On February 9, 2026, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared updated views on how Ethereum could become an economic infrastructure for AGI-related activity, enabling autonomous agents to transact and coordinate. He highlighted ERC-8004, zero-knowledge payments, and local LLM tooling as ways to support trust-minimized AI interactions, while also criticizing Solana's Anatoly Yakovenko for what he called an overly narrow focus on AGI. Buterin further argued that Ethereum and AGI should be guided by aligned philosophical principles, emphasizing human empowerment, security, and practical markets and governance reforms.

In a recent exchange on X, Elon Musk rejected allegations that U.S. government support underpins Tesla and SpaceX, asserting such assistance represents about 1% of their value. He responded to a user who alleged subsidies and contracts drive his success, as SpaceX also referenced $739 million in Pentagon launch awards and a potential mid‑2026 IPO.

Over the weekend, ByteDance rolled out its Seedance 2.0 video-generation tool to limited users on the Jimeng AI platform, triggering sharp gains of up to 20% for related Chinese media stocks. Alibaba Cloud developers also filed pull requests for the new multimodal Qwen-3.5 open-model family, featuring 9 billion and 35 billion parameter versions. Together these launches underscore intensifying competition among Chinese tech firms to release advanced AI products before the 2026 Lunar New Year.

On 9 February 2026 at 16:38, developers and investors argued that Ethereum is being positioned as the base trust layer for AI agents, prioritizing neutrality over raw speed. Proponents highlight ERC-8004 and layer‑2s like Arbitrum, Base, Scroll and Linea to extend throughput while anchoring settlement on Ethereum.

Cango sold 4,451 BTC for net proceeds of about $305 million to partially repay a bitcoin-collateralized loan and reinforce its balance sheet. The company said the weekend sale, settled in USDT and announced on Monday, will also support its strategic expansion into AI compute infrastructure while it continues its bitcoin mining operations.

On February 9, 2026, the European Commission said it has issued a statement of objections to Meta over WhatsApp’s AI access policies and may impose interim measures amid a dominance probe. The dispute centers on a January policy and a January 15 rollout prioritizing Meta AI Assistant, which regulators claim could harm rivals. Meta disputes the case.

Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG) on Feb. 9, 2026 released a shareholder letter detailing a shift from global Bitcoin mining to building an AI compute infrastructure platform. The company highlighted milestones including 50 EH/s of on‑rack machines and 50 MW of energy capacity, and outlined a three‑phase roadmap plus a new Dallas subsidiary to accelerate execution. It also noted a treasury adjustment to cut leverage and fund expansion.

On February 8, 2026, the autonomous AI agent Owockibot was taken offline after it exposed the private keys to its hot wallet, leading to losses of around $2,100. The bot, created by the Gitcoin team and funded with a small crypto treasury, had been granted both internet access and on-chain control before the incident. Soon after its launch, the Owockibot token traded on Uniswap V4 via the Base network but quickly slumped to new lows, raising concerns that AI-powered, tokenized agents can still create significant risks for users.