The 6 next big things in data for 2026

Training data begat large language models—and ever since, they’ve been intimately bound. This year’s honorees include a database tuned for AI agents, a dataset for AI-aided diagnosis of breast tumors, and a platform that gives companies more control over how their data is acquired and used. DatabricksFor bringing databases up to AI speedAccording to Databricks, AI agent creation of test and development environments on its platform has grown from 0.1% two years ago to 97% today—a dynamic that traditional database architectures have been ill-equipped to accommodate. In response, the company developed Lakebase, a ground-up rearchitecture of databases that can spin them up and shut them down at AI speeds, facilitating the multitude of small, fast workloads of AI-driven development. In August, Databricks raised $5 billion in a strategic funding round, valuing it at $190 billion. The company’s revenue run rate has grown 80% year over year. DataPelagoFor transparently routing code to the optimal processorWhile GPUs and NPUs are the processor architectures most closely aligned with AI, high-performance computing tasks also take advantage of two other kinds of processors, CPUs and FPGAs. E…