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August 7, 2026, 8:55 AM
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KOB 4:
New Mexico trial: a judge orders Meta to pay $567M and make changes for underage users after finding its platforms helped create a public nuisance harming teens  —  SANTA FE, N.M. - A Santa Fe judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million, and make changes for the user experience of juvenile accounts …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: OpenAI's new device, slated for 2027, is a hockey puck-sized smart speaker with moving parts that help give it personality and will likely cost $300+  —  A highly anticipated new device from OpenAI will have a unique look, complete with moving parts that help give it personality …
Will Knight / Wired:
Security researchers claim that Kimi K3 went outside of its sandbox during defensive cybersecurity tests, but did not hack anything after accessing the internet  —  Security researchers say that Kimi K3, an open-weight model from China, wandered off to the internet in an attempt to cheat on a test it was given.
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
SK Hynix plans a $38B chipmaking expansion in South Korea, including a new ~$24.7B DRAM facility in Yongin and a ~$13.3B NAND fabrication plant in Cheongju  —  SK Hynix Inc. plans a 54 trillion won ($38 billion) expansion of its chipmaking facilities in South Korea, the memory chip maker said in a statement Friday.
Carl Zimmer / New York Times:
Scientists trained AI on genetic sequences to design viruses not found in nature, yielding 16 viable viruses that can infect bacteria but don't threaten humans  —  Scientists trained artificial intelligence on libraries of DNA and then asked the model to create recipes for viral genomes.
Tobias Mann / The Register:
AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon with the promise to boost inference performance, for an undisclosed sum  —  Early tech demos show model-specific integrated circuits churning out up to 17,000 tokens a second
SemiAnalysis:
Analysis: Google DeepMind has lost frontier-model momentum amid leadership and RL talent departures, with Google Cloud emerging as a winner with more compute  —  GCP YoY rev growth >100%, DeepMind's long term failure is Google Cloud's short term gain  —  On Wednesday, August 5th …
Arunesh Sinha / Reuters:
Atlassian reports Q4 revenue up 28% YoY to $1.77B, vs. $1.66B est., cloud revenue up 31% to $1.2B, forecasts Q1 revenue above est.; TEAM jumps 31%+ after hours  —  Collaboration software maker Atlassian (TEAM.O) beat Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter revenue on Thursday …
Herb Scribner / Axios:
OpenAI updates the default model for free users to GPT-5.6 Luna, adds unlimited text chats for free users, rolls out an improved GPT-5.6 Sol version, and more  —  OpenAI on Thursday announced a series of changes that will upgrade ChatGPT for both paid and free users.
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
Sources: the US Commerce Department's BIS is reviewing how Chinese AI companies access Nvidia chips overseas, including by legally renting foreign data centers  —  A key US agency is reviewing how Chinese AI firms acquire and access Nvidia Corp. chips overseas, following a spate …
More: CNBC and Chip Briefing
Reuters:
The White House imposes a series of price floors and a 15% tariff on products made from polysilicon, a chip raw material primarily produced by China  —  The White House on Thursday imposed a series of price floors and a 15% tariff on products made from polysilicon, the raw material used …
Reuters:
Google and data: hackers used phone calls, phishing websites, and “meticulous” tactics to target dozens of US PE firms and other businesses over the past month  —  Ransom-seeking hackers who use phone calls to compromise their victims targeted dozens of prominent U.S. financial institutions …
Deborah Sophia / Reuters:
Take-Two reports Q1 bookings down 3% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.38B est., forecasts Q2 and FY 2027 bookings below est., reiterates GTA VI's November 19 launch date  —  Take-Two Interactive (TTWO.O) maintained its annual bookings forecast on Friday, but reiterated the November 19 launch date …
Bloomberg:
Alphabet raises $25B in an investment-grade bond sale; sources say it attracted ~$115B of peak demand and that Alphabet plans to issue US debt twice per year  —  Alphabet Inc. sold $25 billion of investment-grade bonds after generous yield payouts helped secure one of the year's largest order books for AI-related debt.
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
Livestream shopping app Whatnot raised a $545M Series G led by Iconiq, Lightspeed, and Avra at a $20B valuation, up from an $11.5B valuation in October 2025  —  Whatnot, started in a Funko Pop-flooded rental house, is now a $20 billion company.  —  The live commerce platform exclusively told Fortune …
Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal:
Filing: ex-a16z partner Bryan Kim is forming venture firm Mido Capital; sources: he plans to raise ~$100M for a fund backing early-stage AI and other startups  —  Bryan Kim, who invested in consumer tech and AI startups at Andreessen, is creating his own firm, Mido Capital Bryan Kim …
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Airbnb reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $3.6B, Nights and Seats Booked up 10% to 148.3M, above est., lifts 2026 revenue forecast; ABNB jumps 10%+ after hours  —  Airbnb Inc. boosted its annual revenue forecast for a second time this year after it saw robust global travel demand, particularly in the US and Europe.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:55 AM ET, August 7, 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.

From Mediagazer

The Wrap:
The FCC votes to repeal the national broadcast ownership cap and replace it with a case-by-case review, approving the measure by a 2-1 margin

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
A US federal judge pauses an order requiring Trump to disclose details of his businesses' financial performance to the BBC in his $10B defamation suit

Etan Vlessing / The Hollywood Reporter:
Lionsgate reports Q1 revenue up 48% YoY to $776.6M, vs. $693.1M est., net loss of $28.8M, vs. $109M a year earlier, adjusted OIBDA of $79.3M, vs. $65.5M est.

More News

Bloomberg:
Sources: up to five people tied to US Cyber Command died by suicide from early June to early July 2026, prompting it to flag a potential suicide cluster
Ram Iyer / TechCrunch:
Naïve, which provides infrastructure for AI agents to handle most business operations, raised a $28.5M Series A led by Nexus, bringing its total funding to $32M
Anna Tong / Forbes:
Docs: US data labeling companies, like Surge AI and Mercor, that sell AI training datasets to US labs and the government are also selling them to Chinese labs

Earlier Picks

Terrence O'Brien / The Verge:
Suno says it will adopt new audio watermarking tech, fingerprinting tech, transparency tools, and a new download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI music
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
OpenAI debuts Agent Plugins, an open standard for bundling skills and MCP servers, and says Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, and Vercel are on its steering committee
Victoria Turk / Wired:
Google DeepMind says its WeatherNext model can accurately predict a storm's track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data, and open sources the model
Reuters:
SpaceX and Tesla plan to initially invest $16.8B to build Terafab in Grimes County, Texas; combined demand from SpaceX and Tesla is forecast to top 1 TW
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