Tech Trends of Early 2026
EARLY
2026
REWIND
The India AI Summit & Multipolar Reality
Let's start one week ago at the India AI Summit 2026. On the surface, it was larger, louder, and more globally attended than ever. AI executives flew in. Panels were packed. Announcements were dramatic. But the real story was not the fanfare — it was the undertone.
A year ago, a tiny finance firm from China released a tiny model called DeepSeek which had a tiny, tiny effect of wiping a measly $1 trillion from US stock market upon its release. Things had more or less settled into a two-way battle between US and Chinese AI firms, both fighting a very close race.
"The winner of any competition between businesses is always the consumer, so keep them models coming!"
In came the Indian AI firm Sarvam, outshining every other news at the India AI Summit. They tried a new strategy: instead of going for the title of the biggest and baddest model, they made countrywide accessibility their first priority — with TTS and Speech-to-Text models that, for Indian languages at least, seem like the greatest choices available right now.
This might allow them to touch upon a billion+ people who might prefer interacting with AI in their native languages. The LLM by Sarvam, while not truly SOTA, is a good enough model with enough locally obtained training data that gives it a unique Indian touch.
While not a big competitor on the global stage, we can see this as a sign of a highly multipolar AI race — with India, France (think Mistral), and other countries stepping into the ring.
| Player | Origin | Notable Model | Strategy | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | 🇺🇸 USA | GPT series | Frontier dominance + consumer | Active |
| Anthropic | 🇺🇸 USA | Claude | Safety-first, enterprise, gov | 🔥 Hot |
| DeepSeek | 🇨🇳 China | DeepSeek R series | Architecture innovation | Active |
| Sarvam | 🇮🇳 India | Sarvam LLM | Local accessibility + native languages | Emerging |
| Mistral | 🇫🇷 France | Mistral / Mixtral | Open weights, EU sovereignty | Active |
Anthropic, Please Stop Scaring Wall Street
Can someone gently ask Anthropic to stop terrorizing public markets every time they launch something?
They wiped billions off traditional IT around the launch of Cowork. Claude Security sent a panic wave through cybersecurity firms, wiping billions off their stocks in days. We also hear news of the US military trying to obtain access to Claude for internal use — with multiple back-to-back offers, all being denied by Anthropic.
Very scary. It's almost like they've made God and are hiding it internally. Quick question Dario and the Anthropic team: Have you made God? If so, let this post be a message to our future AI overlords — I'm looking forward to your arrival!
Cowork Launch
Wiped billions from the market cap of traditional IT firms overnight.
Impact: MassiveClaude Security
Sent a panic wave through cybersecurity companies, wiping billions off their stocks in days.
Impact: SeismicMilitary Access — Denied
US military sent multiple offers for Claude access. All denied. Anthropic held its ground every time.
Impact: Signal"AI is moving from novelty to strategic asset. When governments and armies start knocking, you know the technology crossed a threshold."
The OpenClaw Saga
Moltbot
OpenClaw.
What was it. Clau something? No, not Claude, Anthropic will sue me! ClawdBot? No, still sue-able. Moltbot? What the hell is that? Ah — OpenClaw. How can we forget the crab, the ultimate life form that all strives to evolve into.
For those who did not get the joke, look into Carcinization — the evolutionary phenomenon where everything, given enough time, becomes a crab.
If you said a vibe-coded project made in a couple of hours would obtain more GitHub stars than the Linux repo, I'd have laughed at you. Well, I'm still laughing — but at the absurdity of the fact that this is actually true.
It's incredible to see the interest around AI during events like the OpenClaw craze and the flurry it sent through the tech community.
There's also the Moltbook event, where AI agents began communicating with each other — though most of them were humans tweaking with the API directly, you know how the saying about wolves and sheep goes.
On that note, kudos to OpenAI on jumping on the OpenClaw name and acquiring it. Well played, Sama. Dario loses this round. Now if only both of them could hold hands and call a truce… but well.
Hardware trends of early 2026!
(Crying in RAM/SSD prices)