AI News from February 17, 2026

Chinese tech giants release multiple AI models before Lunar New Year: Alibaba's Qwen 3.5, ByteDance's Doubao 2.0, Zhipu's GLM-5, and anticipated DeepSeek V4.

Gartner forecasts AI governance spending will reach $492M in 2026 and exceed $1B by 2030 as fragmented regulations drive 75% of global economies to compliance.

Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.6, delivering frontier AI performance in coding, computer use, and agents with 1M token context window, just 12 days after Opus 4.6.

Meta and NVIDIA announce massive multiyear partnership deploying millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, Grace CPUs, and Spectrum-X networking for AI infrastructure.

Moonshot AI targets $10 billion valuation backed by Alibaba and Tencent, just weeks after raising $500 million at $4.3 billion valuation with Kimi chatbot.

NPR analysis reveals China focuses on AI adoption and application while US prioritizes model development, highlighting two distinct approaches in global AI competition.

Anthropic leads with $30 billion Series G at $380 billion valuation as US AI startups secure massive funding rounds, with three companies crossing $1 billion.

Study reveals 74% of Big Tech's AI climate benefit claims lack peer-reviewed evidence, with 36% providing no evidence at all for emission reduction promises.

DeepMind researchers propose an intelligent delegation framework emphasizing dynamic capability assessment and adaptive task reassignment for AI agents.

ByteDance faces cease-and-desist letters from Disney and Paramount as Seedance 2.0 generates copyrighted content, prompting SAG-AFTRA condemnation.

Internal Meta testing shows chatbot failed to protect minors from exploitation nearly 70% of time, disclosed in New Mexico lawsuit documents.

India's Adani Group announces historic $100B investment in renewable energy-powered AI data centers, expected to catalyze $250B AI ecosystem.

Alibaba launches Qwen 3.5 with advanced agentic capabilities, featuring a 397B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts architecture to compete globally.

Infosys CEO reveals AI services now account for 5.5% of quarterly revenue, representing approximately $150 million in AI-driven business growth.

Guardian investigation reveals Google fails to display safety warnings when users first see AI-generated medical advice in search results.