January Insights

Welcome back, data enthusiast! January is finally wrapping up — yes, it felt like 154 days long, but we made it through! And there's no slowing down now. Here’s what we’ve got for you this month.

??? What we have been working on

Website Revamp: We're kicking off the year strong with a fresh new layout, making it easier to explore our expertise, solutions, and customer success stories.

Our team keeps growing: We welcome Virginia as our new Analytics/BI Engineer and Greta back part-time while completing her studies.

With new projects ahead, we’re locking in our company-wide OKRs — aligning teams, setting clear goals, and ready for another year of success!

??? Articles

The Ideal Chief Data Officer

What makes a great Chief Data Officer (CDO)? Our latest article explores their role in turning data into a strategic asset. We discuss the challenges they face, like cultural resistance and data silos, and the blend of technical skills and leadership needed to overcome them. Plus, we touch on different data team structures and common pitfalls to avoid.

?? Read more

Effective Period Comparison in Looker

Comparing time periods in Looker can be tricky. Our latest article offers a flexible, user-friendly solution to make these comparisons. Whether you're analyzing website visits week-over-week or year-over-year, we've got you covered.

?? Watch our quick demo

?? Data News worldwide

• DeepSeek's AI Breakthrough: Chinese startup DeepSeek unveiled an AI model developed at a fraction of the cost of its Western counterparts, challenging current AI economics and causing significant market reactions.
• Stargate AI Initiative: President Trump announced the Stargate project, a collaboration with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, aiming to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure, starting with a $100 billion data center in Texas.
• Don't do RAG, use CAG — A paper introducing an alternative approach to information retrieval for AI knowledge tasks. It proposes using a key-value (KV) cache to eliminate the latency issues that traditional RAG might encounter.
• O'Reilly 2025 Tech Trend Report — Interest in AI grew by 190%, and Prompt Engineering by 456%. Python and Java still lead programming language interest but have seen declines (-5% and -13%), while Rust is gaining traction (+13%).
• Lessons Learned Implementing Metrics Trees — An interview with someone who implemented Metrics Trees, focusing on translating business needs into equations.
• Fundraising Updates: Databricks raised $10B as it moves toward an IPO, while Cursor secured $100M in Series B funding.

Thank you for reading! See you next month, data enthusiast! ??