users must maintain the underlying infrastructure, apply security updates and run supported versions.Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
Plans and prices
Sandbox Free free forever 1 connector · 1 user · 100 chat queries/month · 5 saved reports · no scheduled delivery · no alerts or signals · “Powered by Sema” embeds Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
Pro $49 a month $49/user/mo · minimum 3 seats · 14-day trial unlimited connectors and chat · unlimited reports, schedules, alerts and signals · RBAC · audit log · email support · no card required Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
Business $99 a month $99/user/mo · minimum 10 seats Everything in Pro · SSO · advanced governance · Compliance Agent V2 · AI evaluation harness V2 · federated joins V2 · priority support · 99.9% SLA Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
Enterprise Priced on request Contact annual Everything in Business · SAML/SCIM · custom DPA · BYOK encryption · on-premises Helm option · SOC 2/HIPAA/GDPR evidence packs · named CSM · 99.95% SLA Read 15 Oct 2026 · semalayer.com
Strong points and limits
Strong points
- Shows SQL and graph nodes behind answers.
- Verified inferred joins can be reused.
- Supports scheduled reports and metric alerts.
- Can run in a customer VPC or self-hosted Kubernetes.
Limits
- Sandbox limits use to one connector and one user.
- Sandbox has no scheduled delivery or alerts.
- Pro has a three-seat minimum.
- Several connectors remain in beta or on the roadmap.
Who it suits
Sema is aimed at enterprise and regulated teams, including those working with warehouses that have thousands of tables. Its deployment options and governance controls may suit teams with specific security or compliance needs.
Verdict
Sema combines plain-English business queries with a visible SQL trail, reusable data relationships, and reporting features. Compare its Sandbox limits and per-user plan minimums with your expected usage.
Where Specifiction places it
- Semantic Layer Software#4 of 288.7
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