GenAI Daily - February 22, 2026: ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 Sparks Hollywood Backlash, Record AI Funding Surge, Enterprise Partnerships Scale Up
Top Story
ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 Forces Copyright Reckoning as AI Video Quality Leaps Forward
ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 video generation model, launched February 12, has created cinematic videos of celebrities in absurd situations that have gone viral online, with the new model being among the most advanced of its kind and quickly drawing praise for its ease of use and realistic nature of videos it can generate in minutes.
The tool can create
15-second videos from text prompts, similar to OpenAI's Sora, but quickly drew criticism for an apparent lack of guardrails around the ability to create videos using the likeness of real people, as well as studios' intellectual property.
The Motion Picture Association's CEO Charles Rivkin condemned ByteDance for engaging in "unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale," stating that "by launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs."
Disney sent ByteDance a cease and desist letter on February 13, alleging the model had been trained with Disney works without compensation, while Paramount accused the company of "blatant infringement" of properties including Star Trek, South Park, and Dora the Explorer.
After the outcry, ByteDance said in a statement that it respects intellectual property rights and will strengthen safeguards against the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likenesses on its platform, though it did not specify how.
The controversy highlights the rapid advancement of AI video generation and the increasing tension between technological capability and intellectual property protection.
Why it matters: Enterprise teams need to understand both the technological possibilities and legal risks of advanced AI video generation as these tools become commercially available and integrated into business workflows.
Key Developments
Record AI Funding Frenzy Shows No Signs of Slowing
Anthropic raised $30 billion in Series G funding at a $380 billion valuation, marking the second-largest venture deal of all time, underscoring explosive investor appetite for frontier AI despite profitability concerns, as competing startups race to scale infrastructure and enterprise capabilities.
OpenAI is close to finalizing a funding round that could bring in more than $100 billion, with the overall valuation potentially exceeding $850 billion as the ChatGPT maker prepares to spend trillions in infrastructure investment.
The funding surge extends beyond the AI giants:
Nearly 20 U.S.-based AI startups have raised mega-rounds of $100 million or more in 2026's first two months, suggesting another record-breaking year for AI investment following 2025's $76 billion in mega-round funding.
Impact: The massive capital inflows signal continued confidence in AI's enterprise potential but also indicate rising infrastructure costs and competitive pressure among vendors.
OpenAI Launches Frontier Platform for Enterprise AI Agent Management
OpenAI launched Frontier, an end-to-end platform designed for enterprises to build, deploy, and manage AI agents, addressing the gap between what models can do and what teams can actually deploy as enterprises feel pressure to move agents past early pilots into real work.
The platform was designed to work like how enterprises scale people, with Frontier connecting siloed data warehouses, CRM systems, and internal applications to give AI coworkers shared business context so they understand how information flows and where decisions happen.
Early results include a major manufacturer reducing production optimization work from six weeks to one day, and a global investment company deploying agents across the sales process to free up over 90% more time for salespeople to spend with customers.
(OpenAI)
Impact: Enterprises now have infrastructure tools specifically designed for agent management, potentially accelerating the move from AI pilots to production deployments.
Major Enterprise AI Partnerships Reshape Market Dynamics
Infosys announced a strategic collaboration with Anthropic on February 17 to develop enterprise AI solutions across telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing, and software development, starting with a dedicated Anthropic Center of Excellence.
Snowflake and OpenAI entered a $200 million multi-year partnership bringing OpenAI frontier intelligence directly into Snowflake, enabling enterprise customers to build AI agents and generate insights directly from their data.
The trend shows enterprises will continue striking partnerships with multiple AI companies because each offers large language models with varying strengths and weaknesses, similar to how ride-hail users swap between services based on immediate needs.
Impact: Multi-vendor AI strategies are becoming the norm as enterprises hedge their bets and avoid vendor lock-in while accessing specialized capabilities.
Product Launches
- Wizard AI Shopping Agent:
Marc Lore's commerce company launched its AI Shopping Agent with native checkout integration with Best Buy, bringing smarter product discovery and trusted recommendations in one streamlined experience for the nation's largest electronics specialty retailer.
(Wizard)
- Alibaba 3D Restaurant Showcases:
Alibaba's mapping unit Amap launched an AI-driven service helping restaurants create immersive 3D digital showcases using the "Tongyi Wanxiang" visual generative model, allowing merchants to generate high-quality 3D tours from standard photos or videos.
(Source)
- Fujitsu AI Supply Chain Platform:
Fujitsu announced the global release of a new AI-powered platform designed to provide real-time resilience for complex supply chains on February 17.
(Source)
Funding & Deals
- Anthropic - $30B Series G:
The AI research company closed funding at a $380 billion post-money valuation, more than double what it was worth in September, driven by enterprise adoption of its Claude coding and productivity tools.
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Led by Singapore's GIC and Coatue (CNBC)
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ElevenLabs - $500M Series D:
The voice AI company raised funding in a round led by Sequoia that valued the company at $11 billion, focusing on realistic text-to-speech and voice synthesis for enterprise applications.
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Led by Sequoia (TechCrunch)
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Runway - $315M Series E:
The media-generation platform raised funding that valued the company at $5.3 billion, with the round led by General Atlantic and participation from Nvidia, Fidelity, and Felicis.
- Led by General Atlantic (TechCrunch)
Related reading: Check out this week's [Deep Insights analysis] for strategic context on these developments.
