Techmeme: Google says the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL are its most durable Pixel phones yet, using spacecraft-grade aluminum frames and a twice as scratch-resistant coating (Mariella Moon/Engadget)

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August 12, 2026, 11:30 AM

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Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:

Google DeepMind launches SL2T, a multilingual sign-language-to-text model debuting on the Pixel 11 in Gboard and Live Transcribe, first for ASL to English text — Google DeepMind said today it wants to bring the artificial intelligence revolution to the estimated 70 million people across …

More: Google DeepMind, Engadget, Digital Trends, and Unite.AI

Jessica Conditt / Engadget:

Google unveils the $1,899+ Pixel 11 Pro Fold, with a stronger hinge, inner and outer displays that are 20% brighter, Tensor G6 chip, and an updated 48MP camera — Fly like a (Tensor) G6. — The Pixel 11 Pro Fold is the ultimate evolution in Google's latest line of mobile devices …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

Google unveils the $899+ Pixel 11, $1,099+ 11 Pro, and $1,299+ 11 Pro XL, with a Tensor G6, new Gemini features, Magic Capture to pick the best frames, and more — For the last few years, Google's Pixel has been a showcase of new AI features, with few hardware changes from the previous year's devices.

More: Google, 9to5Google, The New Things, Tech Advisor, 9to5Google, Engadget, Associated Press, CNN, Gizmodo, CNBC, Android Authority, Wired, Wired, PetaPixel, and Trusted Reviews

X: @sundarpichai, @rosterloh, @cartidise, @backlon, @google, and @davidimel

Sam Rutherford / Engadget:

Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold hands-on: a letdown after Samsung released the Galaxy Z Fold 8, with few design changes, and it feels like Google is coasting this time — In a year when Samsung made two new flagship foldables, the latest Pixel Pro Fold feels like a letdown.

More: T3, Engadget, ZDNET, PCMag, Android Central, TechRadar, Yahoo Finance, Trusted Reviews, Android Authority, and SammyGuru

X: @lanceulanoff and @alexmaxham

Max Buondonno / The Shortcut:

Google Pixel 11 series hands-on: few design changes, a HiLight status light on the rear camera bar, new colors, and small camera and performance improvements

Mariella Moon / Engadget:

Google says the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL are its most durable Pixel phones yet, using spacecraft-grade aluminum frames and a twice as scratch-resistant coating

More: ZDNET, Android Central, and PetaPixel

Damien Wilde / 9to5Google:

Google is cutting the Google One AI Pro trial bundled with the Pixel 11 Pro and other handsets from 12 to six months and removes the free trial for the Pixel 11

More: T3, Android Police, Irish Examiner, Android Central, Digital Trends, and The Hans India

David Imel / The Verge:

Google's Pixel 11 introduces Camera Looks, a total rethink of how the camera captures and styles an image, as users seek “more authentic or traditional” photos

More: The Verge, Engadget, 9to5Google, 9to5Google, CNET, Android Authority, Mashable, and Imaging Resource

Kris Holt / Engadget:

Google raises Pixel and Watch prices by $100 and $50 for 2026's models; the base Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL have 12GB of RAM, down from 16GB in previous models

More: Droid Life. X: @stocksavvyshay and @mweinbach

Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg:

Google is introducing an insulin-resistance trend feature that uses AI, accelerometer, and other sensors, launching first on the Watch 5 and Fitbit devices — Alphabet Inc.'s Google Inc. is bringing a new set of health features to its wearables, including one that tracks insulin resistance over time …

More: Engadget, Wired, and Google

Victoria Song / The Verge:

Google unveils the $399 Pixel Watch 5 with a satin pyrite case finish, offline Gemini, proactive AI suggestions, better GPS maps, and insulin resistance trends — The $399 Google Pixel Watch 5 isn't about the hardware. Sure, there's a new satin pyrite case finish, a few new strap colors, and a Steph Curry Special Edition.

More: TechCrunch, How-To Geek, 9to5Google, Engadget, ZDNET, Gizmodo, Android Police, CNET, Digit, GSMArena.com, The Independent, Tom's Guide, Android Central, The Sun Malaysia, Mashable, Google, and BGR. LinkedIn: Noah Presler

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:

Google says Android's AirDrop-like Quick Share will now let some devices exchange files and contact info when tapped together, starting with the Pixel 6 and up — The Quick Share update makes it easier to share contact info and files between Pixel devices, and soon, Samsung phones.

More: Google, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, Engadget, Android Central, Android Authority, Podcasts, and Droid Life

Dominic Preston / The Verge:

Google plans to launch the $29 Pixel Tag on November 11 with a four-pack priced at $99, matching AirTag 2 pricing, offering UWB, Find Hub support, and more — The $29 tracker combines UWB with Bluetooth channel sounding. … More than two years after launching its own device-tracking network …

More: PCMag, How-To Geek, T3, Engadget, TechCrunch, ZDNET, Gizmodo, Android Authority, Tom's Guide, TechRadar, Android Central, Digital Trends, Mashable, Google, and Droid Life

Will Sattelberg / 9to5Google:

Google says the Pixel Buds Pro 2 will get new features, including dynamic ANC and sleep sync, via a software update in September, and adds a new Olive color — It's been a couple of years since Google rolled out a new set of Pro-branded earbuds, and while it's still not ready to debut …

More: Android Central, Digital Trends, SoundGuys, Google, and Android Authority

Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg:

Sources: AI coding startup Cognition is in early talks with investors to raise $1B+ at a $40B+ valuation, after raising $1B at a $26B valuation in May — Cognition AI is in early talks with investors for a new funding round that may boost the coding startup's valuation by more than 50% …

More: PYMNTS, Silicon Republic, RuntimeWire, Tech Funding News, and Tech in Asia

X: @rebeccatorrenc5 and @ohare888. Bluesky: @fry69.dev

Bloomberg:

Tencent reports Q2 revenue up 11% YoY to ~$30.4B, above ~$30B est., driven by surging WeChat advertising and resilient game spending, and net income of ~$8.3B — Tencent Holdings Ltd. more than doubled spending on AI projects and computing to about $7.8 billion last quarter …

More: The Information, CNBC, Music Ally, South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, and The Straits Times

X: @briantycangco, @gpuhell, @tencentai_news, and @tencentai_news

See also Mediagazer

Will Knight / Wired:

Researchers find that feeding a frontier model's encrypted reasoning traces to a weaker model from the same provider can make it output the traces in plaintext — Researchers devised a way to extract “reasoning traces” from Claude, GPT, and Gemini. What they found, they say …

More: arXiv.org, Simon Willison's Weblog, The Hacker News, WinBuzzer, The American Bazaar, Digit, Latent.Space, The Neuron, and Wccftech

X: @kotekjedi_ml, @jonasgeiping, @_can1357, @miles_brundage, @suchenzang, @xincynthiachen, @natolambert, @laz4rz, @andrewwhite01, @scaling01, @eliebakouch, @scaling01, @scaling01, @teortaxestex, @matthew_d_green, @maksym_andr, @jxmnop, and @scaling01

Bluesky: @carnage4life and @carlbergstrom.com. Forums: r/LocalLLaMA

Tom Wilson / Financial Times:

Researchers say suspected Chinese hackers used open-source AI agents to build an autonomous hacking tool that compromised Taiwanese government websites in July — AI agents ran simultaneous reconnaissance and break-ins in display of new phase of cyberwarfare.

More: Dream Security, PCMag, Metacurity, Tom's Hardware, CNBC, KnowBe4 Blog, and Insurance Business

X: @trajektoriepl and @michaelturton. Bluesky: @metacurity.com. Forums: r/technology

Sherry Qin / Wall Street Journal:

Foxconn reports Q2 revenue up 41% YoY to ~$78.4B, with cloud and networking products contributing 50%+ for the first time, and net profit up 35% YoY to ~$1.86B — Net profit for the three months ended June rose 35% from a year earlier — Foxconn Technology Group reported another strong quarter …

More: Bloomberg, 9to5Mac, Forbes Middle East, Dow Jones Newswires, The Economic Times, MacDailyNews, Al Jazeera, and Tech in Asia

Prakhar Srivastava / Reuters:

AI code review startup CodeRabbit raised a $143M Series C co-led by Atomico and Smash at a $1.5B valuation, after raising a $60M Series B in September 2025 — AI code review startup CodeRabbit said on Wednesday it had raised $143 million in a funding round that valued it at $1.5 billion.

More: Finimize, FinSMEs, SiliconANGLE, Bloomberg, Axios, and Fidelity Investments

X: @harjotsgill, @coderabbitai, @coderabbitai, and @coderabbitai

Wall Street Journal:

Some health and fitness obsessives are using AI for hyperpersonalized training, building dashboards and tools to analyze their sleep, workouts, diet, and more — From marathon training to tracking office angst, health obsessives are linking their data to chatbots to build hyperpersonalized coaches

More: TechRadar and Digital Trends. Bluesky: @hypervisible.blacksky.app

Juro Osawa / The Information:

Former Alibaba star researcher Junyang Lin launches Shanghai-based Pragmatik Labs to build digital and physical AI agents; Pragmatik hit a $2B valuation in June — Former Alibaba star researcher Junyang Lin announced that he had started a new AI company, confirming The Information's earlier reports.

More: Pragmatik Labs, Bloomberg, and RuntimeWire

X: @justinlin610, @justinlin610, @pragmatik_labs, @himanshustwts, and @justinlin610

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal:

AT&T says open models currently account for ~25% of its AI usage, and it targets 70% to 80% over time; AT&T uses an average of 45B AI tokens per day — The telecom company is staking its future on open models, both to control token cost and protect its proprietary data

Kai Nicol-Schwarz / CNBC:

A look at the challenges facing incoming Google DeepMind head Koray Kavukcuoglu, who joined DeepMind in 2012 and will oversee Gemini and frontier AI research — DeepMind's new boss is set to face intense pressure to close the AI performance gap with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Forums: r/technology

Ben Dummett / Wall Street Journal:

Stockholm-based AI coding startup Lovable raised $400M at a $13.3B valuation, up from $6.6B in December 2025, becoming one of Europe's most valuable startups — New funding round catapults AI company into the ranks of Europe's most valuable startups — Artificial-intelligence startup Lovable …

More: Sifted, Bloomberg, Reuters, Silicon Republic, Lovable, FinSMEs, Tech.eu, Business Insider, BusinessCloud, and Tech Funding News

X: @fabianhedin, @felixhhaas, @deedydas, and @antonosika

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:

Skan AI, which is building a “context graph of work” by observing staff using enterprise software, raised a $63M Series C co-led by Cathay Innovation and Dell — Skan AI, a startup that builds what it calls a “context graph of work” by observing how employees actually perform …

More: SkanAI, FinSMEs, Unite.AI, and RuntimeWire

Kate Knibbs / Wired:

A look at AI news website RuntimeWire, which costs $100/day to run and “beat” human reporters to OpenAI's Black Hat disclosure, favoring quantity over quality — Last week, an AI newsroom beat mainstream journalists—including WIRED—to a story about OpenAI and hacking. It's just the beginning.

More: Talking Biz News. X: @stokel and @nxthompson

Bluesky: @amymaxmen, @knibbs, @jeffgreene, and @davidgilbert. Mastodon: @dsilverman@mastodon.social. Forums: r/Journalism

See also Mediagazer

Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:

Thrive Capital's Thrive Holdings, which acquires traditional service businesses and adds AI, raised $2B from SoftBank, D1, and others at a $12B valuation — The company, Thrive Holdings, acquires businesses to infuse them with artificial intelligence and drew interest from backers like SoftBank.

X: @joshuakushner, @samaysham, and @thriveholdings

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:

ClearJet, whose AI-enabled logistics service connects shippers with unused cargo capacity on commercial flights, raised a $25M Series B led by Edison Partners — ClearJet, an AI-enabled logistics technology startup, has raised a $25 million Series B, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.

More: FinSMEs, ClearJet, and RuntimeWire

Sumedha Mukherjee / Reuters:

FlightAware withdraws its lawsuit against Kalshi, a day after it alleged Kalshi is using its data without permission to let users bet on flight cancellations — Flight-tracking company FlightAware withdrew its lawsuit against Kalshi on Tuesday, a day after it filed the suit that accuses …

More: Bloomberg Law, CoinDesk, View from the Wing, crypto.news, Unchained, The Block, TechCrunch, Straight Arrow, Gizmodo, Engadget, The Event Horizon, and Wall Street Journal

Frederic Lardinois / The New Stack:

OpenAI launches a ChatGPT desktop app for Linux in preview, supporting ChatGPT Work, Codex, and more; Computer Use outside the in-app browser is not available — On Tuesday, OpenAI launched its ChatGPT desktop for Linux. — Now in preview, the app, which combines ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work …

More: TechCrunch, OMG! Ubuntu, The Decoder, Neowin, Business Today, Implicator.ai, Linuxiac, RuntimeWire, The Verge, Thurrott, and SQ Magazine

X: @openai, @theo, @i2cjak, @boazbaraktcs, @giffmana, @nickbaumann_, @thsottiaux, @jameszmsun, @openai, and @btibor91. Forums: r/linux

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From Mediagazer

Ted Johnson / Deadline:

Paramount's Makan Delrahim says everything is on the table to end the suit against Paramount's WBD deal and chatter about leaving California is not “blackmail”

Corbin Bolies / Variety:

Suno adds music rights company BMG as its latest licensing partner as it prepares new models powered by licensed work, following a similar deal with WMG

Matt Hughes / The Guardian:

Sources: Apple has had preliminary discussions about bidding for US rights to golf's Open Championship, whose current US deal with NBC expires in 2028

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More News

Paula Doenecke / Bloomberg:

Amsterdam-based neocloud Nebius reports Q2 cloud revenue up 514% YoY to $575M and total revenue of $582M, above $557M est.; NBIS jumps 15%+, and is up 145%+ YTD

More: The Information, Reuters, Quartz, MarketWatch, Blockonomi, Barron's Online, The Crypto Basic, Yahoo Finance, TheEnergyMag, and Barchart.com

Loni Prinsloo / Bloomberg:

African e-commerce company Jumia raised $50M, including ~$25M from the World Bank; its US-listed shares are down from $60+ in 2021 to $6, valuing Jumia at $743M

More: Business Insider, Nairametrics, and WeeTracker

Wall Street Journal:

The NYC Council sent letters to Polymarket, Kalshi, Coinbase, and Gemini Titan as it investigates alleged deceptive marketing practices and targeting minors

More: City of New York, International Business Times, The Hill, CNBC, Fortune, CBS News, Washington Examiner, The Crypto Times, UPI, Quartz, Reuters, CoinGape, Blockonomi, crypto.news, Bloomberg Law, and Joe.My.God.

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:

AI code-testing startup Blacksmith raised a $45M Series B led by Peak XV Partners at a $550M valuation, up from $60M after it raised a $10M Series A in 2025

More: FinSMEs and WOWTALE

Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast:

Q&A with Redwood Research Chief Scientist Ryan Greenblatt on AI R&D, RSI, whether human expert data bottlenecks AI progress, token prices, alignment, and more

More: Dwarkesh Patel on YouTube and Don't Worry About the Vase

X: @agupta, @ryangreenblatt, @dwarkesh_sp, @dwarkesh_sp, @dwarkesh_sp, @_nathancalvin, @ryangreenblatt, and @sckimbriel

Nduka Orjinmo / Bloomberg:

Briter: Africa-focused startups raised $3.3B in H1 2026, up 73% YoY, driven by Zipline's $950M raise; US- and UAE-incorporated entities raised half the capital

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:

Bengaluru-based Yulu, which gets ~95% of its revenue from renting e-bikes to gig workers, raised a $93M Series C, sources say at a ~$170M post-money valuation

More: The Economic Times, Entrackr, Moneycontrol, Inc42, VCCircle, and Tech in Asia. X: @techcrunch

Bloomberg:

Sources: Singapore-based data center operator DayOne confidentially files for a US IPO, aiming to list as soon as next quarter, and is considering raising ~$5B

Earlier Picks

Chase DiFeliciantonio / Politico:

OpenAI VP of Global Policy Ann O'Leary says AI policy in the US is anchored in the states and still informed by California's AI transparency law passed in 2025

Alanna Okun / Bloomberg:

A look at Candy Crush's continued popularity 15 years after its launch, with an estimated 81.5M MAUs, 190.5M installs, and $876.5M in-app revenue in FY 2025

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:

The US CFTC uses its “emergency authority” to order Kalshi to continue operating in New York after the state filed a lawsuit in July seeking to shutter Kalshi

More: CFTC, Decrypt, The Crypto Times, Cointelegraph, Blockonomi, CoinGape, Unchained, Gizmodo, crypto.news, Bloomberg, Bitcoin News, The Block, Protos, and Blockchain.News

X: @iohk_charles, @quinnypig, @mollyisonchain, and @chairmanselig

Business Insider:

Sources: former OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil is aiming to raise $150M for a new AI science startup at a $750M+ valuation; Weil left OpenAI in April

More: Quartz, New York Times, CNBC, and The Indian Express. X: @kenwattana

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

CoreWeave reports Q2 revenue up 112% YoY to $2.58B, vs. $2.56B est., a $104B revenue backlog, and active power up nearly 500 MWs to 1.5 GW; CRWV jumps 20%+

More: Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Morningstar, Forbes, Business Wire, New York Times, CoinDesk, Blockonomi, Fortune, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, The Information, TheEnergyMag, RuntimeWire, Constellation Research, Quartz, Bloomberg, and Pulse 2.0

X: @midnight_captl, @oguzerkan, @firstadopter, @firstadopter, and @stocksavvyshay. Bluesky: @edzitron.com. Forums: r/wallstreetbets

See also Mediagazer

Dina Bass / Bloomberg:

Super Micro reports Q4 revenue up 93% YoY to $11.1B, below $11.3B est., and forecasts Q1 and FY 2027 revenue above est.; SMCI jumps 10%+, and is up 15%+ YTD

More: Supermicro, The Crypto Basic, Dow Jones Newswires, Blockonomi, Reuters, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, Tech in Asia, Quartz, Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Yahoo Finance, and Barron's Online. Forums: r/SMCIDiscussion

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Similarweb: Bluesky's mobile MAUs fell 27% YoY to 10.4M in June and DAUs fell 26% YoY to 3M in July; X's mobile MAUs fell 3% to 302M and DAUs fell 7% to 123.7M

More: PR Daily, Manton Reece, Simon Owens's Media Newsletter, and Pixel Envy

Bluesky: @dannypalmer, @thebluenami, @davidallengreen, @ascottreid, @jamesrball.com, @simonlester.com, and @caseynewton. Mastodon: @davidgerard@circumstances.run

Forums: Hacker News and r/BlueskySocial

See also Mediagazer

Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:

SpaceXAI rolls out AI agent app Grok Bot in beta on macOS, iOS, Windows, and Linux, initially for SuperGrok Heavy, Cursor Ultra, and Cursor Teams Premium users