ChatGPT Ads Go Live, $2 Trillion Software Wipeout & $30B+ AI Infrastructure Deals | February 11, 2026

Daily AI Blog

February 11, 2026

📋 Quick Takeaways

OpenAI officially begins testing ads in ChatGPT for Free and Go tier users in the U.S., marking a historic monetization shift for consumer AI

Anthropic fires back with anti-ad manifesto and strikes AI partnership with Man Group, escalating the OpenAI rivalry to new heights

$2 trillion wiped off software stocks in a week, yet AI bull market holds as hyperscaler capex guidance surges 24% YoY to $660B for 2026

Alphabet raises $20 billion in its largest-ever bond sale — including a 100-year bond — to fund AI infrastructure buildout

Firmus Technologies secures $10 billion Blackstone-led loan for Australian AI data centers, one of the largest private credit deals ever

Melius Research downgrades Microsoft, saying CEO Nadella has “lost the AI narrative” with Copilot underperformance

ChatGPT returns to 10%+ monthly growth, with OpenAI teasing an updated chat model shipping this week

💰 AI Monetization & Platform Strategy

OpenAI Officially Launches Ads in ChatGPT — A Watershed Moment for Consumer AI

Historic Shift: On February 10, OpenAI officially began testing advertisements inside ChatGPT, fundamentally changing the economics of consumer AI. The rollout targets logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers in the United States.

Implementation Details:

Ads appear at the bottom of ChatGPT responses, clearly labeled as sponsored content
Ad personalization is enabled by default, using recent conversations and chat history to select relevant ads
Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education subscribers remain ad-free
Ads will not appear in temporary chats, logged-out sessions, or the ChatGPT Atlas browser
Sensitive topics including health, mental health, and politics are excluded from ad placement
Free and Go users can opt out of ads in exchange for fewer daily messages

Revenue Context: OpenAI, valued at roughly $500 billion with 800 million weekly active users, remains far from profitable as inference costs continue to rise. Internal documents reported in mid-2025 showed OpenAI planning $1 billion in “free user monetization” starting in 2026, growing up to $25 billion by 2029.

Industry Significance: This is the first time a major AI chatbot has introduced advertising, raising fundamental questions about whether commercial incentives can coexist with AI objectivity. The move came just one day after Anthropic’s satirical Super Bowl ads lampooned the concept of ads in AI.

Source: TechCrunch | The Register | Euronews | Axios

Anthropic Fires Back with Anti-Ad Manifesto, Strikes Man Group Partnership

Corporate Rivalry Escalates: Anthropic published a detailed blog post on February 10 explaining why advertising does not belong in AI conversations, directly countering OpenAI’s ad launch. The post argued that AI chats are fundamentally different from search engines and social media, as users share sensitive personal details and complex work tasks.

Man Group Partnership: On February 11, Anthropic struck a strategic AI partnership with Man Group, a major investment management firm. The companies will collaborate on using Anthropic’s AI products and building new financial tools together.

Competitive Positioning: Anthropic’s Chief Commercial Officer Paul Smith told CNBC that the company is focused on “growing revenue and winning business, rather than spending money and announcing the biggest compute deals.” He described the $2 trillion software stock selloff triggered by Claude Cowork as “a lot of hyperbole,” while praising “incredible growth” in Claude Code, Cowork, and enterprise business overall.

Financial Standing: Anthropic is in the final stages of raising $20 billion in new capital at a $350 billion valuation, barely five months after raising $13 billion. The company has committed $50 billion to building U.S. data centers.

Source: CNBC | The News International

📉 Market Dynamics & AI Bull Market

$2 Trillion Software Wipeout Fails to Derail the AI Bull Market

Market Paradox: In one of the starkest market divergences in years, $2 trillion was wiped off software company market caps in the week ending February 7, yet S&P 500 futures were up and tech stocks rallied as investors bet on AI infrastructure growth.

Software Carnage:

The WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund plummeted ~20% YTD in 2026
HubSpot fell 39% YTD, Figma plunged 40%, Atlassian dropped 35%, Shopify down 29%
Goldman Sachs’ basket of U.S. software stocks saw its biggest single-day decline since April’s tariff-fueled selloff
Anthropic’s Claude Cowork legal and marketing plugins were the primary catalyst

But the Bull Case Holds:

Hyperscaler capex guidance for 2026 is up 24%, $117 billion more than last year
An estimated $1.3 trillion will be spent on AI facilities through 2027, with $660 billion planned for 2026 alone
75% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q4 earnings with EPS 12% higher YoY
Big Tech companies are taking on record debt to finance AI infrastructure

Analyst Perspective: Wedbush Securities called the selloff an “Armageddon scenario for the sector that is far from reality,” arguing enterprises won’t completely overhaul trillions in prior software infrastructure investments overnight.

Source: Fortune | CNBC | Bloomberg

OpenAI Reports ChatGPT Back to 10%+ Monthly Growth, Teases New Model

Growth Resurgence: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees on February 10 that ChatGPT is “once again growing by more than ten percent per month,” a return to double-digit expansion after months of plateauing growth. The service now reaches 800 million weekly active users globally.

Codex Momentum: OpenAI’s Codex coding product has grown roughly 50% in just one week, which Altman called “insane.” GPT-5.3-Codex, released last week, was described as the first model “instrumental in creating itself.”

New Model Incoming: Altman teased an “updated Chat model” set to launch later this week, expected to be the larger general-purpose variant of GPT-5.3.

Funding & IPO Context: The growth announcement coincides with ongoing funding discussions and reports from the Wall Street Journal that OpenAI is racing toward a public listing in Q4 2026.

Source: WinBuzzer | 9to5Google

Melius Research Downgrades Microsoft — Nadella Has “Lost the AI Narrative”

Analyst Downgrade: Melius Research downgraded Microsoft from buy to hold on February 10, delivering a pointed critique that CEO Satya Nadella has “lost the AI narrative” and that the company’s heavy focus on Copilot hasn’t paid off as investors hoped.

Key Concerns:

Copilot adoption has underperformed expectations, with reports suggesting it “flat-out failed to complete even simple tasks 70% of the time”
Stock deemed “very expensive” given new free cash flow estimates from management
While Alphabet and Meta aggressively boost AI spending, Microsoft’s competitive position relative to peers is under question

Market Reaction: Despite the downgrade, Microsoft stock was up more than 2.5% in Tuesday trading, suggesting investors are taking the call in stride for now.

Source: CNBC

🏗️ AI Infrastructure & Financing

Alphabet Raises $20 Billion in Largest-Ever Dollar Bond Sale for AI

Record Offering: Alphabet is raising $20 billion in a U.S. dollar bond sale — the largest in Google’s history — including an unprecedented 100-year bond tranche in sterling. The deal was reported to be 5x oversubscribed.

AI Infrastructure Drive: The capital will fund Alphabet’s massive AI buildout as the company guides capex spending of $175–185 billion in 2026, roughly double the prior year. Alphabet’s long-term debt quadrupled in 2025 to $46.5 billion.

Risk Acknowledgment: In its annual financial report, Alphabet highlighted new AI-related risks for the first time, including the potential impact of AI on its core advertising business and the possibility of ending up with “excess capacity” from costly infrastructure commitments.

Broader Market Signal: The offering is fueling forecasts that 2026 will be a record year for U.S. corporate bond sales, with Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle also tapping debt markets to fund AI data center construction.

Source: CNBC | WebProNews

Nvidia-Backed Firmus Secures $10 Billion Blackstone-Led Loan for AI Data Centers

Massive Private Credit Deal: Australian AI infrastructure startup Firmus Technologies secured a $10 billion debt funding package led by Blackstone, with participation from Coatue Capital. The financing ranks among the largest private credit deals ever completed in Australia.

Project Scope:

Funds the next phase of Firmus’ data center expansion via Project Southgate
Targets up to 1.6 gigawatts of capacity across Australia by 2028
Developed alongside CDC Data Centres and Nvidia
Powered by Nvidia’s chips

Previous Funding: Firmus raised A$830 million in equity last year across two placements backed by Nvidia and Ellerston Capital, laying the groundwork for this national-scale execution.

Market Significance: AI data centers are becoming a distinct asset class with different power contracts, cooling designs, and equipment requirements than traditional enterprise facilities. Private credit is stepping in to finance them at a pace public markets rarely match.

Source: Bloomberg | Tech Startups

Ares Arranges $2.4B Loan for Vantage Data Centers

Infrastructure Financing Continues: Ares Management arranged a $2.4 billion loan deal for Vantage Data Centers, signaling that private credit continues to underwrite the physical expansion of cloud and AI infrastructure at scale.

Strategic Context: The financing supports large campus footprints capable of handling the power density and redundancy that AI workloads demand. As customers push for capacity guarantees rather than best-effort availability, AI data centers require fundamentally different infrastructure designs.

Source: Tech Startups

🌐 Regulation & Competition

EU Signals Interim Measures Against Meta Over AI Assistant Competition on WhatsApp

Regulatory Escalation: European regulators signaled possible interim measures over Meta’s handling of rival AI assistants on WhatsApp, escalating scrutiny of how dominant platforms may steer users toward in-house AI tools.

Key Concern: Classic competition law is being applied to a new battleground — if messaging is the distribution surface for consumer AI, then controlling which assistants can operate there becomes a powerful lever.

Startup Impact: For startups building AI assistants, this is a critical reminder that partnerships and integrations with dominant platforms are not guaranteed channels. If third-party assistants can’t access key messaging workflows, their ability to compete on user experience is fundamentally limited.

Broader Implications: “Assistant distribution” is fast becoming the next platform war, potentially reshaping how AI products reach consumers worldwide.

Source: Tech Startups | European Commission

🔧 AI Products & Hardware

Cisco Introduces Silicon One G300 for AI Data Center Networking

Networking Bottleneck Solution: Cisco introduced its Silicon One G300 and accompanying systems and optics on February 10, positioned specifically for AI data centers where networking is increasingly the performance bottleneck.

Why It Matters: As model training and inference scale, the limiting factor is often not just GPUs, but the ability to move data efficiently between compute nodes and storage without latency spikes that waste expensive accelerators. AI infrastructure is reorganizing the networking market around throughput, power efficiency, and predictable performance under heavy east-west traffic.

Industry Impact: For enterprises building private AI stacks, new networking silicon can reduce total cost of ownership by improving utilization and cutting time-to-train. The network is no longer plumbing — it’s a core AI performance layer.

Source: Tech Startups | Cisco

Samsung Announces Galaxy Unpacked — “Next Phase of AI” with Galaxy S Series

AI Phone Era: Samsung announced on February 11 that it will host Galaxy Unpacked on February 25 in San Francisco, unveiling the new Galaxy S series built to make Galaxy AI “seamlessly integrated from the moment it’s in hand.”

Positioning: Samsung is framing this as “a new phase in the era of AI as intelligence becomes truly personal and adaptive,” signaling deeper on-device AI integration rather than cloud-dependent features.

Consumer AI Significance: With Samsung targeting 800 million AI-equipped mobile devices by end of 2026, the announcement underscores how AI is moving from cloud services to ambient, always-on device intelligence.

Source: Samsung Newsroom

🔬 AI Research & Science

University of Michigan AI System Reads Brain MRI Scans in Seconds

Medical Breakthrough: Researchers at the University of Michigan announced on February 10 an AI system that can interpret brain MRI scans in just seconds, accurately identifying a wide range of neurological conditions and determining which cases need urgent care.

Clinical Impact: The system was trained on hundreds of thousands of brain scans and can triage cases that require immediate attention, potentially transforming emergency neurological care by dramatically reducing diagnostic wait times.

Broader Context: This development arrives as both OpenAI and Anthropic push aggressively into healthcare AI with ChatGPT Health and Claude’s new health record integration features, signaling healthcare as a critical frontier for AI applications in 2026.

Source: ScienceDaily

🎬 AI Creative & Content

Runway Closes $315M Series E with Nvidia and Adobe Participation

World Model Investment: AI video generation company Runway closed a $315 million Series E led by General Atlantic, with notable participation from Nvidia, Fidelity Management & Research, AllianceBernstein, and Adobe Ventures. Total funding now stands at $860 million.

Strategic Importance: The Series E underwrites Runway’s leap from productized video generation into higher-capability simulation and representation learning — effectively transitioning from creative tools to world models that can understand and generate 3D environments.

Market Signal: Nvidia and Adobe’s involvement signals strong conviction that generative video and world models will become foundational AI infrastructure layers for entertainment, gaming, simulation, and enterprise applications.

Source: Tech Startups

📊 Market Impact Analysis

The convergence of events on February 10–11 reveals several defining dynamics for AI in 2026:

Monetization Reckoning: OpenAI’s ad launch and Anthropic’s principled opposition mark the beginning of a critical debate about how consumer AI platforms sustain themselves. The two largest AI labs are now pursuing fundamentally different business models — mass-market advertising vs. premium enterprise subscriptions.

Infrastructure Arms Race Intensifies: Over $30 billion in AI infrastructure financing was announced or confirmed in just 48 hours (Alphabet’s $20B bond, Firmus’ $10B loan, Ares’ $2.4B Vantage deal). AI has become a balance-sheet story, not just a product story.

Software Disruption Is Real — But Not Immediate: The $2 trillion software wipeout shows markets are pricing in a future where AI agents cannibalize SaaS, but analysts warn the transition will take years, not quarters.

Capital Concentration Accelerates: With OpenAI eyeing $800B+ valuation, Anthropic at $350B, and Alphabet spending $175–185B in capex, the AI industry is consolidating around a small number of massively capitalized players.

🔮 Looking Ahead

Key Events to Watch:

OpenAI’s updated GPT-5.3 chat model expected to launch this week
Samsung Galaxy Unpacked AI phone reveal on February 25
Anthropic’s $20 billion funding round finalization
OpenAI’s IPO timeline (reportedly targeting Q4 2026)
EU regulatory decisions on AI assistant distribution in messaging platforms
Ongoing software stock repricing as AI agent capabilities expand

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Last Updated: February 11, 2026, 10:00 PM CST