SunnyDigest – April 17

THIS DOLL'S NEW JOB? PROMPT ENGINEER.

A new trend has hit the AI world—turning professionals into retro-style action figures using image generation tools like ChatGPT. It started with a viral prompt and quickly became LinkedIn’s latest obsession. What began on LinkedIn has now spread to Instagram and TikTok, showing just how quickly AI-generated content is taking over social media.

The prompt?

“A professional portrait of [your name & interests], action figure toy packaging, studio lighting, ultra detailed, 4k.”

People have jumped in, posting their own miniature personas with job-themed accessories and funny taglines. Naturally, SunnyData and Databricks couldn’t resist. We joined the fun and dropped our own AI-generated action figure on LinkedIn—and yes, it's as epic as they sound.

Databricks even designed their figure as a Data + AI Summit attendee, complete with laptop, badge, water bottle, and notebook. It's all part of the lead-up to this year’s summit in San Francisco—arguably the most accessorized one yet.

SPEAKING OF SUMMIT…

We’ve already got our tickets to the 2025 Data + AI Summit, happening this June in San Francisco—and yes, we’ll be bringing our non-plastic selves.

💸 Bonus: You can still get $600 off if you register before April 30. Future you will thank you.

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📰 IN OTHER NEWS

FENNEL JOINS DATABRICKS TO DEMOCRATIZE ML

Databricks just acquired Fennel, a startup focused on real-time feature engineering for machine learning. Fennel was built to help teams ship production-ready ML features faster, without cobbling together custom pipelines or wrestling with batch delays. Think: fresh, real-time data powering your models with minimal engineering overhead.

By bringing Fennel into the fold, Databricks is making it easier to build ML systems that are both fast and maintainable. This aligns perfectly with their goal of simplifying the entire machine learning lifecycle—from data ingestion to deployment.

And since Fennel was designed with a developer-first mindset (low-latency, declarative APIs, versioning, monitoring, the works), its integration could help close the gap between data engineers and ML practitioners.

LAKEFLOW CONNECT IS NOW GA

Databricks just announced the general availability of LakeFlow Connect, a key piece of their new LakeFlow product suite—and it’s all about making data ingestion way less painful.

LakeFlow Connect lets you easily connect to dozens of data sources (think SaaS apps, databases, and more) and bring that data into the Databricks Lakehouse with just a few clicks. It’s fully managed, supports both batch and streaming, and includes change data capture (CDC), so you always have fresh data flowing in without custom pipelines or duct-taped schedulers.

Why it matters: Getting data into your lakehouse has historically been one of the messiest parts of the job. LakeFlow Connect aims to fix that by offering native, low-lift connectors for modern data teams—plus full observability and orchestration built in.

Another win for clean, reliable pipelines.

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