Sunday, 15 February 2026

Top Stories

- Is safety 'dead' at xAI? (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-14 Elon Musk is "actively" working to make xAI's Grok chatbot "more unhinged, according to a former employee. - Hollywood isn't happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-14 Hollywood organizations are pushing back against a new AI video model called Seedance 2.0, which they say has quickly become a tool for "blatant" copyright infringement. - India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-14 India's $1.1B fund-of-funds will invest through private VCs to support deep-tech and manufacturing startups. - Airbnb plans to bake in AI features for search, discovery and support (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-14 Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company wants to increase its use of large language models for customer discovery, support and engineering. - Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses, report claims (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 The feature, internally known as "Name Tag," would allow smart glasses wearers to identify people and get information about them via Meta's AI assistant. Hollywood organizations are pushing back against a new AI video model called Seedance 2.0, which they say has quickly become a tool for “blatant” copyright infringement. - India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-14 India’s $1.1B fund-of-funds will invest through private VCs to support deep-tech and manufacturing startups. - Airbnb plans to bake in AI features for search, discovery and support (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-14 Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company wants to increase its use of large language models for customer discovery, support and engineering. - Airbnb says a third of its customer support is now handled by AI in the US and Canada (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 Airbnb was poised to introduce an app that doesn't just search for you, but one that "knows you." CEO Brian Chesky said, "It will help guests plan their entire trip, help hosts better run their busine - Why top talent is walking away from OpenAI and xAI (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while Ope - OpenAI removes access to sycophancy-prone GPT-4o model (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 The model is known for its overly sycophantic nature and its role in several lawsuits involving users' unhealthy relationships with the chatbot. - AI burnout, billion-dollar bets, and Silicon Valley’s Epstein problem (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while Ope - Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads mocking AI with ads helped push Claude’s app into the top 10 (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 The numbers suggest that Anthropic's Super Bowl commercials, combined with Anthropic's recent release of its new Opus 4.6 model, worked to drive attention to Claude's app and its key differentiator fr - Elon Musk suggests spate of xAI exits have been push, not pull (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 At least nine engineers, including two co-founders, have announced their exits from xAI in the past week, fueling online speculation and raising questions about stability at Musk’s AI company amid mou - Cohere’s $240M year sets stage for IPO (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 Cohere surpassed $240 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, highlighting strong enterprise AI demand as the Canadian startup positions itself for a potential IPO amid intensifying competition f - Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses, report claims (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-13 The feature, internally known as “Name Tag,” would allow smart glasses wearers to identify people and get information about them via Meta's AI assistant. - Amid disappointing earnings, Pinterest claims it sees more searches than ChatGPT (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-12 Pinterest's stock tumbles after an earnings miss, with higher-than-expected usage its only bright spot. - IBM will hire your entry-level talent in the age of AI (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-12 IBM plans to triple its entry-level hiring in the U.S. in 2026, but these jobs will have different tasks than in previous years. - Musk needed a new vision for SpaceX and xAI. He landed on Moonbase Alpha. (TechCrunch AI) 2026-02-12 "I really want to see a mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space."