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Techmeme
July 18, 2026, 3:20 AM
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Top News

New York Times:
Sources: Meta is in talks to rent computing power from its data centers to Anthropic in a deal that could be worth ~$10B over two years  —  A deal would underline how scarce computing power is for artificial intelligence development, and could create a new business for Meta.
AI Security Institute:
Analysis: recent open weight models lag frontier closed models' cyber capabilities by 4 to 7 months, a narrower gap than the 6 to 10 months through most of 2025  —  AISI has tracked the cyber capabilities of frontier AI models since 2023.  On our evaluations, the most capable models …
Transformer:
Kimi K3 hype shouldn't alarm the US about “losing the AI race” to China; K3 is a good model but not frontier-level and likely lacks dangerous cyber capabilities
Gavin Baker / @gavinsbaker:
Models like Kimi K3, Grok 4.5, and Muse 1.1 may prevent the dominance of 2-3 frontier labs with 90% inference margins from hurting other AI ecosystem layers
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Kimi K3 takes #1 on the Frontend Code Arena benchmark, surpassing Claude Fable 5, and scores 88.3 on Terminal Bench 2.1, trailing only GPT-5.6 Sol's 88.8
Claude / @claudeai:
Anthropic says Claude Fable 5 will be included in Max and Team Premium plans at 50% of limits from July 20 and via usage credits for Pro and Team Standard users  —  Beginning July 20, Claude Fable 5 will be included in all Max and Team Premium plans, at 50% of limits. Pro and Team Standard users will continue to have access to Fable via usage credits, and will receive a one-time $100 credit. Demand for Fable has been challenging to
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Memo: the DOJ says federal employees can now download TikTok on government devices, citing TikTok US' transfer of control, lifting a 2022 congressional ban  —  The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday that federal employees can now download the short-video app TikTok on government devices.
Reuters:
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index sank ~10% for the week, its largest weekly fall in over a year, and is now down ~20% from its late-June all-time high  —  A brutal week for chip stocks — the same names that fueled this year's blistering market rally — has left investors from Seoul …
Reuters:
Sources: Trump Media pitched a monthly fee of as much as $100K for the Truth API, with fast access to Trump's posts, for banks, algorithmic traders, and others  —  Donald Trump's social media company has discussed charging Wall Street traders and investment firms as much as $100,000 a month …
Minxiao Chang / South China Morning Post:
China's National Data Administration says the country's daily AI token consumption hit 140T in March 2026, up from 100T in December 2025 and 100B in early 2024  —  Every month, a Beijing-based ByteDance employee says he burns through close to a billion units of a new corporate currency - one that cannot buy a coffee or pay rent.
Bloomberg:
Sources: China's National AI Industry Investment Fund gained voting rights in DeepSeek by joining its $7.4B round; other investors like Tencent and JD got none  —  On a video conference call from Hangzhou earlier this year, one of China's hottest startups held a four-hour pitch meeting …

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From Mediagazer

Deadline:
A US district court judge says she'll issue a ruling by July 22 on state AGs' request for a temporary stay that would pause the Paramount-WBD merger

Patrick Hipes / Deadline:
Sinclair-owned TV stations affiliated with ABC and NBC aired Trump's speech about elections, using Sinclair's feed; Sinclair owns or operates 177 stations

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Playboy has relaunched a print edition with a “respectful and modern” take on nudity; in 2025, its parent company had a $12.7M net loss on $120.9M in revenue

More News

Robert Booth / The Guardian:
Amazon apologizes after some AWS users received bills as high as $1.5T due to “an issue with unit pricing within the estimated billing computation subsystem”

Earlier Picks

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple raises the price of Apple Music, with the individual plan up by $1 to $11.99, and some Apple One bundles, citing rising licensing costs
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple and the DOJ are in early discussions about settling a 2024 antitrust lawsuit alleging that Apple violated antitrust laws
Matt Burgess / Wired:
San Francisco sends legal notices to Apple and Google, demanding they take down 13 AI apps used to make deepfake nude images; Google says it deleted five apps
Michael Acton / Financial Times:
Sources: Apple has sent personal legal warnings to ~40 former employees who now work at OpenAI, directing them to preserve documents and meet with its lawyers
Reuters:
At the World AI Conference, Xi Jinping touts open-source AI, pledges to help the Global South build AI capabilities, and calls unequal AI access an “injustice”
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