Techmeme
October 18, 2026, 5:15 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
James Titcomb / Telegraph:
Microsoft cancels its deal to be the anchor tenant and rent 23K Nvidia AI chips at Nscale's Essex, UK, data center, which may not get grid power until the 2030s  —  US tech giant pulls the plug on Nscale deal in threat to multibillion-dollar listing  —  Microsoft has pulled …
Anthropic:
Anthropic says it's committing 5% of its shares to a Public Benefit Fund, for a total of ~20% with co-founder and staff pledges, plus 2% per 50% valuation rise  —  Today, we're committing a portion of Anthropic's shares to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, a new entity with a structure that increases the stake as the company grows.
Steven Zeitchik / The Hollywood Reporter:
Bleecker Street says TikTok suspended the Musk documentary account for “political policy” violations and called the suspension “permanent”; Bleecker's appealing  —  Move comes just as Alex Gibney doc film expands to nearly 500 screens.  Distributor Bleecker Street says it is appealing.
New York Times:
AI debt worries mount as CoreWeave's bond yield tops 15%, insuring SoftBank debt gets pricier, and some Oracle debt trades near 80 to 90 cents on the dollar  —  Debt trouble at CoreWeave, Oracle and SoftBank raises questions about whether there are broader problems with the data center build-out.
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Sources: Anthropic is consulting law firms on deal negotiation tactics as it develops AI agents to negotiate on humans' behalf and interact with AI counterparts  —  Tech companies are being forced to confront the rules of negotiation when machines act on humans' behalf
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
DeepSeek releases V4.1-Flash-1017, an update it says offers “stronger benchmark performance, faster task completion, and shorter outputs” than its predecessor  —  DeepSeek released an update of its AI model this weekend that it says is faster and leaner, ramping …
Giovanni Colantonio / Polygon:
An interview with Apple's new VP of the App Store, Carson Oliver, on Apple's gaming vision, Apple Arcade, providing tools for indie game developers, and more  —  Back when Apple Arcade launched in 2019, there was a resounding belief among gamers that the mobile gaming service wasn't long for this world.
Joanna Stern / The New Things:
An interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the Nvidia RTX Spark-powered Surface Laptop Ultra, plans to make Windows a safer OS to run AI agents, and more  —  My exclusive interview with Satya Nadella on the new Surface Laptop Ultra and Microsoft's plan to make Windows safer for AI agents
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Sponsor Post
Chase DiBenedetto / Mashable:
MapQuest adds a Surveillance Layer to its mobile app showing license plate readers and cameras from 10+ companies including Flock, using OpenStreetMap data  —  MapQuest will not go gentle into that good night.  —  The navigation software — which debuted in 1996 and was later eclipsed …
Bloomberg:
Filing: Disney agreed to hire 60+ staff from Character.AI and pay them ~$180M over three years, plus $30M for retention awards; a bankruptcy judge must approve  —  More than 60 workers at Character.AI are being offered a lifeline from the media giant … Soft Landing  —  Layoffs are common in bankruptcy.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
What will the next generation of developers do when AI writes the code?  —  Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon are betting that the junior devs we train today will be the senior engineers of tomorrow.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
UK tax compliance with Zoho Books  —  The evolving tax landscape in the UK has added an additional responsibility to business owners, accountants, and bookkeepers to ensure their choice of accounting software supports compliance …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
Inside the black box of AI: How AI models actually think | Emmanuel Ameisen (Anthropic)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic IPO Panic, A Spy At OpenAI?, The Great Food Slop Debate
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Great Chat:
What happened to tech's backbone?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The $7B Startup Mapping Your Health In Just One Hour | Neko's Hjalmar Nilsonne
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
The company building underwater drones for $50,000
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
BG2 Pod:
Jensen Huang | Does AI Revenue Justify Capex, '27 AI Bottlenecks, Singularity, Open vs Closed & more
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
 

Newest

More News

Google:
Walter Schulze / Startup Fortune:
Zack Abrams / The Block:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Jean Eaglesham / Wall Street Journal: