A flurry of activity across the technology and political landscapes marked the week of February 12-15, 2026, with developments ranging from advancements in AI and data center efficiency to a Democratic governor's resistance to federal immigration policies. Simultaneously, a balloon mission preparing for launch and a new AI-powered database project also made headlines.
In the tech sector, an Indian startup, C2i Semiconductors, secured $15 million in Series A funding, led by Peak XV Partners, to tackle the growing power constraints in AI data centers, according to TechCrunch. The company aimed to develop plug-and-play power solutions to reduce energy losses, addressing the increasing energy demand driven by the shift towards GPUs and techniques like Mixture of Experts for AI, as reported by Hacker News. This shift, coupled with the computationally expensive nature of token generation in large language models, has led to the adoption of techniques like continuous batching to improve throughput.
Meanwhile, a team of developers, utilizing AI tools like Claude, Codex, and Gemini, successfully built a SQLite-like engine in Rust, according to Hacker News. The project, encompassing 19,000 lines of code, included a parser, planner, executor, pager, btrees, WAL, recovery mechanisms, joins, aggregates, indexing, transaction semantics, and more. The developers emphasized the importance of software engineering principles, including distributed systems methodologies, version control, and rigorous testing, with 282 unit tests passing.
On the political front, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker continued his aggressive stance against federal immigration policies, as reported by Vox. He signed laws limiting ICE operations, established the Illinois Accountability Commission, and sued the federal government. "Few Democratic politicians have leaned into the fight against the Trump administration as aggressively as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker," stated Astead Herndon, a host and editorial director at Vox.
Adding to the week's diverse news, the EXCITE mission, a balloon mission, was being prepared for launch above New Mexico, according to Phys.org. The mission aimed to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, a field that has gained significant attention with the James Webb Space Telescope.
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