Analytics and Data Science News for the Week of February 6; Updates from Alteryx, BigHammer, Databricks & More

Solutions Review Executive Editor Tim King curated this list of notable analytics and data science news for the week of February 6, 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.

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Analytics and Data Science News for the Week of February 6, 2026

Alteryx and Google Cloud Expand AI-Ready Analytics in the Middle East

Alteryx and Google Cloud are deepening their partnership to put governed, AI‑ready analytics directly inside BigQuery for enterprises across the Middle East, where the AI economy is projected to reach about $320 billion by 2030. With Live Query for BigQuery and Alteryx One: Google Edition on Google Cloud Marketplace, business users can build no‑code analytics workflows that run in place on BigQuery data while IT teams retain centralized governance, auditability, and performance for AI‑driven decision‑making.

Read on for more → https://cairoscene.com/Business/Alteryx-Google-Cloud-to-Expand-AI-Analytics-in-the-Middle-East

BigHammer.ai: AI Agents as a Virtual Data Engineering Team

BigHammer.ai has emerged from stealth with an AI-agent platform positioned as a replacement for the traditional fragmented data stack, acting as a virtual data engineering function across ingestion, transformation, orchestration, governance, quality, and observability. Centered on four “super agents” (DataGov, Pipeline, DataOps, and Xplore) coordinated by a meta-model, the system promises up to 70% faster data product delivery, 70% lower operational and labor costs, and 30% lower TCO by consolidating tools while automating governance and compliance for growing data and AI programs.

Read on for more → https://bighammer.ai/news/bighammer-ai-to-replace-the-legacy-data-stack-with-ai-agents

Databricks Lakebase GA: Serverless Postgres for Operational Workloads on the Lakehouse

Databricks has made Lakebase generally available as a fully managed, serverless Postgres service that runs operational applications directly on the Databricks Platform, sharing the same governance, security, and data foundation used for analytics and AI. By separating compute from storage, Lakebase auto‑scales (including to zero), offers instant branching for safe testing, supports PITR and automated backups up to 8 TB, and keeps operational tables synced with lakehouse context so teams can avoid separate databases and fragile ETL pipelines.

Read on for more → https://www.databricks.com/blog/databricks-lakebase-generally-available

Collate Joins Snowflake’s Open Semantic Interchange to Standardize Metrics for BI and AI

Collate, creator of the OpenMetadata project, has joined Snowflake’s Open Semantic Interchange (OSI), an open-source effort to define a vendor-neutral semantic model specification so consistent business metrics and definitions can flow across BI, notebooks, ML, and AI agents. By helping design OSI and applying it through its Semantic Intelligence Platform, Collate aims to let enterprises share and govern a single semantic layer—reducing metric drift, simplifying data operations, and making it easier to build AI products on trusted, interoperable definitions.

Read on for more → https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/02/03/3230969/0/en/Collate-Joins-Snowflake-and-Industry-Leaders-to-Advance-Open-Semantic-Interchange-OSI-for-Data-and-AI-Interoperability.html

OpenMP + Python: Anaconda Joins to Bring HPC-Grade Parallelism to AI Workloads

The OpenMP Architecture Review Board has created a Python Language Subcommittee to add Python as the fourth officially supported language in OpenMP 7.0, and welcomed Anaconda as its newest member to help lead the integration. The move aims to bring OpenMP’s portable, high-performance parallel programming model directly into the Python ecosystem used for AI and data science, giving teams a standard way to accelerate compute‑intensive workloads across heterogeneous architectures without abandoning Python.

Read on for more → https://www.hpcwire.com/bigdatawire/this-just-in/openmp-arb-launches-python-subcommittee-welcomes-anaconda-as-newest-member/

Pentaho V11: Modernized Data Integration for Operational and AI-Ready Data

Pentaho has released Version 11 of its Data Integration and Business Analytics platform, aimed at helping enterprises deliver trusted, operational, and AI-ready data faster and with less risk. V11 introduces a modern UX, a new web-based Semantic Model Editor, stronger governance and security (including OIDC/OAuth SSO), a streamlined plugin manager, and Java 21 support—simplifying complex data workflows and giving both technical and business users better access to the data foundations needed for analytics and agentic workloads.

Read on for more → https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pentaho-enhances-flagship-data-integration-solution-to-deliver-operational-and-ai-ready-data-at-scale-302678425.html

Power BI Deep Dive: Composite Semantic Models With Direct Lake + Import

Microsoft has released a deep dive on composite semantic models that mix Direct Lake tables on OneLake with import tables from any Power Query source, now in public preview. The update lets modelers blend high‑performance Direct Lake tables with calculated columns, hierarchies, and other features enabled by import mode—while maintaining regular relationships, refresh, schema sync, row‑level security, and version history—so teams can fine‑tune performance and modeling flexibility in Fabric.

Read on for more → https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deep-dive-into-composite-semantic-models-with-direct-lake-and-import-tables/

Quantum Rise Acquires Dhauz to Expand AI Consulting, Data Engineering, and Agentic Decision Support

Quantum Rise, a Chicago-based AI consultancy and product firm, has acquired Brazil-based Dhauz to expand its global footprint and deepen capabilities in data architecture, engineering, data science, integration, agentic AI, and customized decision support. The deal will grow Quantum Rise’s team beyond 100 people across the U.S. and Brazil and strengthen its “Consulting 2.0” model, enabling end‑to‑end AI transformation work—particularly in sectors like healthcare where Dhauz already brings strong data engineering and InsightStudio methodology.

Read on for more → https://www.einpresswire.com/article/888233239/quantum-rise-acquires-dhauz-expands-global-team-and-footprint

Teradata’s Data Analyst Agent Lands on Google Cloud Marketplace

Teradata has made its foundational Data Analyst AI agent available on Google Cloud Marketplace, allowing customers to deploy an enterprise-grade analytics agent directly alongside Vantage and Google Cloud services without moving data. Built on Teradata’s Enterprise MCP and Google’s Agent Development Kit, the agent supports multi-turn conversational analytics, secure pushdown processing, and prebuilt agentic flows so organizations can accelerate AI-driven insights while maintaining governance and compliance at scale.

Read on for more → https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/teradata-brings-enterprise-grade-ai-agents-to-google-cloud-marketplace-302678777.html

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.

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 is Getting Set to Host Nutanix and Northeastern University for the Exclusive Session ‘Cloud-Native for the AI-Powered, Innovation-Ready Enterprise Masterclass’ on February 19

Join us for the Nutanix Cloud Native Masterclass, an exclusive event for C-level executives, where attendees will receive a Certificate of Completion from Northeastern University, recognizing their expertise in cloud native strategies. In this Masterclass we’ll explore how cloud native architecture is reshaping enterprise IT. Unlike traditional monolithic applications — which are slow to evolve, difficult to scale, and operationally complex — cloud native applications are composed of independent, loosely coupled components. Built on microservices, containers, Kubernetes, and API-driven design, they are optimized for dynamic, distributed environments.

Register on LinkedIn

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 Familiar Becomes Alien: Polar Bears and Data Storytelling by Dr. Joe Perez

Seeing a polar bear without its white fur is quite alarming. It seems as though you’re looking at a whole new creature. All those familiar “bear” traits disappear, and your brain scrambles to put it into a category. But the real shock isn’t the animal itself; it’s what’s missing. That thick fur keeps the bear warm, but it also signals to us, “This is a polar bear.” When it’s gone, so is our sense of recognition.

Read on Solutions Review

Thought Leaders – Where it All Began: Finding Business and Data by Samir Sharma

What I didn’t realize until I landed was this. I had effectively become the first data person in the company. Did I know what that meant? Not a clue. So I did the only sensible thing I could think of. I went back to first principles, and good old-fashioned business analysis and a dose of common sense.

Read on Solutions Review

The Editors Lens: How Analytics Leadership Development Programs Solve for the AI Moment

Analytics leadership development is no longer discretionary. It is infrastructure for organizations operating in an AI-mediated decision environment. 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 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.