Welcome back, AI enthusiasts!
In today’s Daily Report:
🚀 OpenAI’s $100 Billion Record-Breaking Funding Round
✨ Bringing AI to Life, Literally.
📍AI Tier Tracker
🛠Trending Tools
🥪Brief Bites
💰Funding Frontlines
💼Who’s Hiring?
Read Time: 3 minutes
🗞RECENT NEWS
OPENAI
🚀 OpenAI’s $100 Billion Record-Breaking Funding Round
Image Source: Canva’s AI Image Generators/Magic Media and AI Image Upscaler
OpenAI’s reportedly finalizing a $100 billion Series G funding round at an $850 billion post-money valuation.
Key Details:
But beneath this explosive growth lies a revenue rocket that’s fueled by burning cash. OpenAI’s losing money on Pro Plans and is projected to burn through more than $115 billion by 2029, with roughly 85% of all capital being funneled into compute costs. Although 800 million people rely on ChatGPT every week, less than 5% upgrade to a paid tier.
There’s a HUGE mismatch between current earnings and planned spending, meaning OpenAI must dramatically scale revenue. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar hinted that OpenAI could IPO as early as the second half of 2026. “Going public is the most likely path for us, given the capital needs we have.”
Why It’s Important:
That’s why OpenAI officially started running ads in the U.S. within ChatGPT, specifically for the “Free” tier and the new “Go” tier. It’s all about pursuing revenue-maximizing paths to monetize the other 95%.
OpenAI’s new CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, spent over a decade at Facebook, eventually becoming the Head of the Facebook App. Many believe she’s responsible for the “Meta-fication” of ChatGPT, prioritizing revenue over purity of experience.
TAVUS
✨ Bringing AI to Life, Literally.
Image Source: Reve Image/AI Image Generator and Creative Tool
Tavus, the human computing company developing emotionally intelligent AI, recently introduced an upgraded Conversational Video Interface (CVI).
Key Details:
CVI essentially equips AI with a virtual human-like body that mirrors lifelike mannerisms, including hand gestures and facial expressions, to create incredible real-time conversational video experiences that bridge the gap between humans and machines.
It relies on three native multimodal AI models to bring AI to life:
🔴 Raven-1: Tracks body language to interpret non-verbal cues like eye contact or posture shifts.
🟠 Sparrow-1: Handles conversational timing to know exactly when to listen, pause, or respond.
🟡 Phoenix-4: Generates micro-expressions to ensure every smile, frown, or blink feels genuine and authentic.
CVI empowers AI to move, speak, and pause exactly like a human. Our brains are hard-wired to respond to these specific human patterns. As a result, we subconsciously shift into social mode, often forgetting that we’re even talking to a machine.
Why It’s Important:
Are we pushing past the “Uncanny Valley”: the eerie feeling you get when AI-generated content looks almost, but not quite, human? We’re entering a phase where synthetic characters and artificial voices feel natural enough to blend in.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan envisions “digital doubles” shortening the workweek. The average U.S. employee spends about 11.3 hours per workweek in meetings, accounting for roughly 28% of their billable time. More importantly, around 72% of meetings are seen as a waste of time.
THE STOCK MARKET
📍AI Tier Tracker
TIER 0: ENERGY American Superconductor Corp. |
|---|
TIER 1: SILICON Micron Technology, Inc. |
TIER 2: DATA CENTERS Equinix, Inc. |
TIER 3: AI MODELS Intuit Inc. |
TIER 4: SOFTWARE STACK Elastic N.V. |
TIER 5: AI AGENTS Workday, Inc. |
🔔CLOSING BELL: As of 2/19/2026 market close.
💡STOCK SPOTLIGHT: Each tier showcases a new stock every day.
🛠TRENDING TOOLS
📈GoAI is your personal AI investment analyst for stocks.
⚡️WebZum is the world’s fastest way to get a website live.
🌾Granola turns raw meeting notes into refined to-do lists.
🏝️Lindy is the AI-powered assistant that puts life on autopilot.
🪧AdScriptly offers AI ad optimization for predictable revenue.
🧰 Browse our Always Up-To-Date AI Toolkit.
🥪BRIEF BITES
Google unveiled “Lyria 3,” an advanced music generation model that converts text or images into 30-second musical masterpieces with custom cover art.
OpenAI acqui-hired “Nerve,” which specializes in helping AI reason over company context to proactively track an enterprise’s mission-critical tasks.
Cops are buying “GeoSpy,” a visual intelligence platform that analyzes pixels to find any photo’s location, pinpointing suspects to streamline criminal cases.
Reddit is testing a “New Shopping Product Experience in Search,” integrating AI-powered product carousels into search results with direct where-to-buy links.
💰FUNDING FRONTLINES
Selector closed a $32M Series B for AI-infused network observability.
Cogent Security raised a $42M Series A to find and fix security risks.
Vestwell landed a $385M Series E to power the future of savings.
💼WHO’S HIRING?
📒FINAL NOTE
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