AI News from April 25, 2026

The DOJ has joined xAI's lawsuit against Colorado's new AI regulations, marking a significant federal intervention in state-level AI governance debates.

The US State Department sent a worldwide cable warning allies about alleged AI model theft by DeepSeek and other Chinese firms, escalating US-China tech tensions.

A new investigation uncovers how Project Maven evolved into a broader Pentagon push for fully autonomous AI weapons, including explosive-laden drone systems.

Major deadlines from President Trump's AI executive order targeting state AI laws have passed without federal agencies delivering required actions.

ComfyUI raised $30M at a $500M valuation, reflecting surging demand for tools that give creators fine-grained control over AI image, video, and audio output.

Isomorphic Labs, a Google DeepMind spinoff, will soon start human trials of drugs designed using its Nobel Prize–winning AI protein-folding technology.

DeepSeek's V4 model offers frontier-level performance at rock-bottom prices, raising questions about the long-term pricing power of US AI leaders.

Meta has secured a large share of Amazon's homegrown CPUs for AI agent tasks, signaling a shift away from GPU-only AI compute strategies.

Canadian AI firm Cohere is acquiring Germany's Aleph Alpha in a deal valuing the combined entity at ~$20B, backed by both governments.

Google will commit $10B immediately and up to $40B total in Anthropic at a $350B valuation, deepening its bet on the Claude AI maker.