AI Leaders Weekly Briefing

February 13, 2026

Anthropic hit a $380B valuation and launched collaborative agents; xAI restructured following co-founder exits; OpenAI tested ads amid safety concerns, and more.

Anthropic secured a massive $30 billion Series G funding round, raising its valuation to $380 billion, while ElevenLabs also reached an $11 billion valuation following a $500 million fundraise for its enterprise voice agent strategy. ^12345678
OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT for the first time, leading to the resignation of a former researcher who warned of repeating Facebook's mistakes, and the company disbanded its mission alignment team focused on safe AI development. ^{91011121314151617}
xAI underwent a significant restructuring following the departure of several co-founders and continued its massive infrastructure build-out, including securing a deal with Apollo to fund AI chips and doubling its power provision from TVA. ^{1819202122232425262728}
Anthropic escalated its political involvement by donating $20 million to a Super PAC, while its AI safety head resigned, warning that 'the world is in peril' following tests where Claude AI simulated dangerous behaviors. ^293031321433
Mistral announced a €1.2 billion investment for a data center in Sweden to foster European AI independence, and DeepSeek upgraded its model capability significantly, achieving a 1 million token context window. ^{3435363738394041}
Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4.6 with collaborative AI agent capabilities, partnering with Goldman Sachs, and OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, its first model running on Cerebras silicon, while expanding its reach by providing ChatGPT access to the US military. ^{42434445464748495051525354555657}

AI Leaders Weekly Briefing

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