AI Leaders Weekly Briefing

February 20, 2026

Anthropic partnered with Infosys, OpenAI plans new India offices, DeepMind released Gemini 3.1 Pro, xAI got $3B from HUMAIN and Meta trimmed stock bonuses, and more.

• Anthropic partnered with Infosys to develop custom AI agents for various industries, including telecom, finance, and manufacturing, and opened a new office in Bengaluru, India, while also signing AI impact commitments and a partnership with Rwanda. ^{1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829}
• OpenAI announced plans to open offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru in 2026, partnered with Tata Group for AI infrastructure, and committed $7.5 million to The Alignment Project for independent AI safety research. ^{30313233343536373839404142434445464748495051}
• DeepMind released Gemini 3.1 Pro with upgraded intelligence and advanced reasoning, and its CEO predicted Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) within five years, urging global cooperation and safeguards. ^{525354555657585960}
• xAI received a $3 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN and was acquired by SpaceX, though it faced scrutiny for an unpermitted power plant and an alleged talent exodus. ^{6162636465666768697071}
• Meta trimmed staff stock bonuses amid its AI push, disclosed a halted chatbot due to high failure rates in protecting minors, and announced plans to spend $65 million to advance its AI agenda. ^{72737475767778}
• Other notable developments include DeepSeek expanding its context window, ElevenLabs introducing AI insurance for voice agents, Mistral AI partnering with Ericsson on AI agents for 6G research, and Alibaba unveiling its new Qwen3.5 model for the 'agentic AI era'. ^{798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100}

Sources

1. Infosys, Anthropic join forces to launch AI agents for telecom newsbytesapp.com
2. Pentagon CTO Confirms Work With Anthropic Is 'Under Review,' Pushes Back On AI Use Concerns defensedaily.com
3. Anthropic Bans OpenClaw and OAuth Tokens in Similar Third-Party Apps geeky-gadgets.com
4. Anthropic signs New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments Anthropic
5. Evolution & diffusion of technology: Anthropic CEO Amodei, Nandan Nilekani in Conversation | Impact AI Summit economictimes.indiatimes.com
6. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Bets Big On India's AI Future, Opens Bengaluru Office As Claude Faces US Military Scrutiny At Home benzinga.com
7. Anthropic announces The Briefing event Anthropic
8. Anthropic on shaky ground with Pentagon amid feud after Maduro raid thehill.com
9. Anthropic signs pact with Rwanda, joining US-China AI race in Africa asia.nikkei.com
10. Anthropic May Pay $6.4 Billion To Cloud Partners finance.yahoo.com
11. Claude Sonnet 4.6 brings 1M token power and fewer AI hallucinations pcworld.com
12. India has central role to play amid challenges around AI's potential misuse: Anthropic CEO firstpost.com
13. Anthropic Says New AI Model Is Better at Using Computers bloomberg.com
14. Infosys, Anthropic join forces to build custom AI agents financialexpress.com
15. Belagavi court issues fresh summons to Anthropic PBC after US company fails to appear in trademark suit barandbench.com
16. Infosys, Anthropic Partner on AI for Telecom, Finance, Manufacturing wsj.com
17. Defense Dept. and Anthropic Square Off in Dispute Over A.I. Safety nytimes.com
18. Anthropic collaborates with Infosys on AI agents Anthropic
19. Anthropic signs MOU with Rwanda's government Anthropic
20. Anthropic introduces Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic
21. Anthropic releases improved web search with dynamic filtering Anthropic
22. AI researchers are sounding the alarm on their way out the door finance.yahoo.com
23. Hegseth reportedly considering severe penalty on Anthropic as negotiations stall morningstar.com
24. Enterprise uptake buoys Anthropic’s growing India business cryptopolitan.com
25. Anthropic opens Bengaluru office; announces partnerships in India thehindubusinessline.com
26. Pentagon used Anthropic AI in Maduro raid as contract faces review: Report yahoo.com
27. Authors File Objections to Anthropic Book Settlement, Citing Misleading Notice and Pressure to Waive Rights tennessean.com
28. Anthropic opens Bengaluru office Anthropic
29. New Anthropic AI Model Targets Coding, Enterprise Work -- THE Journal thejournal.com
30. OpenAI commits $7.5M to The Alignment Project OpenAI
31. OpenAI's Altman: World 'urgently' needs AI regulation, similar to nuclear safeguards timesofisrael.com
32. OpenAI for India: Sam Altman to Open New Offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru in 2026 outlookbusiness.com
33. Tata Group and OpenAI Form Partnership, to Develop AI Data Centers wsj.com
34. Payments firm Pine Labs partners OpenAI to build conversational AI tools for merchants moneycontrol.com
35. OpenAI taps Tata for 100MW AI data center capacity in India, eyes 1GW techcrunch.com
36. OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity near approval to host AI directly for the U.S. government (exclusive) fastcompany.com
37. Morning Minute: OpenAI and Paradigm Turn Focus to Smart Contracts decrypt.co
38. OpenAI introduces EVMbench benchmark OpenAI
39. OpenAI pushes into higher education as India seeks to scale AI skills techcrunch.com
40. OpenAI Pays 20% of Total Revenue to Microsoft Until 2032 theinformation.com
41. OpenAI launches OpenAI for India initiative OpenAI
42. OpenAI blocked from using 'Cameo' name amid trademark lawsuit reuters.com
43. OpenAI voice technology picked for Pentagon’s drone swarm competition latimes.com
44. OpenAI Deleted Word 'Safely' From Its Mission – Its New Structure Is A Test claimsjournal.com
45. OpenAI expands agentic commerce push digitalcommerce360.com
46. Windows Wrap: Microsoft fixes Windows 11 while ditching OpenAI tech.yahoo.com
47. OpenAI s GPT-5.3-Codex Faces California AI Safety Law Scrutiny As Watchdog Alleges High-Risk Violations finance.yahoo.com
48. OpenAI and Cisco Back Standards to Scale Agentic AI | PYMNTS.com pymnts.com
49. India has 100M weekly active ChatGPT users, Sam Altman says | TechCrunch techcrunch.com
50. OpenAI Delays First Consumer Device to 2027 | PYMNTS.com pymnts.com
51. OpenClaw Joins OpenAI : Raising Questions About Its Open Source Future geeky-gadgets.com
52. Google Unveils Gemini 3.1 Pro, Touting a Leap in ‘Complex Problem-Solving’ eweek.com
53. DeepMind ships Gemini 3.1 Pro at scale DeepMind
54. Watch DeepMind CEO Warns of AI Risks, Urges Global Cooperation - Bloomberg bloomberg.com
55. Google’s Lyria 3 Arrives in Gemini for Custom Music Creation eweek.com
56. DeepMind releases Lyria 3 music model DeepMind
57. Google unveils India-America Connect Initiative, DeepMind partnership with Centre to boost AI ecosystem fortuneindia.com
58. In India visit, Google DeepMind chief pitches key role in public AI utilities livemint.com
59. DeepMind establishes AI partnerships in India DeepMind
60. DeepMind's Demis Hassabis predicts AGI within five years thehindubusinessline.com
61. HUMAIN takes minority stake in xAI with $3bn investment finance.yahoo.com
62. California builds AI oversight unit and presses on xAI investigation reuters.com
63. xAI launches Grok Imagine template xAI
64. Hundreds show up for public meeting over xAI's new power plant in Southaven fox13memphis.com
65. Sustainable Switch: US civil rights group threatens to sue xAI over pollution reuters.com
66. Spain is investigating unsavory AI content on social media ‘giants’ yahoo.com
67. SpaceX Acquires xAI to Build and Launch Space-Based Massive Solar-Powered Orbital Data Centers spacecoastdaily.com
68. Saudi Arabia’s AI venture Humain invests $3bn in Elon Musk’s xAI ft.com
69. xAI Talent Exodus, Including Two Co-Founders, Loom Over SpaceX Merger thedeepdive.ca
70. Grok and other ‘nudification’ apps offered by Google and Apple put Silicon Valley at center of global outrage mercurynews.com
71. ‘A Different Set of Rules’: Drone Footage Shows AI Power Plant Flouting Clean Air Act mississippifreepress.org
72. Meta trims staff stock bonuses amid AI push news.az
73. Meta’s Controversial A.I. Chief Alexandr Wang Outlines His Superintelligence Playbook observer.com
74. Meta Shares 'Truth' About Troubled AI Chatbot That Overwhelmingly Failed To Protect Minors: 'Did Not Launch This Product' aol.com
75. Meta begins $65 million election push to advance AI agenda seattletimes.com
76. Meta Will Buy Millions of Nvidia Chips for AI Buildout wsj.com
77. Meta AI Patent Recreates The Dead mediapost.com
78. EU threatens Meta over WhatsApp AI restrictions guardian.ng
79. DeepSeek expands context ten-fold as Zhipu rolls out new model in China’s AI race dqindia.com
80. ElevenLabs introduces Experiments from ElevenAgents ElevenLabs
81. Mistral AI, Ericsson Partner on AI Agents for 6G Research and Network Performance thefastmode.com
82. Qwen launches Coding Plan on Alibaba Cloud Qwen
83. Qwen releases Qwen3.5-397B-A17B-FP8 weights Qwen
84. OpenAI, Anthropic Deals Power Abu Dhabi's $100 Billion AI Bet (1) news.bloomberglaw.com
85. ElevenLabs secures insurance for AI voice agents ElevenLabs
86. [IA Insider] Mistral sets out to conquer the north with a 1.2 billion euro investment in a Swedish data center usine-digitale.fr
87. Runway launches Gen-4.5 on API Runway
88. ElevenLabs introduces ElevenAgents for Support ElevenLabs
89. Mistral announces acquisition of Koyeb Mistral
90. Mistral AI to Buy Software Infrastructure Startup Koyeb wsj.com
91. AI startup ElevenLabs raises $500 million, hits $11B valuation newsbytesapp.com
92. ElevenLabs Launches AI Insurance for Voice Agents A Defining Moment in Enterprise AI Risk Management » Serrari Group serrarigroup.com
93. ElevenLabs introduces ElevenLabs for Government ElevenLabs
94. ElevenLabs hosts summit with industry leaders ElevenLabs
95. AI Summit: "You need the best of model and product at enterprise scale" ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski on the Sarvam AI threat moneycontrol.com
96. DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp released, training and inference efficiency improved, API price reduced synchronously news.qq.com
97. Qwen releases Qwen3.5-397B-A17B model Qwen
98. Alibaba unveils new Qwen3.5 model for 'agentic AI era' reuters.com
99. Just now, DeepSeek V4 benchmark test leaked! Suspected to be released tomorrow, the whole audience exclaims the return of the new king finance.sina.com.cn
100. Moonshot AI introduces Kimi Claw Moonshot AI