I flew into Utah expecting a user conference. I came back with one of the clearest pictures I’ve seen of where AI in regulated industries is heading.

MasterControl Masters Summit 2026. Hyatt Regency, Salt Lake City. October 12 to 15.

600+ quality and manufacturing leaders. 90+ speakers. 100+ sessions. One theme kept coming up in almost every conversation I had: All Together Now.

Here’s everything you need to know.

The headline: 90 new customers, and they’re buying platforms

MasterControl used the Summit to share its 2026 numbers. It added 90 new customers this year.

The bigger story is what those customers are buying. Most started with Quality Excellence (Qx), but more and more are adding Manufacturing Excellence (Mx) and Asset Excellence (Ax). 15 new customers took more than 1 product, and Sonablate went all in on Qx, Mx and Ax together.

On the manufacturing side, 12 of the 15 new manufacturing customers also adopted quality. That tells you what’s driving buying decisions. Teams want their batch records and their quality events connected.

Dave Edwards summed it up on stage: “The companies choosing MasterControl this year are making a platform decision.”

New names on the customer list include Pharmavite, Revlon, Bespak, Alfresa, Amber Therapeutics, Glatt Pharmaceutical Services and Vero Biotech. MasterControl also renewed its contract with the U.S. FDA.

The numbers worth saving

90 new customers in 2026
15 customers adopted more than 1 product
12 of 15 new manufacturing customers also adopted quality
About 20% ARR growth for Mx over the past 12 months
250,000+ quality events launched through Quality Event Management in 2 years
150,000+ of those in 2026 alone, which is 70%+ growth this year
1,200+ companies on MasterControl worldwide

AI that stays inside the walls

This was the part I came for.

Every conversation about AI in life sciences hits the same wall. Where does my data go?

MasterControl’s answer is simple. It doesn’t go anywhere.

Matt Lowe, Chief Strategy Officer, explained it clearly. MasterControl runs its AI, including open-source LLMs and its own machine learning models, inside its own system boundary. Customer data never leaves, and it’s never used to train outside models.

That foundation also lets them move fast. When a new AI development lands, they can adopt it without putting compliance at risk.

2 AI tools are already live on this foundation:

SOP Analyzer, generally available since January, checks standard operating procedures against regulatory requirements, flags gaps and suggests fixes. MasterControl says it cuts update cycles from days to hours.

Event Summarizer, launched in April, writes summaries of deviations, CAPAs and non-conformances right where teams work. Reviewers can still edit and refine every summary.

Both run on the ADAPT Platform. Alex Kaplunov, CTO, explained why the ISO 42001 certification matters. It’s the international standard for managing AI responsibly, which means governance comes built in from day 1. For a quality team that answers to auditors, that’s the difference between an AI pilot and AI in production.

The CEO storyline

This was Dave Edwards’s first Masters Summit as CEO.

Some context. MasterControl had the same CEO for 25 years. It bootstrapped to $100M+ in ARR before raising a Series A, and has since passed $200M. That almost never happens in enterprise software.

Dave has been at MasterControl for 9+ years, most recently running revenue. Before that, he managed factories and commercial teams. So when he talks to quality and manufacturing leaders, he’s talking about problems he has lived.

His keynote focused on execution. Finish what’s been promised, listen to customers, then build what’s next. He also took live questions from the audience, which you rarely see a CEO do at a vendor event.

Customers on the keynote stage

My favorite part of the Summit was how much stage time went to customers.

Michael Schnabel, VP Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs at Cirtec Medical, shared what a real ERP integration with MasterControl looks like.

Dmytro Panchenko and Nina Markosyan from Microbix walked through taking their entire quality operation digital, including the challenges along the way.

Pine Pharmaceutical shared a simple example that says a lot. When a quality event links directly to a batch record, the release team has everything in one place when it’s time to release a drug.

The Hackathon that ships

This might be the most underrated thing MasterControl does.

Customers pitch the features they want. A Selection Show picks the winners on Day 2. Engineering teams then build around the clock, and the results get revealed on Day 4.

The winning features make it into released software within days. Most companies take quarters to act on customer feedback.

What I took away

1. Connected beats best-of-breed. The growth is coming from customers linking quality, manufacturing and assets on one platform.

2. Trust decides whether AI gets used. In life sciences, the companies winning with AI are the ones that can show regulators exactly where the data lives.

3. Customers set the agenda. Town halls, the Hackathon and customer keynotes all pointed the same direction. That’s what All Together Now looked like in practice.

Thank you to the MasterControl team for having us in Salt Lake City. If you work in quality, manufacturing or anywhere in life sciences, this is a company worth watching.

Hit reply and tell me: what’s stopping your team from putting AI into production today?

Best,
Ravit Jain
Founder & Host of The Ravit Show