Feb 10, 2026 · 24-Hour AI Briefing: Salesforce Cuts Again, Waymo Locks 50K Robotaxi Vehicles, Alibaba Open-Sources the RynnBrain Embodied Stack
In the last 24 hours, three updates highlight what “AI delivery” looks like at scale: enterprise software shifts from vision marketing to monetization discipline; autonomy moves from pilots to supply-chain certainty; and embodied intelligence accelerates via open-source infrastructure.
1. Salesforce launches a new layoff round: under 1,000 roles, primarily in marketing, product, and data
Commentary:
This follows the early-2025 high-profile cut of ~4,000 customer support roles, after leadership claimed AI could take on “half the workload.” Reality has been messier—AI still struggles with complex customer issues and escalations.
Cutting marketing and product roles now suggests Salesforce is trimming non-core functions that expanded to support an “AI-everywhere” narrative, refocusing on the CRM fundamentals: customer success and revenue execution.
Notably, Salesforce is still hiring aggressively for AI product sales roles. That signals a strategic pivot from “selling the AI story” to “selling AI features as billable value.”
The interesting twist is data being included in the cuts. That could indicate consolidation of data governance/platform work into core product lines, overlap reduction, or a shift toward tighter, centralized data strategy—rather than broad data-team expansion. Overall, Salesforce looks less aggressive than in 2025: is it slowing down, or preparing a more systematic productization push?
2. Hyundai plans to supply 50,000 IONIQ 5 autonomous vehicles to Google-backed Waymo by 2028; ~$2.5B contract, roughly $50,000 per vehicle
Commentary:
Waymo is pushing autonomy from “technology validation” into “scalable fleet supply,” and Hyundai is locking in a mass-production Robotaxi channel.
For Hyundai, this deal signals a role shift: from OEM to hardware infrastructure provider for an autonomous mobility platform. Production at the new HMGMA plant in Georgia also improves supply-chain resilience and could benefit from U.S. domestic EV manufacturing incentives, strengthening cost and policy positioning.
Waymo’s scaling bottlenecks include supply-chain coordination and operational complexity. Locking 50K vehicles increases delivery certainty—this is the kind of move that marks the transition from lab to street at industrial scale.
3. Alibaba DAMO Academy releases the RynnBrain embodied foundation stack and open-sources seven models, including a 30B MoE
Commentary:
RynnBrain isn’t positioned as a single LLM, but as a modular embodied framework: RynnVLA-001-7B (Vision-Language-Action), RynnEC (video multimodal “world understanding” for embodied cognition), and RynnRCP (a robot context protocol that brings MCP-style ideas into robotics).
The implication is an open-source “base layer” aiming at spatiotemporal memory, spatial reasoning, and more human-like action execution—not just a standalone model drop.
Alibaba’s full open-source approach is a deliberate ecosystem play. After Qwen’s momentum, this looks like a repeatable pattern: open models → community adoption → application diffusion → strategic leverage.
Most important AI events in the last 72 hours: