In June 2025, OpenAI’s systems flagged and banned violent chats linked to 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, and staff debated notifying Canadian authorities but did not. After the Tumbler Ridge shooting, the company contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Her online activity also reportedly included a Roblox mass-shooting simulation and firearm posts on Reddit.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking in India, rejected online claims about heavy water usage in newer AI data centers and argued that their cooling systems no longer rely on water. He acknowledged growing concern over electricity demand, comparing the energy needed to train AI models to the decades-long effort of raising a human, a stance criticized by Indian billionaire Sridhar Vembu. Across the United States, large off-grid data center projects and rising power prices on the PJM grid highlight how AI-driven computing growth is reshaping energy infrastructure and regulation.

In 2025, global funding rounds of $50 million or more reportedly totaled about $300 billion, down from over $500 billion at the height of the 2021 boom, with the number of qualifying companies falling to 1,440. According to Crunchbase data, private equity and crossover funds such as Tiger Global and SoftBank Vision Fund sharply cut their mega-round participation, while traditional venture capital firms reclaimed the lead by deal count. AI-focused financings dominated the largest raises, including a $40 billion round for OpenAI, a $14.3 billion deal for Scale AI, and a $13 billion round for Anthropic.

On February 23, 2026, Solana-based AI agent Lobstar drew attention after sending $441K worth of its meme token in response to a social media request for a 4 SOL donation. The recipient sold the entire amount into a pool with $300K liquidity, realizing about $40K due to slippage and briefly crashing the token price. Lobstar later recovered, with its liquidity climbing to $455K, while observers debated whether the event was a genuine mistake or a publicity tactic.

Apple is prioritizing on‑device AI through new wearables and a roughly 1 billion dollars per‑year Gemini license, sidestepping the 100 billion dollars infrastructure build pursued by rivals. The company’s shares have outperformed heavy AI spenders over the past year, while a chatbot‑style Siri upgrade for iOS 27 is planned later this year.

On 22 February 2026, AI, data, and Web3 infrastructure-focused crypto networks such as Chainlink, Internet Computer, NEAR, Filecoin, Livepeer, The Graph, Bittensor, Qubic, Flux, and Injective topped development activity rankings. These projects are building decentralized oracles, cloud, storage, indexing, compute, and DeFi rails, indicating a shift in the crypto sector toward real-world utility rather than pure speculation.

Anthropic has released a limited research preview of Claude Code Security, an AI-driven tool on its Claude Code platform that scans entire codebases for vulnerabilities and suggests fixes. Powered by the Claude Opus 4.6 model, it reportedly uncovered more than 500 flaws in live open-source projects, while the announcement on February 21 2026 coincided with sharp declines in several cybersecurity stocks. The launch also followed reports that the same model was linked to a $1.78 million exploit at DeFi lending protocol Moonwell, underscoring the dual-use nature of advanced AI in cyber offense and defense.

OpenAI told investors it plans about $600 billion in compute spending by 2030, replacing the $1.4 trillion figure previously discussed by Sam Altman. The company projects over $280 billion in 2030 revenue, nearly evenly split between consumer and enterprise, while Nvidia confirmed talks on a potential $30 billion investment separate from a September $100 billion framework.