The US government is establishing an emerging de facto licensing framework for frontier artificial intelligence models, marking a significant policy shift in how advanced AI systems reach the market. After regulatory negotiations, Anthropic secured permission to release its Mythos-5 model exclusively to selected companies and government agencies, while OpenAI launched GPT-5.6 'Sol' with initial access restricted to approximately 20 approved organizations. Meta is facing pressure to submit its models for voluntary government review, signaling what industry observers describe as a geopolitical treaty-linked licensing regime that represents a new phase of government control over frontier AI deployment. The restrictions coincide with mounting questions about frontier model safety and capability assessment. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol has demonstrated extreme sensitivity to benchmark cheating, and both companies have limited public disclosure of true performance metrics, raising concerns about real-world alignment and long-horizon behavior. As governments tighten oversight, competition in AI compute infrastructure is accelerating simultaneously: OpenAI unveiled the Jalapeño inference ASIC with Broadcom on TSMC's 3nm process; Amazon is exploring Trainium chip sales to data-center operators; and Micron announced a strategic investment in Anthropic alongside memory supply agreements. SK Hynix has surpassed Samsung as South Korea's most valuable company, while AI chipmaker Groq confirmed a $650 million funding round. Open-source alternatives are emerging as a counterweight to the government-gated model economy. Alibaba's GLM-5.2, released under an MIT license, has shown strong long-context coding performance with rapid optimization support. Meanwhile, bipartisan US workforce initiatives backed by both parties have launched to address AI's labor market impacts, and safety researchers from DeepMind and Apollo published roadmaps on AI control and loss-of-control mitigation strategies.