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February 18, 2026, 12:35 PM
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WeSmirchTop News
| Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: |
OpenAI partners with six Indian education institutions, including IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad, and AIIMS New Delhi, to provide ChatGPT Edu access to 100K+ students — OpenAI is expanding its footprint in India and moving into the country's higher-education system through partnerships with leading academic institutions.
More: The Economic Times, Microsoft, Digit, and Moneycontrol
| Abu Sultan / Reuters: |
More: Benzinga, CNN, DatacenterDynamics, Fortune India, Digit, Economic news, Tech in Asia, Blockonomi, Hindustan Times, and Business Today. Forums: r/technology
| Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: |
| Dylan Butts / CNBC: |
| Shruti Rajagopalan / Get Down and Shruti: |
More: Project Syndicate, Marginal Revolution, and The Indian Express
X: @mafernando, @apurvasanghi, @pramodbiligiri, @mattooshashank, @pranaykotas, @srajagopalan, and @seemasirohi
LinkedIn: Viren Mahurkar, Vasu Eda, and Shruti Rajagopalan
| Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: |
More: TechCrunch, TechCrunch, Moneycontrol, Digit, Fortune India, Tech in Asia, and The Economic Times. Forums: r/india
| Himanshi Lohchab / The Economic Times: |
| Todd Haselton / The Verge: |
Google unveils the $499 Pixel 10A, with a Tensor G4 and 8GB of RAM, like the Pixel 9A, an 11% brighter screen, and 128GB or 256GB storage, shipping from March 4 — Google's midrange Pixels have been our top pick for budget Android phones for a while. They offer good cameras and most of what you need at a budget-friendly price.
More: CNET, Android Police, The Keyword, Livemint, Forbes, Tech Advisor, Business Standard, Thurrott, Ars Technica, XDA Developers, Gizmodo, Engadget, Engadget, TechRadar, Android Authority, MobileSyrup, Android Central, PhoneArena, Wired, Tom's Guide, Digit, Android Headlines, The Indian Express, iPhone in Canada, The Shortcut, Droid Life, Trusted Reviews, GSMArena.com, Notebookcheck, The Hans India, and Xiaomiui.Net
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Google expands Quick Share support with AirDrop to the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold, after introducing it on the Pixel 10 in November 2025 — After introducing on the Pixel 10 last year, Google is expanding Quick Share support with AirDrop to the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold.| Joe Miller / Financial Times: |
How US citizens, clergy, and elected officials in conservative communities like Missouri are leading a grassroots rebellion against the Trump-backed AI boom — Republicans fear backlash against White House agenda could undermine support in this year's midterm elections| Sophie McEvoy / GamesIndustry.biz: |
Matthew Ball's State of Video Gaming 2026 report: global video game content sales grew 5.3% YoY to $195.6B in 2025 while job losses fell 40% YoY to 9,200 people — Private funding fell a further 55% last year, according to Epyllion's latest State of Video Gaming report
More: MatthewBall.co, PocketGamer.biz, and GamesBeat
X: @loudmouthjulia, @jamesekaplan, @jmoledina, @ballmatthew, @jonahblake, @ballmatthew, @ballmatthew, @ballmatthew, and @jonathanhawkins. LinkedIn: Jamil Moledina
Bluesky: @pedrothedagger, @mayteramarble, @felipepepe, and @hantani
| George Hammond / Financial Times: |
Sources: Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former Google DeepMind Principal Scientist David Silver, is raising a $1B seed led by Sequoia at a ~$4B valuation — Funding deal would value David Silver's start-up Ineffable Intelligence at $4bn — David Silver, one of Britain's top AI researchers …
More: The Economic Times, Sifted, Implicator.ai, David SIlver, Tech Funding News, Capacity, and Semafor. X: @etnshow
| Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: |
Perplexity says it has no plans to further pursue ads, which it introduced in 2024, after phasing them out in late 2025 over fears they would erode user trust — Leading start-ups have recently embraced sponsors as they search for revenue — AI start-up Perplexity has abandoned advertising …
More: The Information, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Search Engine Land, PYMNTS.com, WinBuzzer, MacRumors, Benzinga, The Verge, and The Decoder
| Alicia Tang / Bloomberg: |
Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $1B from a16z, Nvidia, AMD, and others to advance its world models focused on robotics and scientific discovery — World Labs, a startup from artificial intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li, raised $1 billion in a new round of funding to pursue a novel approach to AI development.| The Keyword: |
Google rolls out Lyria 3, a generative music model that can make 30-second tracks with Nano Banana-made cover art, in beta in the Gemini app in eight languages — The Gemini app now features our most advanced music generation model Lyria 3, empowering anyone to make 30-second tracks using text or images in beta.
More: PCMag, Ars Technica, Mercury News, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, The Verge, Android Central, Android Authority, MobileSyrup, Neowin, Tom's Guide, Music Ally, Power FM Ballarat, Digital Trends, iPhone in Canada, Campaign Middle East, EFTM, Android Headlines, and Sherwood News
X: @marcelocaporale, @710_eth, @allan_d_clive, @ammaar, @jasonbaldridge, @_philschmid, @officiallogank, @synthwavedd, and @joshwoodward. LinkedIn: Debbie W.. Forums: r/singularity
| Alex Heath / Sources: |
Sources: while Meta offered OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger more money than OpenAI, he ultimately aligned more closely with OpenAI's overall vibe and vision — Less than a week before he ultimately joined OpenAI, OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger talked about the two job offers …
More: Fast Company, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, CNET, The Mac Observer, MakeUseOf, and Michael Tsai. Bluesky: @alexeheath.com
| Bloomberg: |
Saudi-backed AI startup Humain invested $3B in xAI, becoming a “significant minority shareholder” in a deal that completed just before SpaceX's xAI acquisition — Saudi Arabian artificial intelligence company Humain has invested $3 billion into Elon Musk's xAI …
More: Financial Times, The Information, Reuters, HUMAIN, Capital Brief, Nairametrics, arabnews.jp, New York Times, and Semafor
| Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: |
Microsoft confirms a bug that let Microsoft 365 Copilot summarize confidential emails from Sent Items and Drafts folders, and deployed a fix in early February — Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January … | Krystal Hur / Wall Street Journal: |
A Las Vegas federal appeals court rejects Kalshi's emergency bid for an administrative stay on Nevada's push to block the platform, a major setback for Kalshi — A federal appeals court rejected Kalshi's bid, setting the stage for Nevada's civil-enforcement proceedings| Ram Iyer / TechCrunch: |
Kana, which builds AI marketing agents to perform data analysis, audience targeting, campaign management, and more, emerges from stealth and raised $15M — Marketing is one of the few operations no industry can afford to ignore, which is why we have a veritable host of AI-powered marketing tools …
More: Business Wire
| Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: |
Snap says its direct revenue business has hit a $1B annualized revenue run rate, driven primarily by Snapchat+ surpassing 25M subscribers since its 2022 launch — Snap's direct revenue business has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, the company announced on Wednesday.| Eugene Kim / Business Insider: |
Sources: Amazon shut down Blue Jay, a multi-armed robotic system launched in October 2025 for same-day delivery warehouses, to focus on small modular warehouses — - Amazon halts Blue Jay robot project amid strategic shift in warehouse technology. — Blue Jay faced high costs and complexities … | New York Times: |
Meta plans to spend $65M this year backing state politicians friendly to AI; filings: it is starting two super PACs, one backing GOP and another for Democrats — Meta's biggest election investment aims to prevent state legislation that it fears could inhibit artificial intelligence development.| Bloomberg: |
Robinhood launches an IPO for Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a $1B closed-end fund to provide retail investors access to private markets, offering 40M shares at $25 — Robinhood Markets Inc. is seeking to raise $1 billion in an initial public offering of a closed-end fund designed … | Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: |
A look at China's push to become a world leader in brain-computer interfaces, as Shanghai-based startup NeuroXess moves to human trials with Beijing's backing — Looser regulation and new investment are helping groups such as NeuroXess accelerate trials of ‘brain-computer interfaces’| Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: |
Cogent Security, which aims to use AI agents to decide which software bugs to remediate, raised a $42M Series A led by Bain, taking its total raised to $53M — Cogent Security has raised a $42 million Series A just six months after launch. Their bet? That AI agents can finally fix …
More: FinSMEs
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Audible launches an “immersion reading” feature that lets readers switch between ebook and audiobook versions of a title in their Audible and Kindle libraries — Only days after Spotify announced its foray into physical book sales, which included an audiobook feature that lets …
More: ZDNET, The Verge, Audible.com, Publishers Weekly, Jane Friedman, TechRadar, Mashable, and Good e-Reader
| Leo Schwartz / Fortune: |
Sports-focused prediction market Novig raises a $75M Series B led by Pantera Capital at a $500M valuation; Novig is commission-free for retail traders — As the prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket dominate the attention of investors and regulators, a sports-focused challenger called Novig … | Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg: |
SEC filing: Peter Thiel and Founders Fund have fully exited ETHZilla, after disclosing a 7.5% stake in August 2025; ether is down 60% from its August 2025 peak — Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel and his Founders Fund have fully exited ETHZilla Corp., according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.| David Singleton / flurries of latent creativity: |
Dreamer, founded by former Stripe CTO David Singleton, Hugo Barra, and others, launches in beta to let technical and non-technical users build agentic AI apps — Dreamer is the name of the platform and company I started with Hugo, Nicholas and others a little over a year ago.
More: /dev/agents and Dreamer
X: @joannastern, @dps, @bentossell, @hbarra, @mikeyk, @dps, @paraga, @dps, @dreamer, and @dreamer
Bluesky: @martinsfp and @edzitron.com
| Rachel Swan / San Francisco Chronicle: |
Tesla agrees to stop using the term “autopilot” to market its EVs in California to avoid a 30-day suspension by the state's DMV, resolving a long-running battle — Tesla has stopped using the term “autopilot” to market its electric vehicles in California in order to avoid a 30 … 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.
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.
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 …
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.
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
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.
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Cheeky Pint:
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Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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Robinhood's CEO on letting AI trade your money
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