Inside Datadog's AI Research Lab: Meet two PhD candidates behind Toto

Datadog's AI Research Lab in Paris is at the forefront of developing foundational models and autonomous agents that aim to revolutionize observability, with a significant contribution from PhD students Viktoriya Zhukova and Salahidine Lemaachi, recruited through France's CIFRE program. This government-funded initiative facilitates collaboration between companies and academic institutions, allowing doctoral candidates to work on industry-grounded research. Viktoriya focuses on enhancing timeseries forecasting through multimodal data, leveraging Datadog's extensive observability resources, while Salahidine investigates the application of AI models in understanding environments for improved forecasting and anomaly detection. Both researchers praise Paris's vibrant tech ecosystem, which, combined with France's supportive academic environment, provides them with access to cutting-edge research opportunities. Their work on Datadog's open-source timeseries foundation model, Toto, has been pivotal, demonstrating the impact of applied research in real-world systems. Their contributions have gained recognition, with the Toto model being adopted across various industries and presented at major conferences like NeurIPS.