🎯Today's Big Data Pulse
Updated 1h agoWhat's happening: DHS awards Palantir up to $1B for AI and data analytics platforms
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security signed a five‑year blanket purchase agreement with Palantir Technologies valued at up to $1 billion. The contract lets agencies such as Customs and Border Protection, ICE, FEMA and CISA use Palantir’s Gotham and Foundry platforms via individual task orders, eliminating the need for separate competitive bids.
Also developing:
- •DPO plans $200M high‑performance computing data center in Wisconsin
- •Nvidia close to a $30B investment in OpenAI, Reuters reports
- •DBTA publishes latest big‑data news flashes
By the numbers: Caterpillar acquires RPMGlobal Holdings
News•Feb 18, 2026
Safeguarding IoT & Edge Data Pipelines: QA Best Practices
The migration of data processing from centralized servers to edge devices is reshaping QA strategies for IoT pipelines. Unstable networks, fragmented device fleets, and expanded attack surfaces demand testing that goes beyond functional checks. Specialized IoT testing services now employ network virtualization, chaos engineering, and resource‑utilization benchmarks to validate resilience. AI‑driven automation further accelerates regression cycles and predicts failures before they impact production.
By Datafloq
News•Feb 18, 2026
Platters: WD New Disk Drive Tech Hits Lucky 14
Western Digital announced a 14‑platter hard‑disk drive architecture that boosts capacity by roughly 27% over its current 11‑platter models, enabling 40 TB drives in 2026 and paving the way for 44 TB HAMR units later this year and 100 TB drives by 2029....
By Blocks & Files
News•Feb 18, 2026
Kubernetes May Be Coming to Apple's OS Container Project
Apple’s open‑source Container project, launched in June 2025, enables Linux containers to run as lightweight virtual machines on macOS. At FOSDEM 2026, engineering manager Eric Ernst outlined a roadmap that adds a Windows Subsystem for Linux‑style layer and native Kubernetes...
By The Stack (TheStack.technology)
News•Feb 18, 2026
AI Threatens Staffing Industry as Companies Bring Recruitment In-House
Artificial intelligence is rapidly automating core recruitment tasks, enabling employers to screen resumes, rank candidates, and conduct initial interviews without external recruiters. This technological shift allows companies to bring talent acquisition in‑house, diminishing reliance on traditional staffing firms such as...
By Bloomberg – Technology (sitewide)
News•Feb 18, 2026
Edge Data Centers Vs. Edge Devices: When to Use Each
Edge computing can be delivered via purpose‑built edge data centers or through distributed edge devices such as gateways, sensors, and consumer hardware. Data centers provide consolidated compute, storage, and robust security for high‑throughput, latency‑sensitive workloads, while devices excel at mobile,...
By Data Center Knowledge
News•Feb 18, 2026
Snowflake’s New Coding Agent Is in a Category of Its Own, Says Head of Product
Snowflake unveiled Cortex Code, an AI‑driven coding assistant embedded in its data platform, at the Build conference in London. The tool can generate, explain, and optimize SQL and Python code, handle data‑engineering and analytics tasks, and is context‑aware of schemas, governance...
By TechMonitor (sitewide)
News•Feb 18, 2026
TopQuadrant Launches Enterprise Context Platform to Build Trusted AI
TopQuadrant unveiled TQ Data Foundation, an enterprise context platform designed to close the AI "context gap" that keeps many large firms in pilot mode. The solution layers knowledge‑graph technology over existing data assets, delivering unified models, reference terms, metadata, and...
By MarTech Series
Social•Feb 18, 2026
Data Quality & Governance: Underrated Foundations Beyond Analytics
Data Quality and Data Governance are two of the most underrated but important areas in the data space There are other areas to explore in data outside of Analytics.
By Ebere Oyek (Nelo) — Data | AI | ML
Social•Feb 17, 2026
Pivot Tables: Business Data’s Everlasting REPL
Hot take: Pivot tables are the REPL for business data. Just like programmers use REPLs to quickly test code, business users use pivot tables to quickly test hypotheses about their data. Drag a field. See a result. Adjust. Repeat. This feedback loop is...
By SSP Data
News•Feb 17, 2026
Chatbots Are the New Influencers Brands Must Woo
In early 2024 Athenahealth’s CMO discovered that AI chatbots like ChatGPT could not accurately describe the company’s products, prompting a strategic shift toward marketing to machines. Executives across industries now view large language models as new influencers that shape consumer...
By The New York Times – Technology (sitewide)
Social•Feb 17, 2026
Own Your Data, Not Just Model Tuning
AI teams love tuning models. But they ignore the bike chain: data. Outsourcing labeling to people that care much less on the app’s success. Messy internal docs. No structured knowledge base. No call transcripts. No clean SOPs. Then they ask: “Why isn’t the model improving?” The highest ROI in...
By Louis Bouchard
News•Feb 17, 2026
The Myth of ‘Always On’: Confronting Data Center SPOFs
Recent incidents—a 2021 Texas freeze and a 2021 OVH fire in Strasbourg—highlight hidden single points of failure in data centers. The freeze delayed fuel deliveries, exposing over‑reliance on on‑site fuel, while the fire demonstrated how passive cooling designs can unintentionally...
By Data Center Knowledge
News•Feb 17, 2026
Agoda Open Sources APIAgent to Convert Any REST Pr GraphQL API Into an MCP Server with Zero Code
Agoda has released APIAgent, an open‑source tool that turns any REST or GraphQL API into a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server with zero code and no deployments. The proxy reads OpenAPI or GraphQL schemas, generates tool definitions, and uses DuckDB...
By MarkTechPost (sitewide)
News•Feb 17, 2026
Anthropic, Infosys to Build Custom AI Agents for Firms
Anthropic and Infosys have announced a partnership to create custom AI agents for enterprises, combining Anthropic's Claude large language models, including Claude Code, with Infosys' Topaz AI platform. The collaboration targets sectors such as telecommunications and financial services, aiming to automate...
By Bloomberg – Technology (sitewide)
News•Feb 17, 2026
China AI Startup Moonshot Targets $10 Billion Valuation
Moonshot, the Chinese AI startup behind the Kimi chatbot, is launching a new financing round that targets a $10 billion valuation. The company previously secured $500 million at a $4.3 billion valuation, and its existing backers—Alibaba, Tencent and 5Y Capital—have already committed more...
By Bloomberg – Technology (sitewide)
News•Feb 17, 2026
Interview: CyrusOne on the Sustainable Innovation that Drives Datacentre Business Outcomes
CyrusOne’s vice‑president of environmental, health, safety and sustainability, Kyle Myers, says the company treats sustainability as a profit centre rather than a cost centre. By centralising ESG functions into a cross‑functional working group, CyrusOne has integrated green‑building standards across its...
By Computer Weekly – Latest IT news
Social•Feb 16, 2026
Four Data‑Backed Tech Fields to Pursue in 2026
I did some digging with the help of ChatGPT and Claude Here are 4 tech areas you can still explore in 2026 backed by data: • AI/ML – Data Analytics falls here • Cloud & Infrastructure • Security & Governance • Data Engineering Let me...
By Ebere Oyek (Nelo) — Data | AI | ML
News•Feb 16, 2026
New GraphRAG Solution Moves Beyond Vector-Only RAG – Knowledge Graphs Provide Context and Common Sense to AI
Graphwise unveiled GraphRAG, a low‑code AI workflow engine that replaces flat vector‑only retrieval with a knowledge‑graph‑backed semantic layer. The platform claims to cut hallucinations and boost answer accuracy from about 60 % to over 90 % by grounding large language models in...
By AiThority
News•Feb 16, 2026
Tract’s Fleet Data Centers Seeks $3.8bn to Fuel Nevada Build-Out
Fleet Data Centers, the development arm of Tract, announced a $3.8 billion senior secured note issuance to fund a 230 MW data center campus in Reno, Nevada. The facility, built on a 252‑acre site, is 100 percent leased to an unnamed investment‑grade tenant...
By Data Center Dynamics
News•Feb 16, 2026
From Tea to Tech: UK’s Halma Rides Wave of Hyperscaler Spending
Halma Plc, a FTSE 100 firm with roots in 19th‑century tea plantations, is benefiting from a surge in AI‑driven data‑center spending by hyperscalers. The company’s shares have climbed for eight consecutive sessions, reaching an all‑time high. Analysts at Barclays and JPMorgan...
By Bloomberg – Technology (sitewide)
News•Feb 16, 2026
Fossefall Targets Data Center in Harpefoss, Norway
Norwegian data‑center specialists Fossefall and Polar DC are unveiling new projects aimed at scaling AI‑focused, renewable‑powered facilities. Fossefall plans a data centre on the former Harpefoss childcare site, part of its ambition to reach 500 MW of clean AI infrastructure by 2030,...
By Data Center Dynamics
News•Feb 16, 2026
Blackstone-Owned Link Logistics Files to Develop Data Center Campus Outside Atlanta, Georgia
Blackstone‑owned Link Logistics, through its affiliate B9 Union City Owner LLC, has filed a Developments of Regional Impact application to build a new data‑center campus called the Crossings outside Union City, Georgia. The 231‑acre site could host up to five...
By Data Center Dynamics
News•Feb 16, 2026
South Korean Cloud Firm Okestro Could Build 5MW Data Center
South Korean cloud provider Okestro has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with data‑center developer DC Korea to construct a 5 MW facility at Okestro’s headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul. DC Korea will handle design and construction while Okestro will supply cloud‑orchestration services...
By Data Center Dynamics
Social•Feb 16, 2026
Integrate Data Quality Assertions Directly Into Orchestration
I see data contracts and data quality as overlapping but different: Data contracts: what is the data and how do we enforce it Data products: why do we need this data In practice, I'd argue for asset-based data quality assertions. Every time a...
By SSP Data
Social•Feb 16, 2026
Data Guides Positioning, Yet Quality Creativity Wins
Working in entertainment analytics I am often asked how best to position a title for success. But data can help you aim more accurately and efficiently. What it can’t do is provide the single most important element to success: a...
By Brandon Katz
News•Feb 16, 2026
Telkom Indonesia Revisits NeutraDC Sale Plans - Report
Telkom Indonesia is re‑engaging advisors to sell a majority stake in its data‑center subsidiary NeutraDC, targeting a valuation between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. The company previously explored a sale in 2022 and considered minority stakes in 2024, with Goldman Sachs and...
By Data Center Dynamics
News•Feb 16, 2026
Solaris Energy Signs 500MW AI Data Center Power Deal
Solaris Energy Infrastructure announced a long‑term equipment‑rental agreement to provide more than 500 MW of power‑generation capacity to Hatchbo, an AI‑focused data‑center operator. The rental term begins on January 1 2027 and runs for ten years, with an option to extend for an...
By Data Center Dynamics
News•Feb 16, 2026
Natwest Group CEO Touts Near-Term Agentic AI Workflow Future
NatWest Group CEO Paul Thwaite announced that the bank is shifting from basic chatbots to autonomous AI systems capable of executing complex banking workflows for customers. He expects many of the underlying components to be operational within the year. However,...
By The Stack (TheStack.technology)
News•Feb 16, 2026
AMD Takes on Nvidia in India With Expanded Tata AI Partnership
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced a partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to bring its Helios AI data‑center blueprint to India. The collaboration aims to deploy up to 200 megawatts of AI‑infrastructure capacity, positioning AMD against Nvidia in the rapidly expanding...
By Bloomberg – Technology (sitewide)
News•Feb 16, 2026
Qatar Advances Sovereign Cloud Strategy to Strengthen Digital Trust and National Autonomy
Qatar is accelerating a sovereign cloud strategy to keep sensitive data under domestic law, leveraging its Personal Data Privacy Protection Law as a regulatory backbone. Deloitte’s Cloud Centre of Excellence in Lusail is driving the effort, having migrated over 3,000...
By Computer Weekly – Latest IT news
Social•Feb 15, 2026
Snowflake's Micro-Partitions Promote Lazy Modeling, Undermine Optimization
eczachly I hate Snowflake micro partitions and optimizations for a few reasons - they make data modeling lazy If you don’t have to understand the partitioning or shape of your data. You can just slap the data into Snowflake and call it a...
By Zach Wilson
Social•Feb 15, 2026
Three Red Flags of Non‑Idempotent Data Pipelines
From Zach Wilson, three signs your pipeline isn't idempotent: 1. It uses INSERT INTO instead of INSERT OVERWRITE or MERGE 2. Date filters have "date > start" but no "date < end" - this causes exponential backfill costs 3. Source tables are always...
By SSP Data
News•Feb 14, 2026
Holographic Tape Inches Closer to Mass Market Ahead of Silica, Ceramic Media - 200TB WORM Tech Set to Debut in...
HoloMem, a UK startup, successfully ran its holographic tape system alongside traditional LTO drives inside a live LTO library, proving plug‑and‑play compatibility with existing data‑center hardware. The polymer‑ribbon cartridges are sized like standard LTO tapes and can store up to...
By TechRadar Pro
Social•Feb 14, 2026
Analytics: The Easiest Gateway Into Tech Careers
As a CS girlie, I started my journey in Analytics and to this day, I still believe it has one of the lowest barriers to entry into a career in tech. The barrier has never been lower. If you’re thinking about...
By Ebere Oyek (Nelo) — Data | AI | ML
Social•Feb 14, 2026
ISL Replaces ETL: Intelligence Beats Raw Data Ingestion
Ingest Structure Learn (ISL) is the new ETL. It used to be the case that a company would try to license this kind of data as an “edge”. I’ve seen many companies in SV try to make this claim. That...
By Chamath Palihapitiya
News•Feb 13, 2026
Akron Children's Uses Epic and Real-Time Analytics to Reduce Waste Anesthesia Gases
Akron Children’s Hospital leveraged its Epic EHR and real‑time analytics to dramatically cut waste anesthesia gases, a source of 5‑10% of its greenhouse‑gas emissions. By introducing low‑flow reminders in Epic and on anesthesia machines, the team achieved an initial 5%...
By Healthcare IT News (HIMSS Media)
Social•Feb 14, 2026
WrenAI Automates BI with AI-Powered Text2SQL
Move over Tableau and PowerBI. There's a new Python library that automates Business Intelligence with AI using Text2SQL. Let me introduce you to WrenAI:
By Matt Dancho
Social•Feb 13, 2026
Beyond Accuracy: Build Actionable AI Models and Agents
Most portfolios fail because they stop at “model accuracy.” A good AI/DS portfolio has: 1. A model that predicts something the business can act on 2. An AI agent that turns outputs into next steps It's that simple. Want help?
By Matt Dancho
News•Feb 12, 2026
ChatGPT’s Translation Skills Parallel Most Human Translators
A recent IEEE study compared large language models (LLMs) such as GPT‑4, ALMA‑R and DeepSeek‑R1 with professional translators across eight language pairs. GPT‑4 produced an average of 3.71 major errors per 200‑sentence chunk, comparable to junior (3.27) and medium (3.30)...
By IEEE Spectrum – Artificial Intelligence
Social•Feb 13, 2026
AI Agents Speed Up Database Benchmarking for Patch Reviews
I discovered a new favorite use of AI Agents. Get ☕️, its a bit long: If you follow the postgres-hackers list, you know this pattern: - Someone submits a patch - Someone else raises performance concerns with the patch The rational thing to do...
By Gwen (Chen) Shapira
Social•Feb 13, 2026
Data Engineering: Experience Beats Tutorials Through Pattern Recognition
After years in data engineering, I've realized the job is mostly pattern recognition. You see a problem. You recognize it as a variant of a problem you've solved before. You apply a known solution with modifications. This is why experience matters more...
By SSP Data
News•Feb 12, 2026
Amazon’s Send to Alexa Plus Makes the Kindle Scribe Feel More Like a Productivity Device
Amazon introduced Send to Alexa Plus, a new feature for Kindle Scribe and Scribe Colorsoft that lets users push handwritten notes or PDFs to Alexa’s AI assistant. Alexa can summarize content, generate to‑do lists, calendar events, reminders, and even draft...
By The Verge (sitewide)
Social•Feb 13, 2026
Great Tables Turns DataFrames Into Presentation‑ready Tables
Turning a DataFrame into a presentation-ready table in Python. Recently I tried a library called Great Tables and it makes formatting tables very easy. - Works with Pandas & Polars - 19 formatting methods (currency, percentages, dates, scientific notation) - Export to HTML, LaTeX,...
By Karina | Python | Excel | Stats | DataScience | DataAnalytics
Social•Feb 13, 2026
Unified Data Turns Branches Into Profit Engines
Branches can become profit engines, not cost centers, if supported by unified data and modern infrastructure. Execution is the difference. We discuss this with Benjamin Conant of @alkamitech and Co founder of @Mantl_tech. Watch the full video now: https://t.co/Jamreeb077 https://t.co/L1lau9ecEU
By Jim Marous
News•Feb 12, 2026
India at the Digital Turning Point: How Virtual Twins, AI and Data Are Rewiring Industry
The final India Leadership Talks episode highlighted how virtual‑twin technology and model‑based engineering are moving from promise to practice across manufacturing, infrastructure and life sciences. Leaders from Godrej, KPMG and IndianOil Adani Ventures described a shift from basic digitalisation to...
By ET EnergyWorld (The Economic Times)
News•Feb 12, 2026
Does Your TV Track You Even Through the HDMI Port? Short Answer: Yes
Smart TVs can monitor content played on HDMI‑connected devices using two methods: HDMI‑CEC metadata and Automatic Content Recognition (ACR). ACR takes pixel‑level snapshots to fingerprint shows, movies, or games, while CEC logs device IDs and usage duration. The article outlines...
By ZDNet – Big Data
Social•Feb 11, 2026
5 XGBoost Hacks From a Kaggle Grandmaster
XGBoost Tips from 5x Kaggle Grandmaster Chris Deotte Top 5 ways to improve your ML models:
By Matt Dancho
Podcast•Feb 11, 2026•52 min
Re-Air: Data Teams at the Crossroads: Proving Value in a Changing Business Landscape with Ben Rogojan
In this re‑aired episode, John interviews Ben Rogojan, owner of Seattle Data Guy, about how data teams can demonstrate value amid tighter budgets and rapid AI advances. They discuss shifting from output‑focused metrics like dashboards to outcome‑driven results, the importance...
By The Data Stack Show
News•Feb 11, 2026
Sponsored: Factory-First: How Modular Construction Becomes the only Scalable Path for the Next Era of Data Centers
The data‑center sector is racing to deliver gigawatt‑scale campuses amid soaring AI demand, tight labor markets, and long equipment lead times. Traditional on‑site construction cannot keep pace, prompting a shift toward factory‑first modular building. By standardizing designs and producing electrical,...
By Data Center Dynamics
Social•Feb 11, 2026
AI Agents Boost Platform Growth by Simplifying Data and Code
When thinking through the future of software, it’s helpful to think through what will we produce more of vs. less of in the future due to agents. And what systems are tied to that production or consumption. Whether it’s a new...
By Aaron Levie