💥 OpenAI's biggest ally just left

PLUS: Musk's future doesn't need you, Anthropic says it does

February 17, 2026

Reading time: 5 minutes

🗞️In this edition

  • Microsoft Broke With OpenAI. The Race Just Changed.

  • Sponsored by Hugo: The AI-Native Support Agent Built for Real Businesses

  • Elon Musk Keeps Rewriting What He's Building Toward

  • The AI Revolution Needs More Artists Than Engineers

  • In other AI news –

    • Hollywood Is Suing China's AI. The Content Was Indistinguishable.

    • China's AI Week Just Made the US Uncomfortable

    • AI Startups Generated $189B Last Year. It's Just the Beginning.

  • 4 must-try AI tools

Three of the most powerful people in AI said something this week that nobody expected.

One dissolved a $13 billion alliance and called it progress. One quietly removed humans from the center of the future he's building. One said the skills everyone was told to forget are now the most valuable ones in the room.

None of them were talking to each other. But they were all answering the same question.

Source: UC Strategies

What's happening:

After investing $13 billion and years of infrastructure, Microsoft is building its own AI models. Internal teams across Windows and Microsoft 365 are already switching. OpenAI loses its anchor investor, its biggest customer, and its primary computing infrastructure. Simultaneously.

Why this is important:

Microsoft retains access to OpenAI's technology until 2032—meaning they already extracted what they needed. OpenAI now faces $89 billion in annual costs without its primary backer. The company that made OpenAI possible is now building the thing designed to replace it. That's not competition. That's the endgame.

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Source: Gizmodo

What's happening:

Musk rewrote Tesla's mission from "sustainable energy" to "amazing abundance." Shifted SpaceX from Mars to the Moon. Said AI will exceed all human intelligence in five years — and humans will be there, "ideally."

That word matters. Ideally. Not certainly. Not by design. A hedge buried inside a vision statement that's supposed to inspire confidence in everything he's building.

Why this is important:

Every pivot follows the same trigger: a stock price that needs a story.

Tesla plateaued on EVs — became a robotics company. SpaceX needed an IPO narrative — merged with xAI and pivoted to AI in space. The mission always expands to meet the moment Musk needs it to. "Amazing abundance" doesn't describe a product. It describes a valuation.

The deeper shift: Musk is quietly removing humans from the center of the future he's selling. Mars was for humanity. AI in space is for intelligence. Those aren't the same thing.

Comments from the editor:

What Musk is building matters less than what he's signaling about who it's for.

When the world's wealthiest person says humans will represent less than 1% of future intelligence, and calls their survival "ideal" rather than essential — that's not a philosophical slip. That's the architecture of a worldview being stress-tested in public.

The mission keeps changing because it was always serving one constant: the next deal. Anyone building in AI should pay attention. Not because Musk defines the future — but because his pivots reveal where the money moves before anyone else names it.

Source: Business Insider

What's happening:

Daniela Amodei — Anthropic's president, literature major — says AI is triggering a revenge of the humanities. While AI dominates STEM, the skills it can't replicate are empathy, curiosity, and critical thinking.

Anthropic's own hiring reflects this. Not the best coders. Communicators. People who understand people. The company building the world's most powerful AI is recruiting for the most human qualities possible.

Why this is important:

The rarest skill in AI isn't technical. It never was.

When 80% of Anthropic's code is AI-generated, the humans left aren't coders. They judge, communicate, and decide. AI can write the code. It can't tell you why it matters or who it's for.

The decade of "learn to code" is over. The people who understand humans are now the most valuable people in rooms full of AI. That's not inspiration. That's Anthropic's actual hiring strategy.

  1. Altersnap - A mobile application that allows users to take selfies and create altered photos

  2. LogoPicture AI - An online tool that allows users to create optical illusion art with their logos

  3. FinWise - A financial management tool that helps users manage their profiles and money effectively

  4. Mindie - Allows users to have conversations with anything they encounter on the web, such as YouTube videos, blog posts

The week didn't reveal where AI is going. It revealed who gets to decide.

Microsoft chose independence over partnership. Musk chose intelligence over humanity — in his own words. Anthropic chose empathy over code. Three different bets on what survives the transition.

The question isn't which one is right. It's which version of the future you're preparing for.

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