Techmeme
June 17, 2026, 12:45 PM

Top News

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Google's $99 Google Home Speaker, which is built for Gemini for Home and works as a Matter controller, will ship on June 29, nine months after it was announced  —  The Google Home Speaker is designed for Gemini for Home and its more conversational smart home assistant.
Karen Freifeld / Reuters:
Sources: the US has held off adding DeepSeek, CXMT, and 100+ other flagged companies to its Entity List, last updated in October, the longest gap in 10+ years  —  The U.S. has held off adding China's AI startup DeepSeek, memory chipmaker CXMT and more than 100 other companies flagged …
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch:
XDOF, which is building data pipelines, collection tools, and annotation systems for robot training data, emerges from stealth with $70M  —  Two weeks ago, OpenAI said it would relaunch the robotics program it shuttered in 2021 — the latest signal that the biggest AI labs are racing to teach machines to operate in the physical world.
Nikhil Pahwa / @nixxin:
India's Telegram ban until June 22 over exam paper leak concerns is a terrible look for the country, sets a precedent, and could happen again if unchallenged  —  A few additional thoughts on the Telegram ban in India: 1. Is this a permanent ban? It's unusual for the Indian government to issue a press release about the telegram ban: the precedence that I remember is when Chinese apps were banned in India in June 2020 including tiktok. A
Anhata Rooprai / Reuters:
Shoe company Allbirds changes its name to Smartbird as it pivots to an AI infrastructure company and names ex-AWS exec Nadia Carlsten as CEO; BIRD jumps 20%+  —  Allbirds (BIRD.O) changed its name to Smartbird on Wednesday and appointed former Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O) …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
WordPress survey: 60% of US consumers say “AI” in a brand's messaging is a turnoff, and 86% always or sometimes check the source after receiving an AI summary  —  Getting cited by AI is easier than earning consumers' trust, according to a new report from WordPress VIP …
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Q&A with Luciana Lixandru, who co-leads Sequoia's global early-stage investment business, on why it is time for “act two” for Europe's tech sector, AI, and more  —  The global co-lead of the US venture capital firm's early-stage investment business talks about why it is time for ‘act two’ for Europe's tech sector
Financial Times:
Sources describe Huawei's efforts to rebuild its chip business seven years after the US cut Huawei off from advanced US chips, as it bets on logic-stacking tech  —  Seven years after being written off the Chinese tech giant is making technical advances that appear to sidestep Washington curbs.
Ben Bergman / Business Insider:
Convey, which is building AI “teammates” to automate manual work at clients like NBCUniversal, raised a $38M Series A led by a16z  —  Convey, a startup founded last year that builds AI “teammates,” has raised $38 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Khosla Ventures and Pear VC.
More: The Next Web and a16z
Ryan Lawler / Axios:
Andera, which uses AI to automate corporate audit and compliance testing, raised a $37M Series A led by Lightspeed  —  Andera, which uses AI to automate corporate audit and compliance testing, raised $37 million in Series A funding, CEO Aryo Patel tells Axios exclusively.

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Earlier Picks

CNBC:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: