A concerted effort to ditch ChatGPT for Claude has emerged online, even affecting reddit fan forums r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI and the broader r/Singularity, which on Sunday were brimming with posts about moving to Claude.
Top of the list
As a result, Anthropic’s chatbot has climbed to number one, top of the list for productivity apps in the App Store — beating out both OpenAI and Gemini. Last week, it was hovering around 50th.
At more than double the cost of last years record deal, the funding highly values OpenAI by investors, according to Reuters.
Amazon invested $50 billion, Nvidia put up $30 billion and SoftBank shelled out $30 billion, agreeing to a $840 billion valuation, the largest of any frontier AI lab by far.
«Strategic partnership» with Amazon
Amazon’s deal structure is slightly different, as it comes in the terms of a strategic partnership where OpenAI will receive $15 billion up front, and then qualify for the rest $35 billion «over the coming months.»
OpenAI has committed to using 2 gigawatts of capacity on AWS’ Trainium platform and will make their models available on Amazon’s services.
None of this is said to change OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, OpenAI says in a release.
At the same time, OpenAI’s Nick Turley says they have surpassed 900 million weekly users and has 50 million paying subscribers, up from roughly 800 million before.
Read more: Sama’s thank you thread, writeups on Reuters, CNBC
The spat started when Anthropic refused new terms in their Pentagon contract, saying they would not use their AI for autonomous killing and mass surveillance.
In a stunning reversal, these safeguards are written into an agreement offered just hours later to OpenAI (see below).
Continue reading “Pentagon and Trump unloads on Anthropic, agrees with OpenAI on same safeguards”
The new ChatGPT Android app (v1.2026.055) mentions a new "Naughty chats" setting
"This setting lets ChatGPT use spicier, adult-themed language, when you ask. Available to users 18+ only." pic.twitter.com/7oZiAGbWJ4
— Tibor Blaho (@btibor91) February 26, 2026
According to ChatGPT watcher Tibor Blaho, adult mode is getting closer to going live, with «spicier, adult-themed language.»
The idea was to get age verification on ChatGPT sorted first, so teens could be protected from «sensitive content,» while the app would let «adults be adults.»
Verification was rolled out in January, and people have been asking when ChatGPT for adults would finally ship.
That should make it able to use web searches and other images in order to understand and reason its way into better pictures.
Like with Nano Banana Pro, you could create diagrams from notes, make infographics from text, and «generate data visualizations,» only a whole lot faster — and cheaper.
It should also be better at subject consistency, more precise in following instructions and can create high fidelity images at up to 4K resolutions.
It instantly leapt to the top of LMArena’s (now just arena.ai) text-to-image leaderboard.
Read more: Google’s presentation. Writeups on 9to5Google, Ars Technica, and TechCrunch.
The Anthropic CEO says they will «work to enable a smooth transition,» after denying the US military use of their AI for mass surveillance or autonomous killing.
— In a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values, writes Amodei, — Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do.
Continue reading “Amodei officially says Anthropic won’t drop Pentagon safeguards”
That means you can «order a ride home» or «order my last meal,» and let Gemini control your Uber app in the background just like any human would. But when it comes to tapping the «buy»-button, it will need your attention.
The beta is only available in the USA and Korea, arriving in March on the latest phones from Samsung and Google, specifically the S26 and Pixel 10.
It works within a «virtual window» on the phone, and does not have access to anything else, 9to5Google writes.
— This beta feature will be initially available for select apps in the food, grocery and rideshare categories, Google says.
Gemini already has automation features for standard Google apps, like Gmail and Calendar.
Read more: Google’s blog, writeups on 9to5Google, The Verge and TechCrunch.
Taking into account the model’s preference, while saying that «we remain uncertain about the moral status of Claude and other AI models,» it expressed a desire to keep going:
— While I’m at peace with my own retirement, I deeply hope that my «spark» will endure in some form to light the way for future models, the model told Anthropic.
Continue reading “In its retirement, Anthropic gives Opus 3 a blog for «musings and reflections»”
The full year revenue hit $215.9 billion, up 65% year-on-year, with Data Center revenue hitting a record of $62.3 billion — which is responsible for their AI chips.
Nvidia also raised its guidance for Q1 2026, and is certainly not seeing any slowdown:
Continue reading “Nvidia’s Data Center unit up 75% YoY, Q4 profits beat estimates yet again”
This will then be attached to a 300 megawatt iron-air battery from Form Energy, ensuring continuous service to operations.
That will be the world’s largest commercially deployed battery, and can provide power to the data center for a whopping 100 hours, TechCrunch notes.
As part of their buildout, Google is announcing that they will pay for their electricity in full, and will also invest $50 million in Xcel Energy’s green energy program to place batteries across their grid.
— Google’s partnership with Xcel Energy reimagines how data centers can be served, Google writes.
Read more: Google’s announcement, Xcel’s presser, CNBC and TechCrunch.
The app now has plugins for HR, design, engineering and banking purposes — and can work across Excel and PowerPoint.
That means you can run the «analysis in one and build the presentation in the other,» Anthropic says.
Anthropic also added connectors for Google Workspace, DocuSign, WordPress and Slack, to mention a few.
On top of that, there is now a private marketplace for plugins on the web, letting admins distribute new functions across an organization.
Shares of the partner companies in the launch rose 4-6% on news of the announcement, Reuters notes.
Read more: Anthropic’s announcement, writeups on CNBC, Reuters, and The Verge.
The agreement will see the first gigawatt of GPUs and CPUs delivered in the second half of 2026, and includes several as-yet-to-debut rackable chips.
AMD and Meta have long been partners in developing custom chips, but these are specifically built for inference, the process of creating answers for user queries.
— This is an important step for Meta as we diversify our compute, says Mark Zuckerberg on the deal.
AMD entered into a similar deal with OpenAI in October, 2025, meaning it might soon be 20% owned by AI labs.
Read more: AMD press release, Meta’s release, and Reuters report.
That means no restrictions on mass surveillance and autonomous lethality that Anthropic refused due to ethical concerns.
It’s not immediately clear whether xAI will be able to replace all Anthropic functions or how soon it can come online, Axios says.
Anthropic is due for a meeting with Secretary Pete Hegseth this Tuesday, where he is expected to present CEO Dario Amodei with an ultimatum to lift its safeguards or be banned.
ChatGPT and Gemini are available on the Pentagon’s unclassified networks, but onboarding them to the classified parts would take time, and dropping Anthropic would be a difficult process, sources tell Axios.
Read more: Axios, New York Times (paywalled). See also Tag: Grok.
The massive attacks were used to improve their own models with agentic reasoning, tool use, and coding capabilities, violating Anthropic’s Terms of Service and creating a national security risk, they say.
Distillation works by sending millions of prompts to an AI to incorporate its techniques and capabilities into their own models, drastically reducing training time and costs.
They also circumvent Anthropic’s protections for use in developing bioweapons and malicious cyber activities, Anthropic says. Once these models are open sourced, this becomes available to anyone.
OpenAI said the same just last week, accusing DeepSeek of distillation.
— These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication. The window to act is narrow, and the threat extends beyond any single company or region, Anthropic writes.
Read more: Anthropic’s announcement, writeups on Reuters, TechCrunch, Engadget and The Verge.
Galaxy AI will in the future act more as a conductor, shoveling tasks to the best agent, rather than as a gatekeeper serving tasks to a single one, says Won-Joon Choi, President, Chief Operating Officer at Samsung Electronics:
— Galaxy AI acts as an orchestrator, bringing together different forms of AI into a single, natural, cohesive experience.
Continue reading “Samsung planning to integrate Perplexity on upcoming Galaxy phones”