AI This Week
Adobe announced that CEO Shantanu Narayen will step down after a successor is appointed, and will remain as board chair. Narayen joined Adobe in 1988 and became CEO in 2007, leading the company's transformation from software licenses to Creative Cloud subscriptions and expanding into generative artificial intelligence. Shares tumbled 7% in extended trading following the announcement. Adobe is grappling with a changing software landscape where artificial intelligence is lowering barriers to entry for design. The Board appointed Frank Calderoni, Lead Independent Director, to chair the special committee directing the search for both internal and external candidates. Under Narayen's watch, Adobe's stock jumped more than sixfold, making flagship products like Photoshop and Illustrator household names. The transition comes as Adobe navigates mounting pressure to deliver on AI innovations.
Netflix will pay as much as $600 million for InterPositive, the AI moviemaking company founded by Ben Affleck, marking one of the largest AI deals by a major Hollywood studio. The actual cash payment may be lower, with the owners of InterPositive eligible for additional payouts tied to specific performance targets. Affleck built InterPositive as a tool for filmmakers where a director shoots a movie before the software trains using the footage, helping remove stray items or adjust backgrounds without training on films without permission or generating new projects. The deal will integrate InterPositive's team of engineers, researchers, creatives and producers directly into Netflix. The acquisition represents a major push by streaming platforms to leverage artificial intelligence in film production amid industry concerns about job displacement.
Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. The financing values the startup at $3.5 billion and was co-led by investors including Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, calling the idea that large language models will achieve human-level intelligence "complete nonsense." AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, and robotics industries, potentially building realistic world models of systems like aircraft engines to optimize efficiency and reliability. AMI marks LeCun's first commercial venture since departing Meta in November 2025. The startup represents a contrarian bet against the LLM-dominated AI industry.
AI tools now generate 45 billion monthly sessions worldwide — about 56% of search engine volume, according to new research. ChatGPT dominates AI usage, representing 89% of global AI sessions. The study analyzed five major AI platforms — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Claude — alongside six leading search engines. Most comparisons underestimate AI activity by 4–5x because most usage occurs in mobile apps, not websites. Total usage across search engines and AI assistants has grown 26% globally since 2023. Google's share of search-related activity fell from 89% in 2023 to 71% in Q4 2025, while U.S. AI usage surged roughly 300% year over year by December 2025. The findings suggest marketers need both traditional search optimization and AI visibility strategies.
Caitlin Kalinowski resigned from her role leading OpenAI's robotics team in response to the company's controversial Pentagon agreement. The departure rocks Silicon Valley. She warned that "surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got". Kalinowski stepped down on "principle" after OpenAI revealed plans to make its AI systems available inside secure Defense Department computing systems. She clarified that the announcement was rushed without guardrails defined, calling it "a governance concern first and foremost". OpenAI defended the deal, stating it "creates a workable path for responsible national security uses of AI while making clear our red lines". The controversy exposes growing tensions between AI innovation and military oversight.
OpenAI has released GPT-5.4, its first general-purpose model with native computer-use capabilities that enable agents to operate computers and carry out multi-application workflows. The model scored 87.3% on internal spreadsheet modeling benchmarks for investment banking tasks, up dramatically from GPT-5.2's 68.4%. OpenAI paired the launch with ChatGPT for Excel, which can build, update and analyze spreadsheet models directly inside workbooks. The spreadsheet product is rolling out in beta to ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Edu, Teachers, Pro and Plus users in the U.S., Canada and Australia. This positions OpenAI more directly against Anthropic and Google in the enterprise market, where Anthropic introduced Claude for Financial Services in July 2025.
OpenAI is developing a new code-hosting platform to rival Microsoft's GitHub after engineers encountered a rise in service disruptions that rendered GitHub unavailable in recent months. The project is in its early stages and likely will not be completed for months. Employees working on it have considered making the code repository available for purchase to OpenAI's customer base. The move could pit OpenAI directly against Microsoft, which owns GitHub and holds a major stake in the AI company. GitHub reported a 58% year-over-year increase in incidents during the first half of 2025, rising from 69 cases to 109 with 17 classified as "major," totaling over 100 hours of disruption. Microsoft currently holds roughly 27% of OpenAI and acquired GitHub in 2018 for $7.5 billion.
Chinese AI company DeepSeek is preparing to unveil its mostadvanced artificial intelligence model yet, trained on Nvidia's cutting-edgechips. The launch could happen as soon as March 2026. Timing is everything. Therelease is strategically scheduled before China's "Two Sessions"parliamentary meetings, which kick off March 4. This positioning could cementDeepSeek's status as a national AI champion. While the company has been rollingout incremental updates, competitors like Alibaba have been aggressive. They'recapturing significant market share in the lower-cost, open-source AI space.DeepSeek's new model represents a major step forward, leveraging the mostpowerful hardware available. The move signals China's continued push todominate the global AI landscape. All eyes will be on this March debut.
The AI boom is reshaping global infrastructure at unprecedented scale. Meta announced a staggering $60 billion commitment to U.S. data centers and computing infrastructure through 2028. The social media giant is building two massive new data centers and has locked in a $10 billion deal with Google Cloud. But Meta's spending spree pales beside Oracle's coup. The database company secured a jaw-dropping $300 billion, five-year compute contract with OpenAI beginning in 2027. The deal briefly catapulted Oracle founder Larry Ellison to the top of the world's wealth rankings. These massive infrastructure investments underscore the computing power required for advanced AI development. They signal that tech companies believe the AI revolution demands unprecedented physical and financial resources to maintain competitive advantage.
Block said it will lay off more than 4,000 employees, shrinking its staff from over 10,000 to just under 6,000, according to a letter from co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. Shares surged as much as 24% in extended trading and were up about 18% premarket Friday. CFO Amrita Ahuja said the cuts position Block for its next phase of long-term growth, as the company shifts to smaller teams and uses AI to automate more work. Dorsey said many companies may make similar structural changes as “intelligence tools” drive efficiency gains. Block announced the move alongside fourth-quarter results: adjusted EPS of 65 cents on $6.25 billion in revenue, with gross profit up 24% to $2.87 billion.