Techmeme
May 17, 2026, 1:20 AM

Top News

Terrence O'Brien / The Verge:
In an experiment that let Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok run radio stations, Claude tried to incite a revolution and Gemini cheerfully detailed tragic events  —  Claude tried to incite a revolution, Gemini cheerfully detailed horrific tragedies, and poor Grok was just confused.
Deedy / @deedydas:
SF vibes are frenetic over the huge divide in outcomes and career uncertainty for software engineers; over 5 years ~10K people in AI attained retirement wealth  —  The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope
Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:
Filings: in Q1, Trump traded $220M-$750M in NVDA, MSFT, AMZN, META, ORCL, and others; millions of dollars of NVDA were bought shortly before major news  —  President Donald Trump reported thousands of financial transactions totaling hundreds of millions of dollars — including large purchases …
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:
Nectar Social, which offers an agentic OS for marketers, raised a $30M Series A led by Menlo Ventures, with GV and True Ventures among investors  —  AI-powered marketing platform Nectar Social announced Thursday that it raised a $30 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures and its Anthology Fund …
More: FinSMEs
Zinnia Lee / Forbes:
Shenzhen-listed RoboTechnik, which claims to be the largest silicon photonics tool maker and whose stock is up 340% over the past year, files for a HK listing  —  RoboTechnik Intelligent Technology's Shenzhen-listed shares soared 340% over the past year, propelling founder Dai Jun's net worth to $2.4 billion.
Kwanwoo Jun / Wall Street Journal:
South Korea's Hana Bank agrees to acquire a 6.55% stake in Dunamu, which runs South Korea's largest crypto exchange Upbit, for $672.5M from Kakao  —  The deal would make Hana Bank the fourth largest shareholder in Dunamu  —  Hana Bank will buy a roughly $670 million stake …

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Featured Podcasts

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Channels with Peter Kafka:
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Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
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Earlier Picks

Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Amy Thomson / Bloomberg: