Major year-end summaries of 2025 reveal AI as one of the most recurring themes in global news, intersecting geopolitics, economics, and culture—highlighting AI’s pervasive influence on societal narratives and business strategies. Metrics released in late 2025 indicate that platforms like ChatGPT are reaching record worldwide user bases, reflecting the ongoing mainstream adoption of AI across both consumer and professional segments—underscoring the accelerating pace of digital transformation driven by AI.
As of late 2025, there are an estimated 700 to 800 million weekly active users, sending around 18 billion messages each week. Over 92% of Fortune 500 companies have integrated ChatGPT into their operating processes.
Just in the last month alone, the developments are noteworthy. I have picked a few to ensure you are alert to crucial developments, further fast-forwarding the AI world. What is clear in my mind is as humans we are not in control of what is unfolding as it’s happening so fast around the world – the implications will be unprecedented as the power of AI redefines human potential in ways we have yet to fully understand, and increasingly research is confirming we may never be in control – unless we start to lead more responsibly. What I do know is that in our current world, we are losing our ability to know what is real or unreal. The internet is already becoming a “slop pool of wrong information,” with over 50% of the content being AI-generated, and over 75% of AI-generated content is likely inaccurate. These realities are driving us to think harder about how we ensure our online research methods are using trusted and verified sources.
In the past week, University Professor, Yoshua Bengio, told the Guardian that “AI models were now showing signs of self-preservation, the capacity to evade guardrails and to inflict harm on humans on purpose. Without controls, he said, AI systems will be free to operate like extra hostile terrestrials.”
This really caught my attention as I have been advocating for improving our international regulations and legal frameworks, and for board directors and CEOs to get engaged and lead more responsibly.
We need to ensure the risks of AI are being taken into more thoughtful consideration as CEOs advance AI into their corporate cultures. It is crucial that they deeply understand the types of AI methods being applied and ensure that the AI use cases have guardrails where “humans are in the loop” and “humans are always maintaining control and managing risks.”
Below are just a few of the developments in the past few months that are important.
AI POLICY
On December 11, President Trump signed a new executive order, called “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” touting a “national [AI] policy” free of “cumbersome” state AI regulation. The EO notes that a “patchwork” of state AI laws makes compliance difficult, and it takes aim at those that embed “ideological bias” or regulate beyond state borders (potentially implicating Colorado, California, etc.). While a national AI policy is the priority, it will require Congressional action. The EO specifies several tasks on a more immediate timeline, including:
- Creation of an AI Litigation Task Force. Within 30 days of the EO, a task force will be created to challenge state AI laws inconsistent with the policy of “global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI.”
- Evaluation of State AI Laws.Within 90 days of the EO, the Secretary of Commerce will publish an evaluation identifying “onerous” state AI laws.
- Federal Funding. Within 90 days of the EO, the administration will seek to restrict funding under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, as well as discretionary grants, to target states with burdensome AI laws.
- Standards for AI Development and Use. Within 90 days of the EO, the Federal Trade Commission will issue a policy statement applying the ban on unfair and deceptive acts to AI models. Within 90 days of the published evaluation of state AI laws, the Federal Communications Commission will initiate a proceeding to determine whether to adopt a federal reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that preempts state laws.
- Legislative Recommendations. The EO directs key advisors to recommend legislation for a uniform federal AI framework preempting state AI laws.
POINT OF VIEW (POV)
More than 38 USA democratic states took a proactive position to rally to protect citizens and consumers with increased AI security, privacy, and safety legislation. There are currently over 186 laws enacted across the USA since 2024. Common areas of legislation include:
- Deep fakes and digital replicas – over 45 states have laws now addressing political deepfakes or digital identity theft.
- Algorithmic discrimination: Several states, including CA, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, NY, Texas, and Virginia, have laws addressing the use of AI in consequential decisions impacting employment, healthcare, and insurance to prevent Algorithmic bias in AI models (data sets).
- Many states have put in legislation requiring more transparency, explainability, and accountability in AI Practices
The leadership of the diverse USA states advanced the requirement for a broader set of AI legislation policies to govern all USA states on AI practices, which is crucial to simplify policy formulation and legislation. However, the Federal Government EO will need to recognize the risks of AI in areas such as (1-2) above, which are basic table stakes in protecting human rights, preserving privacy, and safety; otherwise, the challenges will continue for some time. The USA federal government must balance innovation and human safety and not be so pro-innovation that there are no guardrails established. This will take many years to align to a common framework that is balanced and harmonized.
Continued Global AI Safety & Risk Focus
The ongoing International AI Safety Report 2025 (Second Key Update) also highlights emerging challenges in AI risk management and the deployment of enhanced technical safeguards and governance frameworks by researchers and institutions around the world.
RECENT AI ACQUISITIONS
On Dec 30th, closing out 2025, Meta Platforms announced the acquisition of Singapore‑based AI startup Manus for over $2 billion, a major move aimed at strengthening its AI capabilities—especially autonomous agentic systems—and integrating them into products like Meta AI and WhatsApp. The deal is considered a strategic move to bolster Meta’s “agentic AI” capabilities, and the deal value is reportedly valued at over $2 billion, though some estimates, including employee retention packages, place it near $2.5 billion. Meta plans to integrate Manus’s autonomous agent technology—capable of tasks like data analysis, travel planning, and coding—into Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its Meta AI assistant.
POV: This deal is significant as it signals intensified competition in owning next‑gen AI foundations and personal AI agent tech. Meta is positioning the tool as a way for small and medium-sized businesses to automate complex workflows, marking one of its first direct revenue-generating AI product plays.
On Dec 29th, SoftBank strengthens AI Infrastructure with a strategic acquisition to buy infrastructure investor DigitalBridge for $4 billion to support its AI ambitions, particularly in data centers and connectivity needed for large‑scale AI compute growth. The Japanese conglomerate said it is doubling down on building the data centers, connectivity, and power needed to support AI at a global scale. “As AI transforms industries worldwide, we need more compute, connectivity, power, and scalable infrastructure,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group.
POV: This transaction underscores the importance of physical infrastructure in scaling AI globally. The DigitalBridge deal also aligns with SoftBank’s growing focus on what it calls “physical AI,” as the company ramps up investments in the real-world infrastructure — from data centers to robotics — needed to integrate AI into everyday life.
COMPETITION INTENSIFIES – HARD TO KEEP TRACK ANYMORE
Competitive Shifts: Google Surges Past OpenAI in 2025 AI Race – Analysis shows Google making strong strategic gains against OpenAI in 2025, driven by aggressive product development and deep integration of its AI stack into search, cloud, and enterprise offerings—reshaping AI market dynamics among global tech giants. Google’s Gemini 3 large language model family (including Pro, Flash, and DeepThink variants) has rolled out additional capabilities with extended reasoning, multimodal understanding, and software development tools (like Antigravity), underpinning expanded use across search and developer workflows
POV: Competition between Google and OpenAI is a weekly battle for dominance – The risks are high as the Magnificent 7 (Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla) and now with ML Chat Giants (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc) – we have a technology industry that is primed to constantly be challenging for dominance. At the same time, we have China advancing in radically lower-cost methods that could send the entire NA AI industry into a very dark period. It’s a fierce battle – and with valuations being insanely high, will a crash be forthcoming? There are enough cracks to ensure you are balancing your portfolios wisely. Follow the AI Leader performance boards – good source – here.
SUMMARY – WHY THESE DEVELOPMENTS MATTER TO EXECUTIVES
Strategic Competition: Acquisitions like Manus and infrastructure deals like SoftBank’s signal a shift in competitive positioning among global AI players, expanding their AI investments to infrastructure and agentic workflow enablements.
Policy & Regulation: The U.S. national AI framework highlights that federal government action is accelerating on AI governance, which can materially impact compliance and market access for global businesses – the aggressiveness of the USA federal government will spur more unrest in formulating an alignment policy position – and the threat to pull federal government funding without aligning to a unified federal position does not create harmonious win win drum beats.
Safety & Risk Governance: International safety assessments and governance frameworks continue to evolve, underscoring that risk management must be integrated into enterprise AI strategy as an imperative – as waiting for government legislation that is purposeful and guarding citizens and customers may well have to come from boards and CEO’s, and increasingly our regulators.
Article Research Sources:
“Softbank Buys Digital Bridge” Business Insider
“Meta’s acquisition of Manus.” MarketWatch
“Google Surges Past OpenAI in 2025” – Puck
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