📋 Quick Takeaways

• Unprecedented AI safety exodus: High-profile departures hit OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI within days — researchers warn companies are “moving too fast”
• OpenAI fires VP who opposed ChatGPT “adult mode”; researcher Zoë Hitzig quits over advertising in NYT op-ed
• Half of xAI’s 12 co-founders have now left Elon Musk’s AI company amid Grok deepfake controversy and reorganization
• VCs break taboo: Sequoia and Altimeter invest in both OpenAI and Anthropic simultaneously as $20B+ rounds close
• DeepSeek V4 expected mid-February with 1T parameters, reportedly outperforming Claude and GPT on coding benchmarks
• Trump administration plans chip tariff exemptions for Amazon, Google, and Microsoft tied to TSMC’s $165B US investment
• Microsoft explores superconducting power cables to solve AI data center energy bottleneck
• MiniMax M2.5 launches claiming parity with Claude Opus 4.6 in coding and agentic tasks

🛡️ AI Safety & Talent Exodus

Wave of AI Safety Departures Rocks the Industry

An extraordinary cluster of high-profile resignations and firings has swept across the AI industry within a matter of days, raising urgent questions about the tension between rapid commercialization and responsible AI development.