Anthropic Raises $30B at $380B Valuation, ByteDance Seedance 2.0 Goes Viral, Waymo Deploys 6th-Gen Robotaxis | February 13, 2026

Daily AI Blog

February 13, 2026

📋 Quick Takeaways

Anthropic closes record $30B Series G at $380B valuation — the second-largest private tech round ever — with annualized revenue hitting $14B and Claude Code surpassing $2.5B run-rate

ByteDance officially launches Seedance 2.0, a multimodal AI video model that goes viral on Chinese social media, drawing “DeepSeek moment” comparisons and an Elon Musk reaction

Anthropic donates $20M to pro-AI-regulation PAC, escalating a political spending war with OpenAI-backed groups ahead of the 2026 midterm elections

Waymo begins deploying 6th-generation Ojai robotaxis with 42% fewer sensors, targeting 1M weekly rides and expansion to 10+ new U.S. cities plus London

Singapore unveils sweeping AI-centric national budget with 400% tax deductions, a National AI Council, and free public AI tools

Meta begins construction on a ~$10B data center in Indiana with 1GW power capacity

Goldman Sachs raises Nvidia estimates ahead of Feb 25 earnings, forecasting a $2B revenue beat as hyperscaler capex tops $600B

AGIBOT launches $530K global robotics competition at ICRA 2026, reinforcing embodied AI as a major frontier

💰 AI Funding & Corporate Strategy

Anthropic Closes $30B Series G at $380B Valuation — Second-Largest Private Tech Round in History

Anthropic announced on Thursday the close of a $30 billion Series G funding round, valuing the company at $380 billion post-money — more than double its $183 billion valuation from September 2025. The round is the second-largest private tech financing ever, trailing only OpenAI’s $40B+ raise last year.

Investor Lineup:

The round was co-led by GIC (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund) and Coatue Management, with co-leads from D.E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, ICONIQ, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX. Other participants include Sequoia Capital, Accel, General Catalyst, Jane Street, the Qatar Investment Authority, as well as strategic investments from Microsoft (up to $5B) and Nvidia (up to $10B).

Key Financial Disclosures:

Annualized revenue: $14 billion — growing 10x each of the past three years
Claude Code run-rate revenue: $2.5B+, more than doubling since January 2026
Business subscriptions to Claude Code quadrupled since the start of 2026
Enterprise users now represent over half of Claude Code revenue
Customers spending over $100K annually grew 7x in the past year

Strategic Context: The funding comes as Anthropic’s Claude Cowork plugins have triggered a massive software stock selloff — wiping nearly $2 trillion in market cap from the sector at its peak — as investors reassess whether AI agents will cannibalize traditional SaaS businesses. Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao stated the capital will fuel infrastructure expansion, research, and enterprise product development.

According to Ramp data, 1 in 5 businesses using Ramp now pay for Anthropic (up from 1 in 25 last year), and approximately 79% of OpenAI users also pay for Anthropic, suggesting the AI market is not yet zero-sum.

Sources: CNBC | Bloomberg | TechCrunch | Axios | Reuters

🎬 AI Models & Generative AI

ByteDance Officially Launches Seedance 2.0 — AI Video Model Goes Viral, Draws “DeepSeek Moment” Comparisons

ByteDance officially launched Seedance 2.0 on February 12, a next-generation multimodal AI video-generation model that has ignited massive attention across Chinese social media and internationally.

Technical Capabilities:

Generates cinematic, multi-scene video with synchronized audio from text prompts
Processes text, images, audio, and video simultaneously via a dual-branch diffusion transformer architecture
Produces 2K resolution multi-shot sequences within 60 seconds
Significantly improved motion realism, physics awareness, and scene consistency over its predecessor
Automatically parses narrative logic while maintaining character consistency across scenes

Viral Reception:

Seedance 2.0 trended rapidly on Weibo with tens of millions of views. One widely circulated clip reimagined Western public figures in an ancient Chinese palace drama, complete with Mandarin dialogue and singing. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded on X with “This is happening too fast.” Chinese state media drew direct parallels to last year’s “DeepSeek moment”, framing Seedance 2.0 as another validation of China’s AI competitiveness — this time in the multimodal video domain.

Privacy Concerns: ByteDance simultaneously imposed restrictions on real-person image uploads and suspended a feature that could generate personalized voice characteristics from facial images alone, responding to privacy and ethical concerns. The Jimeng platform now requires live verification steps before creating digital avatars.

Industry Significance: As the parent company of TikTok/Douyin — the world’s largest short-form video platform — ByteDance possesses an unmatched feedback loop between content consumption data and video generation model development. Seedance 2.0 competes directly with OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s Veo, Runway’s Gen-4, and Kuaishou’s Kling.

Sources: Global Times | PYMNTS | Reuters via The News International | SitePoint | TechNode

🛡️ AI Policy & Governance

Anthropic Donates $20M to Pro-Regulation PAC, Escalating Political War with OpenAI-Backed Groups

On the same day as its record funding announcement, Anthropic disclosed a $20 million donation to Public First Action, a political advocacy group backing U.S. candidates who support AI safety regulation. The move marks Anthropic’s first major political intervention and sets up a direct confrontation with rival lobbying efforts.

The Political Battle Lines:

Pro-regulation side: Anthropic’s $20M backs Public First Action, which plans to support 30-50 candidates from both parties in state and federal races who favor AI guardrails
Anti-regulation side: “Leading the Future” PAC, backed by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz, has $70M on hand and plans to spend $125M total to elect candidates supporting lighter AI regulation

Immediate Actions: Public First Action launched ad campaigns supporting Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn (running for Tennessee governor) and Republican Senator Pete Ricketts (running for reelection in Nebraska), both of whom have called for AI industry oversight.

White House Friction: The donation comes despite tensions with the Trump administration. AI czar David Sacks previously accused Anthropic of running a “sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering” and being “principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy.” President Trump signed an executive order in December aimed at undermining state-level AI regulations.

Internal Tensions: The political push also coincides with the recent resignation of Anthropic’s Safeguards Research Team lead Mrinank Sharma, who warned that “the world is in peril” — highlighting the tension between rapid commercialization ($14B revenue) and the company’s own safety concerns.

Sources: CNBC | Reuters | AP/Mercury News

🚗 Autonomous Vehicles & Robotics

Waymo Begins Deploying 6th-Generation Ojai Robotaxis with Upgraded Driverless Tech

Waymo announced on February 12 that it has begun using its sixth-generation Waymo Driver to provide autonomous rides on its new Ojai vehicles — built on a base model from Chinese automaker Geely — marking a significant hardware and software upgrade for the Alphabet-owned company.

Key Technical Upgrades:

42% fewer sensors than previous generations, using more cost-effective components
Next-gen 17-megapixel lidar imager with exceptional thermal stability and low-light sensitivity
360-degree overlapping field of view with object detection up to 500 meters in darkness
External Audio Receivers (EARs) to complement visual sensing
Designed for harsher weather conditions, critical for northeastern U.S. expansion

Deployment Timeline: The Ojai vehicles are initially serving Waymo employees and guests in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, before gradually expanding to public service. The company’s 6th-gen system will serve as the “primary engine for the next era of expansion.”

Expansion Plans for 2026:

Currently operates in 6 U.S. cities (Austin, SF Bay Area, Phoenix, Atlanta, LA, Miami)
Plans to open service in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, and Washington
First international market: London
CEO Tekedra Mawakana targets 1 million weekly paid rides in 2026 (up from ~400K currently)
Fleet exceeds 2,500 fully driverless vehicles

Competitive Context: Tesla currently operates approximately 500 robotaxis (mostly with human drivers) in just two markets. Waymo’s fleet scale and fully driverless capability continue to widen its U.S. lead.

Sources: CNBC | Interesting Engineering

🌏 National AI Policy

Singapore Unveils AI-Centric 2026 Budget with Tax Breaks, National AI Council, and Free Public AI Tools

Singapore Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong delivered a sweeping AI-focused 2026 financial year budget on February 12, positioning AI as a core national strategy to overcome structural constraints.

Key AI Measures:

400% tax deductions on up to S$50,000 of qualifying AI expenses per year (for 2027-2028)
New national “AI Missions” targeting advanced manufacturing, connectivity, finance, and healthcare
Establishment of a National AI Council chaired by PM Wong to provide strategic direction
Free access to advanced AI tools for the general public
Continued investment from the S$1 billion AI R&D commitment announced in January 2026

PM Wong’s Rationale: “Harnessed well, AI will be a strategic advantage for Singapore. It can help us overcome our structural constraints — our limited natural resources, rapidly ageing population, and tight labor market.”

Broader Economic Context: Singapore forecasts a S$8.5 billion surplus for the 2026 financial year. The budget also includes measures to boost the stock market, including a S$5.5 billion deployment to asset managers and a dual-listing bridge connecting SGX and Nasdaq.

Global Significance: Singapore’s comprehensive AI budget represents one of the most ambitious national AI strategies in the world, combining enterprise incentives, workforce development, public access, and high-level governance under a single policy umbrella.

Sources: Xinhua | CNBC

🏗️ AI Infrastructure

Meta Begins Construction on ~$10B Data Center in Indiana with 1GW Power Capacity

Meta has started building a massive ~$10 billion data center in Lebanon, Indiana, signaling the company remains in full “build” mode as AI infrastructure demand intensifies.

Project Details:

Expected to come online in late 2027 or early 2028
Designed for approximately 1 gigawatt (GW) of power — placing it among the largest single-site data center facilities globally
Will support Meta’s AI training and inference workloads at scale

Industry Context: Meta plans to spend over $600 billion on AI data center projects over the next three years, dwarfing even the revenues of America’s largest companies. The project underscores a broader industry trend where data centers have evolved from backend IT to strategic infrastructure assets that determine how fast a company can train, fine-tune, and serve frontier AI models.

Physical Constraints: The AI boom is increasingly gated by real-world factors: grid interconnects, transmission buildouts, water availability, and local permitting battles. Meta’s Indiana facility joins a growing list of gigawatt-scale projects reshaping utility planning and regional power markets.

Source: TechStartups

📊 AI Markets & Semiconductors

Goldman Sachs Raises Nvidia Estimates Ahead of Feb 25 Earnings as Hyperscaler Capex Tops $600B

Ahead of Nvidia’s fiscal Q4 2026 earnings on February 25, Goldman Sachs reiterated a Buy rating with a $250 price target — representing approximately 35% upside from current levels.

Key Projections:

Q4 revenue estimate: $67.3 billion (a ~$2B beat over consensus)
Fiscal 2026 full-year revenue: $215.1 billion
Fiscal 2027 revenue: $382.9 billion
Fiscal 2028 revenue: $513 billion

Hyperscaler Spending Backdrop: Combined capex from the Big Five hyperscalers (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle) now exceeds $600 billion for 2026 — a 36% increase from 2025. CreditSights estimates ~~75% (~~$450B) goes directly to AI infrastructure including GPUs, servers, networking, and data centers.

Catalysts to Watch:

Visibility into Vera Rubin next-gen chip systems (expected to reduce inference costs by 10x vs Blackwell)
Growing GPU demand from OpenAI and Anthropic as model companies scale
Sovereign government AI infrastructure spending
Competitive dynamics vs. Broadcom/Marvell custom ASICs

Market Context: Despite the stock falling 13% from its peak, Nvidia trades at approximately 24x forward earnings — a discount to the broader Nasdaq-100’s 26x multiple. The upcoming earnings report is expected to provide critical visibility into 2027 demand.

Sources: Motley Fool | TheStreet/Goldman Sachs | Investing.com

🤖 Robotics & Embodied AI

AGIBOT Launches $530K Global Robotics Challenge at ICRA 2026

Shanghai-based AGIBOT, which claims the #1 global ranking in humanoid robot shipments in 2025, officially announced the AGIBOT World Challenge at ICRA 2026 (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation) on February 12.

Competition Details:

$530,000 in total prizes for the global robotics competition
Open to university labs, technology companies, and startup teams
Participants will develop embodied AI solutions on AGIBOT’s full-stack development platform integrating hardware, data, models, and simulation
Held in conjunction with ICRA 2026, the world’s largest robotics and automation conference (5,000+ attendees annually)

Platform Ecosystem: AGIBOT World is a comprehensive ecosystem that integrates:

Standardized robotic hardware platforms
Large-scale manipulation and locomotion datasets
Foundation models for robot control
High-fidelity simulation environments

Industry Significance: The competition reinforces embodied AI and physical intelligence as a major frontier in 2026, with the convergence of large language models, computer vision, and robotic manipulation driving a new wave of real-world AI applications.

Source: AGIBOT

📈 Market Impact Analysis

The convergence of record funding, geopolitical AI competition, and infrastructure expansion on February 12-13 reveals several critical dynamics shaping the AI landscape:

Capital Concentration Accelerates: Anthropic’s $30B round and $380B valuation — combined with OpenAI’s pursuit of $100B at ~$830B — places the combined valuation of just two private AI companies above $1.2 trillion. The AI funding race shows no signs of slowing despite mounting questions about monetization timelines.

AI Regulation Becomes Election Issue: Anthropic’s $20M political donation vs. the OpenAI-backed $125M “Leading the Future” PAC transforms AI governance from a policy debate into a full-blown campaign spending war. The 2026 midterms will be the first U.S. elections where AI regulation is a primary spending category.

China-US AI Competition Intensifies: ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 viral launch — following DeepSeek’s 2025 impact — demonstrates that Chinese AI companies continue to close the gap with U.S. counterparts, particularly in multimodal and video generation domains.

Physical AI Goes Mainstream: Waymo’s 6th-gen deployment, AGIBOT’s robotics challenge, and the broader push toward embodied intelligence signal that 2026 is the year AI moves decisively from digital screens to physical-world applications.

Infrastructure Bottleneck Tightens: Meta’s $10B data center, Singapore’s national AI budget, and $600B+ in hyperscaler capex all point to an industry where growth is increasingly gated by power, chips, and physical infrastructure — not ideas or software.

🔮 Looking Ahead

Key Events & Trends to Watch:

Nvidia Q4 earnings (Feb 25): The most anticipated AI earnings report of the quarter, expected to provide visibility into 2027 demand
Software stock selloff trajectory: Whether the ~$2T in lost market cap represents an overreaction or structural repricing
AI regulation battle: How the Anthropic vs. OpenAI political spending war shapes 2026 midterm races
Seedance 2.0 global rollout: Whether ByteDance’s model reaches international markets and TikTok integration
Waymo public Ojai service: Timeline for expanding 6th-gen robotaxis beyond employee testing to public riders

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Last Updated: February 13, 2026, 6:00 PM CST