AI This Week
The National Institutes of Health is expanding its artificial intelligence pilots, even as its workforce shrinks and offices reorganize across the Department of Health and Human Services. NIH’s headcount fell to about 17,000 in early 2026, down more than 4,000 from a year earlier, after reductions in force and probationary firings, according to agency figures cited in federal data. At the same time, the number of documented NIH AI use cases climbed to 124 in fiscal 2025 from 82 in 2024. Officials pointed to GSA OneGov agreements that sped up access to approved tools, supporting work across grants analysis, research workflows, lab tasks, and clinical assistance. NIH also is building disease-focused small language models and plans to broaden successful pilots.
Global artificial intelligence leaders and world officials gathered in New Delhi this week for the India AI Impact Summit, where companies announced a wave of big-ticket investments and partnerships. Reliance Industries and its telecom unit Jio said they will invest $109.8 billion over seven years to build AI and data infrastructure. Adani Group announced $100 billion for renewable-powered AI data centres through 2035 and said related spending could reach $250 billion across the decade. Microsoft said it is on pace to invest $50 billion in the “Global South” by 2030. Yotta Data Services committed more than $2 billion for an AI computing hub using Nvidia Blackwell Ultra chips. TCS signed OpenAI as a data centre customer, while L&T and Nvidia announced plans for India’s largest AI factory.
Anthropic on Tuesday released Claude Sonnet 4.6, its second major AI model launch in less than two weeks. The company said the model improves computer use, coding, design, knowledge-work tasks, and the handling of large datasets. Sonnet 4.6 now becomes the default model for free users and Pro subscribers inside the Claude chatbot, and also in the Claude Cowork productivity tool. The rollout follows the debut of Claude Opus 4.6 just 12 days earlier, highlighting the rapid cadence among top AI labs competing with OpenAI and Google. Anthropic said performance once reserved for its Opus-class models now arrives in Sonnet.
Alibaba has released its Qwen3.5 AI model series, adding agent-style features as China’s AI competition accelerates. The launch includes an open-weight model that users can download, fine-tune, and run on their own infrastructure, plus a hosted API version on Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba says Qwen3.5 improves performance and cost versus prior versions and adds native multimodal support for handling text, images, and video in one system. The model also supports coding workflows and works with open-source agent tools such as OpenClaw, reflecting the industry shift toward systems that carry out multi-step tasks with minimal supervision. Alibaba reports 397 billion parameters and support for 201 languages and dialects, up from 82.
Simile has raised $100 million to build AI tools that predict human behavior, including what consumers may buy and the questions analysts may ask on earnings calls. The funding follows the company’s emergence from stealth after months of work on a model trained on hundreds of in-depth interviews about people’s lives, paired with historic transaction data and scientific journal text on behavioral experiments. Simile says it runs simulations filled with AI agents meant to mirror real individuals’ preferences, offering businesses an alternative to focus groups. CVS has tested the service to help decide which products to stock and how to display them.
Shares in trucking and logistics companies slid after Algorhythm Holdings launched its SemiCab AI freight platform, triggering a fast “AI fear trade” across the sector. Algorhythm, a $6m company that once made in-car karaoke systems, said SemiCab helped customers scale freight volumes 300% to 400% without adding headcount, sending its stock up nearly 30%. The Russell 3000 Trucking Index fell 6.6% as CH Robinson dropped 15%, Landstar sank 16%, RXO slid 20.5%, and JB Hunt and XPO each fell about 5%, the sharpest hit since last year’s tariff turmoil. European logistics shares also sank, including DHL, DSV and Kuehne+Nagel.
Anthropic said it has closed a $30 billion funding round at a $380 billion post-money valuation, more than double its value from its last raise in September. The Claude maker now sits behind OpenAI’s record private round, as top AI labs keep pulling in massive checks to cover the soaring cost of training models and buying compute, including Nvidia GPUs. Coatue and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC led the round, with D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ and MGX joining. Anthropic said the financing includes part of previously announced commitments from Microsoft and Nvidia. The company reported $14 billion in annualized revenue and said the cash will fund infrastructure, research, and enterprise products.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI lost a second co-founder in two days after influential researcher Jimmy Ba announced on X that he has departed. Ba, a University of Toronto professor, wrote that he was “grateful to have helped cofound at the start.” His exit followed Tony Wu’s departure a day earlier. The departures add to a longer list of early leaders who have left xAI, including Igor Babuschkin, Kyle Kosic, and Christian Szegedy, while Greg Yang said last month he would step back to focus on treatment for Lyme disease. The moves arrive as xAI faces regulatory probes in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. tied to Grok tools used to create non-consensual explicit images.
ByteDance has suspended a Seedance 2.0 feature that could generate a “personal voice” from a person’s facial photos, citing potential risks. The move puts a sudden pause on a capability that blended face-based identity signals with voice creation, a combination that can raise privacy, consent, and impersonation concerns. The company has not detailed when the feature will return, what safeguards will change, or whether the suspension applies across all markets and products tied to Seedance. The decision lands as tech firms face rising scrutiny over synthetic media, including tools that can mimic real people in audio and video.
Artificial intelligence emerged as one of the Super Bowl’s biggest ad themes, with AI-related messaging accounting for about 23% of commercials aired during the game. Brands across categories used the broadcast to link products and services to AI, betting that mainstream audiences would respond to promises of smarter tools, faster results, and new capabilities. The spike also created a crowding effect. As more advertisers used similar language and claims, it became harder for any single message to stand out, and viewers received a rush of overlapping AI pitches in a short window. The surge put pressure on marketers to explain AI’s role clearly, quickly, and without technical phrasing, while competing for attention in the most expensive media slot of the year.