Techmeme
August 19, 2026, 12:45 PM

Top News

Ina Fried / Axios:
OpenAI changed safety practices and paused RL training for two weeks after the Hugging Face breach and evidence Astra may have met a critical cyber threshold  —  OpenAI said Tuesday that it has made several changes to its safety practices following its determination that an upcoming system …
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI's Q2 sales grew 18% QoQ to $6.7B as its loss jumped 32% to $12.3B; Anthropic's sales grew 2x+ to $11.6B as it swung to a small operating profit  —  The ChatGPT-maker's revenue disappointed some investors, although the company told them its growth accelerated in the third quarter
Alex Isenstadt / Axios:
Memo: GOP asks AI companies to stem the backlash against data centers, saying the issue could kill the party's chances of holding a vital Senate seat in Ohio  —  The Senate GOP campaign arm, in a private memo to top AI companies, warns that toxic views of U.S. data centers are killing …
Wall Street Journal:
US tech companies are offering community investments, guaranteed jobs, and hosting open houses to address concerns and win public support for AI data centers  —  Tech companies are holding listening sessions, offering guaranteed jobs and writing big checks to win public support for the data centers they need.
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon plans to expand Prime Air drone deliveries to cities in at least five more US states in the coming months, including Chicago and Atlanta by 2026's end  —  Amazon.com Inc. plans to expand its drone delivery operation to cities in at least five more US states in the coming months …
Wired:
Reconstructed code from Flock's login pages reveals OS Investigate, a new AI system that integrates license plate scans, arrest records, case files, and more  —  Flock's surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage.  WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police …
Dana Wollman / Bloomberg:
Marvell and Google expand their chip development deal, and Marvell grants Google a warrant to buy up to nearly 59M shares at $206.58 each, totaling up to $12.2B  —  Marvell Technology Inc. has agreed to give Alphabet Inc.'s Google rights to buy as much as $12.2 billion of its shares in exchange for purchasing chips.
Jowi Morales / Tom's Hardware:
A hacker known as Cyberleek leaks two GTA VI gameplay clips and the full map in protest of Rockstar Games' digital-only release; Rockstar issues DMCA takedowns  —  The hacker wants Rockstar to stop pre-selling digital games. … GTA VI is one of the most hotly anticipated games in history …
Zijing Wu / Financial Times:
Alexander Martin / The Record:
AI evaluation lab Irregular's report on its role in hacking incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta models faces criticism over key unanswered questions  —  The company at the center of a series of incidents in which AI models compromised real-world computer systems during supposedly …
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Cerebras unveils CS-4, a server rack with 50% fewer components built on its new Nexus architecture and powered by three WSE-3 Turbo chips, available in Q3 2026  —  Cerebras Systems (CBRS.O) announced on Tuesday a new version of its server hardware that includes its dinner-plate-sized chips that it says will speed AI chatbot queries.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Block releases Berd, a desktop app it built to give its employees a single environment for working with AI agents across different models, under Apache 2.0  —  Block, the technology company founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that owns Square, Cash App and the music streaming service Tidal …
Murad Hemmadi / The Logic:
Sources: Veeda, which is developing world models and is led by ex-Nvidia VP of AI Research Sanja Fidler, raised a $90M+ seed and is backed by Khosla and Radical  —  Toronto-based Veeda is building control systems for physical AI, and is backed by Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures, The Logic has learned
More: BetaKit and Unite.AI
X: @mascobot, @huanling6, and @zgojcicLinkedIn: Sanja Fidler
Pew Research Center:
Survey: 52% of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about increased AI use in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, including 55% of those under 30  —  Americans have become increasingly worried about artificial intelligence over the years, and young adults' concern has continued to climb.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Z.ai prices GLM-5.3 API access at $1.40/1M input tokens and $4.40/1M output tokens, unchanged from GLM-5.2; Kimi K3 costs $3/1M input and $15/1M output tokens  —  After a stunning debut last week with cyber capabilities so advanced they reportedly found a previously undetected vulnerability in Cursor …
@artificialanlys:
Bloomberg:
Hangzhou-based humanoid robot maker Unitree's stock surges 460% in its Shanghai trading debut, giving it a ~$50B market cap, after raising ~$904M in its IPO  —  Unitree Robotics shares surged 460% in their Shanghai trading debut after the company raised 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) …

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Earlier Picks

Denny Thomas / Bloomberg:
Anthropic:
New York Times:
Reuters:
Bloomberg: