Menu

Graph Chat with Philip Rathle, Chief Technology Officer of Neo4j

, , , , , , , , ,

Graph Chat with Philip Rathle, Chief Technology Officer of Neo4j

When I first met Philip Rathle, he was interviewing me for an editor job at Neo4j. 

Maybe it was just my job-interview jitters, but he was sorta intimidating! I didn’t even know what a graph database was, and Philip had like a million questions about that. He’s a careful reasoner, and I’m sure he was testing my own ability to reason through a problem with incomplete information. (I got the job, so he must not have thought I was terrible.) 

A decade later, I finally got to put him in the hot seat, even if I was behind the camera this time. After 5.5 years of working together at Neo4j and then another 5-ish years of working in the same industry, I’ve always appreciated Philip’s interdisciplinary thinking, and that came through in his interview.

As part of this ongoing Graph Chat video series, Amy Hodler from GraphGeeks – and also a Neo4j alum like me – got to sit down and talk with Philip Rathle, CTO of Neo4j, at ODSC West in San Francisco. Watch their interview below!

Graph Chat Interview with Neo4j’s Philip Rathle on Neuro-symbolic AI & Infinigraph

In this Graph Chat, Philip Rathle and Amy Hodler ponder the question: Is the AI moment actually a graph moment? 

What follows is a discussion of the massive shift in how enterprises are building AI, including:

  • GraphRAG vs. Vector Search: Why similarity search isn’t enough for high-stakes enterprise problems and how GraphRAG provides the discernment LLMs lack.
  • Neuro-symbolic AI: A look at the locus of reasoning and how combining non-deterministic models with deterministic graph data creates a grey box of explainability.
  • The AI Memory Problem: Why agents need meta-knowledge and a long-term memory that doesn’t involve shoving an entire company’s database into a model’s context window.
  • Neo4j’s Infinigraph: A peek at vertical sharding and how Neo4j is tackling 100-terabyte graphs.

This Graph Chat is a bit longer than most, but it’s well worth a watch or listen.

 

More about Neo4j

Neo4j is a leader in the graph technology space and the most popular labeled property graph database according to industry observer DB-Engines. The Neo4j graph database is also the #20 most popular database (of any kind) worldwide, according to the same report. 

Today, the Neo4j suite of offerings includes the self-managed Neo4j Graph Database, the AuraDB fully managed graph database-as-a-service, the Neo4j Graph Data Science algorithms and ML modeling, the Aura Graph Analytics-as-a-service, and the Neo4j Aura Agent console. Neo4j also offers partner solutions with Microsoft Fabric and Snowflake, among many others.

Need a Neo4j IDE and client to help you be more productive with your graph database or graph analytics? Check out gdotv – a graph database IDE with a no-fuss free trial – and level up your graph game today.

  

Subscribe for More Graph Chats

The Graph Chat video series by GraphGeeks aims to ask diverse leaders and practitioners about where the future of graph technology is headed. This and other episodes were sponsored by gdotv – the graph database IDE. Check out the full playlist of Graph Chats for more. 

Special thanks to Amy Hodler (Studio Exec, Producer, On-Screen Talent), Denise Gosnell (Audio Engineer), David Hughes (Camera and Audio Support Wizard) and Bryce Merkl Sasaki (“Cinematographer”). 

If you enjoyed this Graph Chat interview with Philip Rathle, subscribe to the GraphGeeks YouTube channel for more great discussions with leaders across the graph technology space.

 

Start doing more with graphs: Give gdotv a try and query, edit, explore, and visualize your graph data with ease and grace that even your boss will notice.

Sure, I'll Give gdotv a Try

Bryce Merkl Sasaki is the Head of Marketing at G.V()

Bryce Merkl Sasaki

Bryce Merkl Sasaki is a writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. A digital nomad and total nerd, he’s wandered the worlds of database and graph tech for more than a decade, covering big moments, interviewing interesting minds, and bringing abstract graph concepts back down to earth. Outside of work, he enjoys hikes with his wife in Northern California and writes on his science fiction novel.

Related Posts