Techmeme
May 20, 2026, 7:30 AM

Top News

The Keyword:
Google rolls out Gemini 3.5 Flash, its “strongest agentic and coding model yet”, for tackling long-horizon agentic tasks, in the Gemini app and Search's AI Mode  —  Gemini 3.5 is built to help you execute complex, agentic workflows.  —  Today, we're introducing Gemini 3.5 …
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Gemini 3.5 Flash costs $1.50 per 1M input tokens and $9 per 1M output tokens, 3x the price of Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 6x the price of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite  —  Today at Google I/O, Google released Gemini 3.5 Flash.  This one skipped the -preview modifier and went straight to general availability …
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Google launches Gemini Omni, a multimodal model it says can “create anything from any input”, starting with video generation, for Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra  —  Although it was already discovered by intrepid AI power users weeks ahead of the official unveiling today …
Macy Meyer / CNET:
Google updates Flow and Flow Music with Gemini Omni Flash support, mobile apps, the ability to create custom tools like a video resizer or shaders, and more  —  Google Flow's family of products gets agentic updates, mobile apps and the Omni Flash treatment.
Sanuj Bhatia / Android Central:
New York Times:
Google overhauls its search box, letting users ask longer queries, upload photos and videos, and use Gemini 3.5 Flash-powered agents to automate searches  —  Powered by a new Gemini A.I. model, the tech giant is overhauling its search box to answer longer queries, introducing a video-generation …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
GitHub confirms breach of ~3,800 internal repositories after one of its employees installed a malicious VS Code extension; TeamPCP claimed responsibility  —  GitHub has confirmed that roughly 3,800 internal repositories were breached after one of its employees installed a malicious VS Code extension.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google introduces Antigravity 2.0, featuring an updated desktop app that lets users orchestrate multiple agents, alongside an Antigravity CLI tool and SDK  —  Google is introducing a new version of its agentic coding app, Google Antigravity 2.0, with an updated desktop app, a CLI tool, and an SDK for custom workflows.
Jackson Chen / Engadget:
Jessica Conditt / Engadget:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Google announces Gemini Spark, a “24/7 personal AI agent” that is powered by Gemini 3.5 and supports integrations with Google Workspace apps, including Gmail  —  The AI agent is rolling out to testers this week.  —  Google has announced a “24/7 personal AI agent” …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Lance Whitney / ZDNET:
Google restructures its AI plans, introducing a $100/month AI Ultra plan for developers and cutting the top-tier Ultra subscription from $250 to $200/month  —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — Google has introduced a cheaper AI Ultra plan at $100 a month.  — The full Ultra Plan is now $50 cheaper at $200 a month.
Josh Woodward / The Keyword:
More: Computerworld and SammyGuru
X: @backlon.  LinkedIn: Allen Jiang.  Threads: @carnage4life.  Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
Ina Fried / Axios:
Madison Mills / Axios:
Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic to help launch a team focused on using Claude to accelerate pretraining research; he helped found OpenAI and worked at Tesla  —  Andrej Karpathy, one of the best-known AI researchers in the world and a founding member of OpenAI, announced Tuesday that he's joining rival AI lab Anthropic.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Threat actors published 600+ malicious versions to npm as part of the Shai-Hulud supply chain campaign; most of the affected packages are in the @antv ecosystem  —  Threat actors earlier today published more than 600 malicious packages to the Node Package Manager (npm) index as part of a new Shai-Hulud supply-chain campaign.
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Kickstarter retracts stricter rules on mature content after creator backlash, and says it adopted the tougher rules because of its payment processor Stripe  —  It explained that it created the new rules due to Stripe's policy.  —  Kickstarter has retracted the new set of rules around mature content …
New York Times:
Meta begins laying off 8,000 employees, or 10% of staff, in a push to become an AI-first company; another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to AI initiatives  —  Meta told employees last month that it would carry out mass layoffs on May 20, as the Silicon Valley giant tries to transform into an A.I.-first company.
Jess Kinghorn / PC Gamer:
Wired:
Hands-on with Google and Samsung's Android XR smart glasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, and with XReal's Project Aura, all set to arrive this fall  —  Here's your first look at smart glasses coming from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, powered by Google and Samsung's XR platform.
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
The Take It Down Act, a law requiring social networks to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours of reporting or face fines, took effect on May 19  —  The Take It Down Act is in full force, but it could be a gift to government censors — not victims of image-based sexual abuse.
Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba's T-Head unveils the Zhenwu M890 AI chip for training and inference, saying it is particularly suited for agentic tasks, and plans annual upgrades  —  Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. added a new processor to its expanding AI technology stack, enhancing a push to cover every aspect of artificial intelligence development.
Reuters:
Trump signs an EO calling on regulators and the Fed to review policies that could support fintech growth, including expanding fintech access to payment accounts  —  U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday calling on regulators and the Federal Reserve to review rules …
Nan Ransohoff / Nan's Substack:
An analysis based on current valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic suggests ~$370B of philanthropic assets tied to the two AI companies are poised to become liquid  —  AI is about to generate hundreds of billions in new philanthropic funding.  We have a huge amount of work to do to make the most of it.
OpenAI:
OpenAI introduces Guaranteed Capacity, a new offering that lets customers guarantee access to OpenAI's compute through one- to three-year commitments  —  Guarantee long-term access to OpenAI compute for the products, agents, and customer workflows that matter most.  —  Plan for capacity Contact sales
Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state; the CFTC has sued Minnesota in response  —  Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state …
Bloomberg:
Samsung Electronics rejects a labor union-accepted mediation proposal, raising the prospect of a workers' strike; a general work stoppage will proceed on May 21  —  Video Player is loading.  —  Play  —  Mute  —  Current Time Loaded: 0%  —  Playback Rate  — captions and subtitles off, selected

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
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:
Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan  —  Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.
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

Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
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.
Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let's Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:30 AM ET, May 20, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Jemima McEvoy / The Information:
John Timmer / Ars Technica:

Earlier Picks