OpenClaw Founder to OpenAI, Anthropic vs. The Pentagon, & Disney's Cease-&-Desist Letter.
This Week in AI Newsletter: 2/16/2026
OpenAI hired Peter Steinberger, creator of the viral AI agent framework OpenClaw, in what analysts are calling the company’s most strategically loaded talent acquisition in the agentic AI space. The tool will move to a foundation to remain open-source. More here.
The Pentagon is considering ending its relationship with Anthropic after the company refused to let the military use Claude for “all lawful purposes” including weapons development and battlefield operations, according to Axios. More here.
ByteDance said it will add safeguards to its AI video generator Seedance 2.0 after Hollywood organizations including the MPA, Disney, Paramount, and others accused the tool of “blatantly” violating copyright and using actors’ likenesses without permission. Disney’s cease-and-desist letter alleged ByteDance had “pre-packaged a pirated library of copyrighted characters.” More here.
Big Tech stocks have shed hundreds of billions in market value since the start of 2026 as investors grow wary of ballooning AI spending, with Microsoft down 17% ($613B lost), and Nvidia, Apple, and Alphabet also seeing steep declines. More here.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that weekly active users for Codex, the company’s AI coding assistant, have more than tripled since the beginning of 2026 following the launch of the standalone Mac app on February 2. More here.
Sam Altman revealed that India now has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, making it OpenAI’s second-largest market after the United States, and announced plans to significantly expand the company’s headcount and operations in the country. More here.
Indian AI cloud startup Neysa is raising $1.2 billion in a Blackstone-led round of equity and debt to deploy over 20,000 GPUs in India. More here.
xAI launched a voice-to-text dictation feature for Grok on Android, enabling seamless voice queries with real-time transcription. More here.