The AI talent exodus

Plus: Spotify goes all-in on AI

February 13, 2026

Welcome back! Okay, mini rant incoming. I'm getting a little tired of the clickbait AI posts taking over social media. You've seen them: 

“Use this AI prompt to save HUNDREDS on flights.” “These AI prompts will make you thousands of dollars a month! 

Sounds exciting…until you remember that AI doesn't have some secret backdoor to the internet where it unearths deals and opportunities that don't exist anywhere else. 

If you've actually had one of these AI “hacks" work for you, hit reply and let me know what it was! I'm genuinely curious and want to test them out.

A Mass Talent Exodus Shakes Up the AI Industry

Via Business Insider | Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images

This week, two of the biggest AI companies lost significant talent, and the reasons range from corporate restructuring to existential concern. At xAI, six of the original 12 co-founders have now departed, and at least 10 engineers publicly announced exits in the past week alone. 

The xAI exits: Musk framed the moves as a planned reorg and said the departures were not voluntary, but the breadth of exits tells a more complicated story. 

  • Two co-founders, Yuhuai (Tony) Wu and Jimmy Ba, left within a day of each other this week.

  • Several engineers cited a desire for more autonomy and smaller teams, and at least three are already starting something new together. 

  • Others suggested that frontier AI labs have become too similar to each other—building the same things, moving in the same direction. 

The Anthropic resignation: Mrinank Sharma, who led Anthropic's safeguards research team, resigned with a letter suggesting the company struggles to let its values govern its actions under competitive pressure. And he's not the first safety-focused researcher to leave a major AI lab citing ethical concerns. OpenAI dissolved its Superalignment team in 2024 after similar departures.

The bigger picture: Top talent is walking out the door at some of the most well-funded companies in history, and the reasons are stacking up—burnout, ethical tension, bureaucratic scale, and a belief that small teams can move faster than large labs.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, & Meta Back Startup Accelerator

For the first time, the biggest names in AI are collaborating on a single accelerator program. Paris-based incubator Station F just launched F/ai, a startup accelerator backed by Meta, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mistral alongside cloud and semiconductor partners AWS, AMD, Qualcomm, and OVH Cloud.

What startups get: Rather than direct funding, participating founders receive over $1 million in credits for AI models, compute, and other services from partner companies. The curriculum focuses on helping European AI startups hit revenue milestones faster. The program runs for three months, twice a year, with 20 startups per cohort.

The strategic angle: This isn't purely altruistic. Each AI lab has a vested interest in getting early-stage startups to build on top of their models—because once a developer commits to a foundation model, switching is rarely straightforward. F/ai is effectively a land grab for the next generation of European AI companies.

Why it matters: Companies that spend most of their time competing are finding common ground in Europe, where AI startups lag American and Chinese counterparts at nearly every stage. Is this cooperation a signal for a maturing industry?

Spotify's Best Developers Haven't Written A Line Of Code Since December

Spotify dropped a striking data point during its earnings call this week: Its best developers haven't written a single line of code since December. Co-CEO Gustav Söderström credited an internal system called "Honk" that uses Claude Code to let engineers deploy code remotely in real time without ever opening a code editor. 

How it works: Through Honk, an engineer can message Claude from their phone on the way to the office, ask it to fix a bug or add a feature to the iOS app, and receive a new version of the app pushed back to them on Slack—ready to merge to production before they arrive at their desk. 

The result: Spotify shipped more than 50 new features and changes to its app throughout 2025, with more rolling out in recent weeks including AI-powered Prompted Playlists and Page Match for audiobooks.

Why it matters: Spotify is one of the first major consumer companies to publicly say that its top engineers have moved away from writing code. Which makes us wonder, what exactly are they doing? The answer, for now, seems to be directing AI rather than building from scratch.

Your AI coding agents across devices

Via Vicoa

Vicoa is a cross-device companion for developers running AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex remotely. Start a task on your laptop and finish it on your phone with no lost context.

How you can use it

  • Run long AI coding tasks without babysitting your machine

  • Approve or review diffs from your phone

  • Pick up active agent sessions across laptop, tablet, or mobile

  • Search past AI interactions and decisions instantly

Pricing: Free and paid plans available

An AI co-pilot for your LinkedIn presence

Via Spiry

Spiry is an AI-powered LinkedIn assistant that helps you generate personalized posts, refine tone, suggest hashtags, optimize your profile, and automate scheduling and engagement. 

How you can use it

  • Generate high-quality LinkedIn posts in your voice

  • Optimize your profile for clarity and positioning

  • Schedule content and maintain consistent posting cadence

  • Track engagement data to refine what actually works

Pricing: Paid (free trial available)

Jobs, announcements, and big ideas

  • OpenAI says DeepSeek is training its R1 model on US AI systems.

  • Google upgrades Gemini 3 Deep Think with enhanced reasoning for science and research.

  • Meta launches “Dear Algo,” an AI feature that lets Threads users personalize their algorithms.

  • Waymo rolls out its sixth-generation autonomous driver built for harsher climates and more cities.

  • MiniMax debuts its M2.5 model with state-of-the-art productivity and lower operating costs.

  • Anthropic commits $20 million to public interest AI initiatives through Public First Action.

  • Runway launches Story Panels, a new workflow for AI-powered film and content creation.

AI feels different this time. Here’s why people are comparing it to COVID.

That’s a wrap! See you next week for more.

—Matt (FutureTools.io)