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.

On February 20, 2026, Nvidia was reported to be close to finalizing a $30 billion investment in OpenAI, far below the $100 billion commitment it had made a year earlier. The funding is part of a $100 billion round that could push OpenAI's valuation to $830 billion and make it one of the most highly valued private firms globally. The reduced commitment has unsettled markets, especially as OpenAI is expected to channel much of the new capital back into Nvidia hardware, raising questions over circular financing and long-term sustainability.

x402 has gone live on the XRP Ledger, enabling AI agents to pay for services directly in XRP and RLUSD without using API keys or traditional accounts. Payments are handled per request using the x402 HTTP 402 "Payment Required" standard, with settlement occurring on-chain. Separately, phase two of Dubai's Real Estate Tokenization Project on the XRP Ledger has started, adding controlled secondary market trading for tokenized properties.