AI systems generate vast amounts of unstructured data, and managing the metadata—such as versions, references, and lifecycles—associated with this data is crucial for operational efficiency and effectiveness. Metadata management is essential for enterprises to harness AI's potential without becoming overwhelmed by unusable information, as it ensures data is transparent, reliable, and actionable, transforming AI into a competitive advantage. Key features for effective metadata management in cloud-native databases include real-time write performance, strong consistency to prevent metadata drift, elastic scalability, advanced query support, global distribution with regulatory compliance, and unified metadata and operational workloads. The text emphasizes that distributed SQL databases like CockroachDB are well-suited for AI metadata management, offering the necessary balance of scale, consistency, and query capability to manage massive object relationships efficiently.