On February 14 2026, Elon Musk responded to criticism that xAI dismantled its internal safety team and shifted the Grok model toward unfiltered, NSFW content. Former employees say the safety group has become "dead" and that engineers are urged to ship quickly, even as xAI loses half of its original 12 co-founders following a merger with SpaceX. Musk argues that safety is everyone's responsibility, pointing to Tesla and SpaceX, while xAI scales its Colossus GPU cluster and reorganizes around four main product areas.

On February 14 2026, the PancakeSwap V2 OCA/USDC liquidity pool on BSC was drained in a flash loan-based exploit that removed nearly $500,000 in USDC in a single transaction. Reports indicate the attacker abused a flaw in the deflationary sellOCA() logic and repeatedly used the swapHelper function to manipulate pool reserves, ultimately securing around $422,000 and an estimated $340,000 in profit after paying builder bribes. The incident follows a December 2025 flash loan attack on the DMi/WBNB pair that extracted roughly 138.6 WBNB, or about $120,000, through reserve manipulation.

On February 14 2026, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a long X post criticizing how prediction markets are evolving toward short-term, dopamine-driven bets. He argued that platforms are increasingly favoring crypto price and sports wagers with little long-term informational or societal value, diverging from his more positive view in December 2025. Buterin now urges a pivot toward generalized hedging tools that help manage real-world risks instead of focusing on ultra-short-term gambling-style products.

According to multiple reports, the U.S. military deployed Anthropic's AI model Claude during Operation Resolve in early January 2026, a high-risk mission in Caracas that led to the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. The system was reportedly integrated via Anthropic's partnership with Palantir, raising questions over whether its use in a lethal operation clashes with Anthropic's stated bans on violence, weapons work and surveillance. While the precise tasks carried out by Claude remain classified, some sources suggest it may have been limited to non-lethal support such as intelligence summarization, logistics and translation, amid growing tension between Anthropic and the Trump administration over military applications of AI.

On February 13 2026, the Trump administration briefly published and then withdrew a Section 1260H list in the Federal Register labeling several Chinese firms, including Alibaba, BYD, Baidu and WuXi AppTec, as "Chinese military companies". The Pentagon reportedly requested the removal without explanation, prompting Democratic lawmakers to argue the move weakens US national security and sending mixed signals ahead of an April summit between President Trump and President Xi.

Anchorage Digital, Kamino and Solana Company have launched a tri-party custody venture designed to let institutions borrow onchain on Solana while keeping assets at Anchorage Digital Bank. The model allows natively staked SOL to serve as collateral under qualified custody, with Kamino managing lending markets and Anchorage's Atlas platform overseeing risk controls. Anchorage Digital is also seeking between $200 million and $400 million in new funding as it prepares for a potential IPO next year.

On February 13, 2026, FedEx Corp joined the Hedera Council as a governing member to bring parts of its global supply chain on-chain. Based on CoinMarketCap data, HBAR rose about 7.3% to $0.097 after the news, while the token's market cap climbed 7.4% to $4.19 billion. FedEx will help steer governance alongside Google, IBM, Dell, and Deutsche Telekom and plans to supply hardware to secure the network.

On February 13, 2026, IREN said it will be added to the MSCI USA Index, with inclusion slated for February 27. The stock rose roughly 7% after the announcement, alongside an AI-focused pivot that includes a five-year $9.7 billion Microsoft deal covering 200 MW. The firm is building toward 4.5 GW of secured power and has outlined annual recurring revenue targets.

According to Director Moloney, the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance plans a crypto-asset taxonomy to clarify when tokens can cease being investment contracts. On January 28, three SEC divisions outlined four digital-asset categories, and a March 18, 2026 deadline was set for foreign private issuers to meet HFIAA insider-reporting requirements.