Half of xAI’s Founders Have Now Left, Apptronik's $500M Series A-X, and Uber Eats AI?
This Week in AI Newsletter: 2/11/2026
Apptronik raised $520 million in a Series A extension at a $5.5 billion valuation, with backing from Google, Mercedes-Benz, PEAK6, and others, bringing the round's total to over $935 million as the humanoid robotics startup races to beat Tesla Optimus and Chinese competitors to market. More here.
Two more xAI co-founders, Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba, announced their departures this week, bringing the total to six of the company’s 12 founding members who have left. More here.
Blackstone boosted its stake in Anthropic to about $1 billion, investing an additional $200 million at a roughly $350 billion valuation as part of the AI startup’s ongoing funding round. More here.
Mistral AI announced a €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) investment to build AI data center infrastructure in Sweden, as the French startup pushes to become the go-to AI supplier for European governments and enterprises. More here.
China’s Zhipu AI released its new flagship model GLM-5, designed to rival Anthropic’s Claude Opus series on complex coding and agentic tasks, as Chinese AI firms race to preempt an expected new product from DeepSeek. More here.
OpenAI abandoned the “io” branding for its Jony Ive-designed hardware device after losing a trademark dispute with audio startup iyO, with the device now delayed to 2027. More here.
Anthropic’s head of AI safety research Mrinank Sharma resigned in a cryptic public letter referencing poetry and warning of a “world in peril,” following the Claude Cowork launch and associated market upheaval. More here.
Cloudflare beat Q4 earnings estimates and forecast full-year 2026 revenue of $2.79-$2.80 billion, above Wall Street expectations, citing AI and agent-driven demand as a “fundamental re-platforming of the internet.” More here.
Uber Eats launched Cart Assistant, an AI-powered feature that lets users build grocery baskets by typing a shopping list or uploading a photo, with plans to add recipe inspiration and meal planning. More here.
