Analytics and Data Science News for the Week of February 20; Updates from Databricks, Qlik, ThoughtSpot & More

Solutions Review Executive Editor Tim King curated this list of notable analytics and data science news for the week of February 20, 2026.

Keeping tabs on all the most relevant analytics and data science news can be a time-consuming task. As a result, our editorial team aims to provide a summary of the top headlines from the last week in this space. Solutions Review editors will curate vendor product news, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital funding, talent acquisition, and other noteworthy analytics and data science news items.

For early access to all the expert insights published on Solutions Review, join Insight Jam, a community dedicated to enabling the human conversation on AI.

Analytics and Data Science News for the Week of February 20, 2026

Amplitude launches agentic AI analytics agents for product teams

Amplitude has introduced Agentic AI Analytics, led by a Global Agent and four specialized agents that continuously monitor product behavior, investigate root causes, and recommend or even execute actions directly in Amplitude. The Global Agent lets teams ask natural-language questions and automatically builds dashboards, drills into funnels and experiments, and explains what’s driving changes, while dedicated agents watch KPIs, scan session replays for hidden friction, design and analyze web experiments, and turn feedback into prioritized product opportunities.

Read on for more → https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260216773220/en/Amplitude-Introduces-Agentic-AI-Analytics-for-the-Next-Era-of-Product-Experiences

Databricks Custom Agents: Agent Bricks as First-Class Databricks Apps

Databricks has made Agent Bricks Custom Agents (formerly Agent Framework) generally available, letting developers build, test, and deploy production-quality AI agents as fully managed Databricks Apps on serverless compute. Teams can use their preferred models and frameworks, integrate with CI/CD, leverage built-in evaluation, and rely on Lakebase-powered memory so agents stay context-aware while operating directly against governed enterprise data and systems within the Databricks platform.

Read on for more → https://www.databricks.com/blog/custom-agents-now-available-databricks

Gurobi appoints Pascal Van Hentenryck to lead new AI Innovation Lab

Gurobi has named Dr. Pascal Van Hentenryck—Georgia Tech professor and director of the NSF AI4OPT institute—as head of its new Gurobi AI Innovation Lab (GAIL), a focused R&D initiative to combine mathematical optimization with machine learning and other AI techniques. The lab will accelerate hybrid AI–optimization methods for large-scale, time-critical decision problems (such as power and energy systems), and strengthen collaboration between Gurobi, industry, and academia to bring cutting-edge research into production decision-intelligence platforms.

Read on for more → https://www.afp.com/en/infos/gurobi-appoints-dr-pascal-van-hentenryck-lead-ai-innovation-lab

Qlik Cloud Government – Gov DoD now available via AWS Marketplace for JWCC customers

Qlik has made Qlik Cloud Government – DoD (SaaS), along with customer-managed Qlik Sense Enterprise and Qlik Data Integration, available in AWS Marketplace through a DoD-specific private listing for JWCC customers. The move gives defense mission teams a faster, standardized procurement path to trusted data products and governed analytics across cloud and on-prem environments, while maintaining the security and control required for regulated, mission-critical workloads.

Read on for more → https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260218897353/en/Qlik-Launches-Qlik-Cloud-Government-Gov-DoD-Qlik-Sense-Enterprise-and-Qlik-Data-Integration-in-AWS-Marketplace-for-JWCC-Customers

Speedata + Nebul: APU-accelerated analytics on European sovereign AI cloud

Speedata, creator of the Analytics Processing Unit (APU), has partnered with European neocloud provider Nebul, which will be the first to deploy Speedata’s APU in a sovereign cloud environment. Benchmarks show the APU can deliver up to 100x speedups on Apache Spark-style big data and AI preprocessing, replacing fleets of CPU/GPU servers, so European enterprises can run high-performance analytics and AI pipelines under full EU legal jurisdiction and energy-efficient infrastructure.

Read on for more → https://aithority.com/machine-learning/speedata-creator-of-worlds-first-analytics-processing-unit-apu-partners-with-nebul-to-bring-high-performance-big-data-and-ai-analytics-to-european-sovereign-cloud/

ThoughtSpot’s next-gen Analyst Studio and SpotCache target AI data bottlenecks

ThoughtSpot has reengineered its Analyst Studio to close the “AI readiness gap,” adding agent-augmented data modeling, a native SQL IDE, and integrated Python/R notebooks alongside a new SpotCache feature. SpotCache lets teams create data snapshots that can be queried unlimited times inside ThoughtSpot—without hitting the cloud data warehouse—giving leaders fine-grained control over cloud spend while ensuring business users and agentic AI features (like Spotter) can access fast, consistent data.

Read on for more → https://www.tipranks.com/news/private-companies/thoughtspot-targets-ai-data-bottleneck-with-next-gen-analyst-studio-and-spotcache

Expert Insights

Watch this space each week as our editors will share upcoming events, new thought leadership, and the best resources from Insight Jam, Solutions Review’s enterprise tech community where the human conversation around AI is happening. The goal? To help you gain a forward-thinking analysis and remain on-trend through expert advice, best practices, predictions, and vendor-neutral software evaluation tools.

NEW Series Launching Soon: The Human Conversation with Solutions Review President Doug Atkinson

What makes us so special? And why isn’t AI just simply going to replace us all? Doug is sitting down with educators, researchers, and practitioners to try to find out. With the rise of AI, it is more important than ever that we need to have the Human Conversation.

Watch on YouTube

Insight Jam is Getting Set to Host Donald Farmer for the Expert Briefing: The Last Mile to AI & Why Analytics Leadership Matters on March 19

While AI can generate insights at unprecedented speed and scale, it cannot verify those insights against business reality, interpret them within organizational context, or take accountability when decisions go wrong. That responsibility still belongs to people. In this live Insight Jam session, Donald Farmer introduces the concept he calls the last mile: the critical gap between AI-generated output and trustworthy business action.

Register free on LinkedIn

Thought Leaders: The Hidden Crisis Killing Your Data & AI Strategy by Samir Sharma

I spoke with a C-suite leader this week who captured something I’ve been seeing everywhere: “I feel like I’m shouting about transformation from the stage while my team sits in the audience wondering what I’m talking about.” He’s not alone. What I’m calling “velocity whiplash” is the most under reported, over experienced pain point in enterprise AI today. Leaders are racing ahead while their organisations stand still. The gap between them is growing into a credibility crisis that’s quietly destroying AI transformations. You might think that’s too strong, but, it is something I’m continuing to hear.

Read on Solutions Review

The Editors Lens: How Leadership Development Groups Solve for the AI Skills Gap by Tim King

The future of analytics leadership development belongs to programs that prepare leaders to own the last mile with clarity, confidence, and authority. Anything less leaves organizations with powerful insight and no one truly responsible for its use.

Read on Solutions Review

Solutions Review Surpasses 250K on YouTube to Power Unmatched Media Momentum in Enterprise Tech & the Human Impact of AI

Solutions Review has officially surpassed 250,000 subscribers on YouTube, a milestone that’s about more than just the number. This moment marks the payoff of a deliberate, two-year strategy centered on authoritative video, human-led insight, and an early recognition of how AI search engines ingest information, assign trust, and surface sources at scale.

Read on Solutions Review

Insight Jam Launches New “Mesh Lab” to Build a Framework for Work & Learning in the Age of AI

Insight Jam Mesh Lab is a year-long, monthly series of expert-led discussions dedicated to exploring and shaping the next generation of frameworks for work and learning in the age of AI. Rather than reacting to tools or trends, Mesh Lab is designed to initiate a sustained, cross-sector conversation about how human capability itself must be re-architected as AI becomes embedded across education, enterprise, and leadership.

Watch on YouTube

Solutions Review Editors Launch New ‘Human-AI Ledger’ Newsletter to Chronicle the Human Impact of AI

Artificial intelligence is everywhere—but understanding its human impact has never been more urgent. That’s where Solutions Review‘s latest newsletter, The Human-AI Ledger, comes in. Designed to chronicle how AI is reshaping the way we learn, work, lead, and live, this newsletter explores the soft side of AI—the non-technical, deeply human dimensions that determine whether this technological revolution helps us thrive or leaves us behind.

Sign up now to get a weekly debrief of the latest human-centric news, insights, and commentary coming out of this emerging discussion.

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For consideration in future analytics and data science news roundups, send your announcements to the editor: tking@solutionsreview.com.