Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 11 hours ago
In this episode from the WorkOS booth at HumanX 2026, Michael Grinich sits down with Matt DeBergalis, co-founder and CEO of Apollo GraphQL — the company that brought GraphQL to the world and is now at the center of how enterprises connect AI agents to the systems they've spent decades building.
Matt's take: modernization was never just technical, and AI is making that clearer than ever. The first question enterprises ask is about MCP or agent tooling. The second question is always about people, change management, and how to navigate what's coming.
Key topics covered:
• Why GraphQL's semantic API layer makes it a natural fit for agents that need to understand what data actually means
• Why MCP is "just rebuilding HTTP for the agent world" — and why that's a good thing
• How Apollo's product lets you define MCP tools directly in terms of GraphQL queries
• Why enterprise legacy systems aren't tech debt, they're 25 years of revenue-generating investment
• The non-developer (head of talent) at Apollo building agents to coach managers in real time
• Why Matt is canceling SaaS subscriptions, not to save money, but to show his team what's possible
• Why learning to code is the wrong skill to teach, and what systems design and taste actually matter
Learn more about WorkOS: workos.com and Apollo GraphQL: apollographql.com
In this episode from the WorkOS booth at HumanX 2026, Michael Grinich sits down with Matt DeBergalis, co-founder and CEO of Apollo GraphQL — the company that brought GraphQL to the world and is now at the center of how enterprises connect AI agents to the systems they've spent decades building.
Matt's take: modernization was never just technical, and AI is making that clearer than ever. The first question enterprises ask is about MCP or agent tooling. The second question is always about people, change management, and how to navigate what's coming.
Key topics covered:
• Why GraphQL's semantic API layer makes it a natural fit for agents that need to understand what data actually means
• Why MCP is "just rebuilding HTTP for the agent world" — and why that's a good thing
• How Apollo's product lets you define MCP tools directly in terms of GraphQL queries
• Why enterprise legacy systems aren't tech debt, they're 25 years of revenue-generating investment
• The non-developer (head of talent) at Apollo building agents to coach managers in real time
• Why Matt is canceling SaaS subscriptions, not to save money, but to show his team what's possible
• Why learning to code is the wrong skill to teach, and what systems design and taste actually matter
Learn more about WorkOS: workos.com and Apollo GraphQL: apollographql.com
