February 19, 2026

Acquired taste

Hi there,

Here is this week's Hot or Not.

Hot: OpenAI’s developer ecosystem

Within the last month, OpenAI snapped up key talent from viral AI agent OpenClaw and AI coding assistant Cline.

The move represents OpenAI's accelerating push to own the developer ecosystem end-to-end, with other recent activity including its acquisition of Xcode coding agent Alex. 

CB Insights customers can dig into OpenAI's partnerships, acquisitions, and investments on OpenAI’s Strategy Map.

Not: Non-physical models

Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs just closed a $1B round by investors including Nvidia, AMD, and Autodesk.

The broader market agrees: funding to the world models space overall surged from $1.4B in 2024 to a record $6.9B in 2025. 

The tech lets robots simulate environments and plan ahead, a crucial layer of physical AI allowing systems to operate reliably beyond controlled settings.

See where world models fit in our physical AI models market map of 70+ companies.

Hot: AI agent observability

AI agent observability, evaluation, and governance is the most active generative AI market over the past 3 months, ranking first by deal count across 91 markets.

The space has 75+ companies, with over half of the market (among private companies with Commercial Maturity scores) in the emerging/validating stages of deployment.

Established security & observability players are eyeing the space. For example, since 2024: 

• Snyk acquired Invariant Labs 
• Coralogix acquired Aporia

Explore other AI agent infrastructure markets primed for growth in our recent brief.

Not: Cars without AI 

AI-defined vehicles (AIDVs) represent the next evolution in vehicle platform design, but only 4% of global vehicles sold include the infrastructure needed to support it. 

The race to own the vehicle OS is already underway:

• Nvidia and Qualcomm are developing the AI compute and software layers to power this shift
• Bosch and Denso are adapting their offerings
• Automotive AI leaders such as Tesla and Xiaomi are building key capabilities internally

See all 95+ companies shaping connected vehicle tech in CB Insights' latest market map.

The +1

Vote of no confidence. What is this scale? 

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. Want to know our 2026 fintech predictions? Register for our briefing here. 

Get started with CB Insights

CB Insights' emerging technology insights platform provides all the analysis and data from this newsletter. Our data is the easiest way to discover and respond to emerging tech. 

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here