Analytics and Data Science News for the Week of December 12; Updates from Altair, DataRobot, ThoughtSpot & More

Solutions Review Executive Editor Tim King curated this list of notable analytics and data science news for the week of December 12, 2025.

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.

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Analytics and Data Science News for the Week of December 12, 2025

Altair HyperWorks 2026 Delivers Design Efficiency for the AI-Driven Engineering Era

Altair released HyperWorks 2026, adding AI‑ and physics‑based optimization, cloud‑native workflows, and automated model setup to help engineers design products faster and more efficiently. The platform enhances multi‑physics simulation, generative design, and collaboration so teams can iterate quickly and reduce time‑to‑market in automotive, aerospace, and industrial applications.​

Read more → https://finance.yahoo.com/news/altair-hyperworks-2026-delivers-design-120000382.html

Alteryx Strengthens Enterprise Governance and Transparency for Trusted, Scalable Analytics

Alteryx announced new governance, lineage, and transparency features to help enterprises maintain trust and control as they scale self‑service analytics and AI. Enhancements include expanded role‑based access controls, auditability, and visibility into data flows, so organizations can meet regulatory requirements while empowering more users with analytics.

Read more → https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alteryx-strengthens-enterprise-governance-and-transparency-for-trusted-scalable-analytics-302637062.html

Databricks Introduces GenAI Partner Accelerators for Data Engineering and Migration

Databricks announced new GenAI Partner Accelerators focused on data engineering and migration, providing prescriptive architectures, templates, and best practices co‑built with leading partners to modernize data stacks on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. These accelerators are designed to help enterprises move off legacy ETL and warehouses, unify data for AI, and stand up production‑grade GenAI and agentic workloads faster with proven patterns and partner implementation support.​

Read more → https://www.databricks.com/blog/introducing-databricks-genai-partner-accelerators-data-engineering-migration

The Hidden AI Tax: IDC Research Reveals Nearly All Organizations Lose Cost Control When Deploying GenAI and Agentic Workflows at Scale

An IDC survey sponsored by DataRobot found that 96% of organizations deploying generative AI and 92% using agentic AI report costs higher than expected, while 71% admit they have little to no visibility into where those costs originate. Early movers that invested in unified platforms, governance, and cost transparency from the start are pulling ahead, as many others struggle with tool sprawl, multi‑vendor complexity, and IT teams spending nearly half their time stitching AI systems together.​

Read more → https://www.datarobot.com/newsroom/press/the-hidden-ai-tax-idc-research-reveals-nearly-all-organizations-lose-cost-control-when-deploying-genai-and-agentic-workflows-at-scale/

Dremio Survey: Agentic Analytics and AI-Driven Decision Making Are Top Priorities for 2026

Dremio’s 2026 State of the Data Lakehouse & AI report finds that 65% of organizations rank agentic analytics and AI-driven decision-making as top priorities for 2026, with 51% citing productivity and faster innovation as the main reasons to adopt AI. Yet 70% say siloed data and weak governance remain the biggest obstacles, driving a move toward open lakehouse architectures as the foundation for enterprise-wide agentic AI.​

Read more → https://www.hpcwire.com/aiwire/2025/12/10/dremio-survey-agentic-analytics-and-ai-driven-decision-making-are-top-priorities-for-2026/

Drillthrough in Excel Now Supported for Direct Lake and DirectQuery Models

Microsoft removed a long‑standing limitation by enabling Excel’s Show Details (drillthrough) feature to work against Direct Lake and DirectQuery semantic models when using Analyze in Excel. Users can now double‑click PivotTable cells to see underlying detail rows across Import, Direct Lake, and DirectQuery, with all applied filters and RLS/OLS security respected, eliminating the need to switch models just for detailed analysis.​

Read more → https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/drillthrough-in-excel-now-supported-for-direct-lake-and-directquery-models/

Qlik CEO: Enterprises Are Underachieving on AI Due to Data Readiness Gaps

Qlik CEO Mike Capone warned that most enterprises are “underachieving” with AI because their data strategies, governance, and analytic readiness lag their AI ambitions. Citing IDC research, he highlighted that while organizations are heavily investing in generative and agentic AI, only a minority have the scalable, trusted data foundations needed to deploy these capabilities at scale.​

Read more → https://finance.yahoo.com/news/qlik-ceo-enterprises-underachieving-ai-133000753.html

Informatica Empowers AI Agent Reasoning on Salesforce Einstein 1 Platform

Salesforce highlighted how Informatica is using the Einstein 1 Platform and Data Cloud to let AI agents reason over governed, unified data with better context. By combining Informatica’s data management with Salesforce’s agentic AI, customers can build agents that make more accurate decisions in sales, service, and marketing while maintaining trust, governance, and compliance.​

Read more → https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/informatica-empowers-ai-agent-reasoning/

ThoughtSpot Launches Four BI Agents That Work as a Team to Deliver Modern Analytics

ThoughtSpot launched four collaborative BI agents—Ask, Monitor, Explain, and Build—that work together to answer questions, watch KPIs, explain drivers, and create analytics content autonomously. Built on the ThoughtSpot Sage platform, these agents are designed to give business users conversational, always‑on analytics while preserving governance and trust over underlying data.

Read more → https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/12/10/3203191/0/en/ThoughtSpot-Launches-Four-BI-Agents-that-Work-as-a-Team-to-Deliver-Modern-Analytics.html

Expert Insights

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Thought Leaders: Fast, Cost Effective Innovation: What AWS Customers Got at AWS re:Invent

Amazon Web Services (AWS) users swarmed Las Vegas last week to network, learn, and buzz about artificial intelligence (AI). Five days and 101 announcements later, what have they walked away with? This blog evaluates re:Invent 2025 from the customer perspective, leveraging new BARC research that assesses the needs of 421 global AI adopters, especially the 120 respondents who rely on AWS.

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Contributor Series: From Prompt Design to Data Engineering – Why Architecture Matters for Agentic AI

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