Techmeme
June 16, 2026, 11:45 AM

Top News

Reuters:
SpaceX agrees to acquire Cursor in a merger valuing the AI coding startup at $60B, set to close in Q3 2026, or pay a $4B to $10B termination fee  —  Elon Musk's SpaceX (SPCX.O) said on Tuesday it would acquire Anysphere, the software firm behind the popular AI coding agent Cursor …
Business Insider:
A profile of Cursor, including its hiring process and testy relationship with Anthropic, which told Cursor that Claude Code was a research effort, per a source  —  How the world's hottest AI coding company hitched its fate to Elon Musk's rocket ship  —  I n 2019, Michael Truell, a shy …
Molly Taft / Wired:
Filing: the US DOJ asks the court to dismiss an NAACP lawsuit over xAI's gas turbines, saying xAI is integral to the US' military operations, like the Iran War  —  In a bid to dismiss a lawsuit over xAI's polluting gas turbines, the Justice Department claimed the company is integral to military operations—including the Iran War.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Financial Times:
Ed Zitron / Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At:
Docs: audited financial figures show OpenAI spent $34B in 2025, up 172% YoY, including $19B on research and development and nearly $6B on sales and marketing  —  Today, I can exclusively report, based on audited financial documents viewed by this publication that have been independently verified …
Financial Times:
Docs: OpenAI's net loss grew from $5B in 2024 to ~$39B in 2025, a source says due to a $30B non-cash accounting charge linked to its previous structure  —  Audited figures reveal mounting costs from model development, infrastructure and rapid expansion  —  OpenAI spent $34bn last year …
Ashley Stewart / Business Insider:
Sources: Microsoft is adding AWS capacity to GitHub after AI-driven growth strained its infrastructure and contributed to dozens of major GitHub outages in 2026  —  Microsoft is turning to its biggest cloud rival, Amazon, to help address capacity issues on its GitHub coding platform following …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta says Threads now has 500M MAUs, adds a “Your Algo” tool that lets users privately control what they see in their feed, and launches Communities out of beta  —  Nearly three years after launching as a competitor to Twitter (now X), Threads has reaches 500 million monthly active users, the company announced Tuesday.
The Information:
Sources: DeepSeek closed a ~$7.4B round at a $50B+ valuation under an unusual structure requiring investors to put capital into an LP run by CEO Liang Wenfeng  —  Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has closed its first funding round that raised more than 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) …
Cristina Carlevaro / Reuters:
Italy's competition regulator opens an investigation into Apple under the DMA over whether iOS and iPadOS interoperate with third-party consumer cloud services  —  Italy's competition regulator said on Tuesday it had opened an investigation into Apple (AAPL.O) over compliance …
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Microsoft upgrades Surface Pro and Surface Laptop with Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 chips; Pro starts at $1,499 and Laptop at $1,599, both $100 higher than last-gen  —  New colors and high prices. New colors and high prices. … Microsoft is launching new Surface Laptops …
Helen Partz / Cointelegraph:
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says the company is “proactively” reducing its full-time workforce by ~10%, or ~290 employees, in a “flattening” of its org structure  —  Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism.  This news article is produced …
Simon van Zuylen-Wood / New York Magazine:
An interview with SBF about life in prison, his serialized prison memoir titled Manfred, and more, as he praises Trump, becomes a Republican, and seeks a pardon  —  Sam Bankman-Fried is incarcerated at a federal prison in Lompoc, California, which sits northwest of Santa Barbara and is dubbed “the City of Arts and Flowers.”
Wired:
Memo: CTO Andrew Bosworth said Meta did “an atrocious job” sharing Applied AI's vision, promising employees better communication, career growth, and more perks  —  In an internal memo seen by WIRED, Bosworth promised employees more stability, better communication …
Alex Ebert / Bloomberg Law:
Florida sues TikTok for allegedly violating its social media regulations for minors and state consumer protection laws by showing “X-Rated” content to minors  —  TikTok Inc. is violating Florida social media regulations for minors and state consumer protection laws by misrepresenting …
Emele Onu / Bloomberg:
Ripple acquires a stake in Flutterwave as part of the African payments startup's Series E, valuing Flutterwave at $3.2B  —  Flutterwave Inc., one of Africa's most valuable financial-technology startups, sold an equity stake to Ripple, as it seeks to accelerate growth through payments expansion and strategic partnerships.
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Sources: several Xbox studios, including Hellblade maker Ninja Theory, are in talks with Microsoft to buy themselves back and go independent to avoid closure  —  The studios, which include Compulsion Games and Double Fine, are in active negotiations with Xbox and may be given the chance to go independent.
Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune:
Bland, which uses proprietary, in-house-built voice models to process calls for 250+ enterprise clients, raised a $50M Series C led by Dell Technologies Capital  —  Isaiah Granet was rejected by 180 investors in three weeks during Y Combinator.  Their reason: phone calls won't exist in a year.
More: FinSMEs

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Brian Thomas / OpenRouter Blog:
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: