Kuali Days 2026 was not just a user conference. It was a signal that Kuali, Inc. is entering a new phase.
The leadership transition was central to the event. Rishi Rana introduced himself as Kuali’s new CEO with a message focused on execution, continuity, and customer value. The tone was measured and practical. There was no attempt to distance Kuali from its past. Instead, the message was that Kuali has a stronger platform, a broader product portfolio, and a clearer opportunity to help institutions modernize the work that sits between their major systems.
The recognition of Joel Dehlin was one of the most meaningful moments of the event. The appreciation for Joel was genuine and well deserved. His leadership helped move Kuali from its foundation-era roots into a modern software company while preserving much of the community orientation that made Kuali distinctive in the first place. That balance is not easy. Joel deserves credit for helping Kuali mature without losing its higher education DNA.
Kuali framed its strategy around systems of record, systems of action, and systems of intelligence. That framing fits the reality of higher education operations. Institutions have spent decades investing in major systems of record, but much of the actual work still happens in the spaces between them. Approvals, forms, exceptions, reviews, handoffs, routing, follow-up, reporting, and local business processes still depend too heavily on email, spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual coordination.
Kuali Build remains one of the clearest examples of the company’s value proposition. It gives institutions a practical way to digitize and improve processes without waiting for a large enterprise replacement project. Build is not simply a forms tool. In the Kuali context, it is part of a broader platform for workflow, routing, data collection, approvals, and operational visibility.
The AI announcements built on that foundation. The AI Gateway and AI Connector are especially important because they address one of the central questions institutions are asking right now: how do we bring AI into campus operations without losing control of data, cost, governance, or institutional context?
That distinction is important. Higher education does not need dozens of disconnected AI experiments sitting outside normal business processes. Institutions need a governed way to bring AI into the work itself, with the right data, the right permissions, the right workflow context, and the right controls.
The AI Connector gives institutions a more practical path for using AI services inside Kuali workflows. Rather than asking every department to figure out its own AI integration strategy, Kuali is moving toward reusable, administratively configured connections that can be made available across applications. That is the right model for higher education. It gives central IT and system administrators a way to manage access while still allowing functional offices to use AI in forms, workflows, document review, summaries, routing logic, and decision support.
The AI Gateway is the more strategic layer. If AI is going to become part of institutional operations, campuses need a control point between their workflows and the large language models they use. That control point needs to help institutions decide which models are used, what data is sent, how requests are governed, how tokens are consumed, and how cost is monitored.
Token usage is not a technical footnote. It is a budget and governance issue. As AI moves from pilot projects into operational workflows, institutions will need visibility into where prompts are coming from, which processes are generating the most consumption, whether expensive models are being used for low-complexity tasks, and where lower-cost models are sufficient. Without that visibility, AI adoption can become another uncontrolled shadow technology expense.
The Gateway also gives Kuali a more credible data protection story. Institutions are rightly cautious about sending sensitive student, employee, research, financial, or operational data into external AI services. A gateway approach creates the possibility of policy enforcement, access controls, model selection, auditability, and more deliberate routing of data. It also supports a more mature approach to institutional AI adoption, where AI use is embedded in approved processes rather than scattered across individual accounts and disconnected tools.
The roadmap toward an Agentic Campus was not simply about adding AI-generated text to forms. The stronger idea was AI that can operate in context: inside workflows, connected to institutional data, governed by permissions, and eventually capable of helping move work forward across processes. The emphasis on AI that acts, not just AI that chats, is the right distinction. Higher education does not need more disconnected interfaces. It needs technology that reduces administrative burden, improves throughput, and makes complex work easier to complete.
The acquisition of Conclusive Systems brings degree audit and academic planning into the Kuali portfolio through Advisor and Focal. That expands Kuali’s academic operations story in an important way. Degree audit is not just a compliance function. It is a core student progression tool, and accuracy matters. When degree requirements, substitutions, exceptions, transfer credits, and catalog changes are not handled well, students and advisors lose confidence in the system.
The addition of Penji extends Kuali into tutoring, coaching, advising, counseling, career support, and student support scheduling. That gives Kuali a stronger position in the student success workflow, particularly around how students find, schedule, and engage with human support services.
Together, Conclusive Systems and Penji help Kuali connect more of the path from curriculum to completion. Curriculum, catalog, degree requirements, academic planning, advising support, tutoring, and student services are often treated as separate administrative categories. In practice, they are part of the same student progression journey. Kuali appears to be building toward that more connected model.
Too many people still think of Kuali through the lens of the Kuali Foundation from twenty years ago. That history is important, but it is not an accurate picture of the company today. Kuali is now a solid software company with real technology, a maturing platform, a broader product portfolio, and a strategy that fits the operational needs of higher education.
It is not trying to be everything. It is not simply trying to replace every system of record. Its strongest position is in the work layer that connects systems, people, policies, approvals, data, and institutional processes.
Higher education is under pressure to improve service, reduce administrative burden, make better use of staff capacity, and modernize operations without launching another decade-long transformation project. Kuali’s platform strategy speaks directly to that need. It gives institutions a way to improve how work gets done while still respecting the complexity of campus governance, compliance, and distributed decision-making.
The company has matured. The technology has matured. Kuali Build continues to deliver real value. The AI strategy is more grounded than performative. The acquisitions of Conclusive Systems and Penji extend the company’s reach across the student and academic operations lifecycle. And the leadership transition appears focused on strengthening the platform rather than chasing a new identity.
It is becoming a more important part of the conversation about where higher education operations go next.
Originally posted by Matthew Winn on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow him there to catch all his great industry insights.
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