Techmeme
August 19, 2026, 4:10 PM

Top News

Axios:
Letter: Stripe told investors January 1 marked the “beginning of the singularity”, a major inflection point in long-term trends, and H1 revenue rose 41% YoY  —  Stripe on Wednesday told investors that January 1st marked the “beginning of the singularity,” which it refers …
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.
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 …
Alex Isenstadt / Axios:
Memo: the GOP asks AI companies to stem the public backlash against data centers, saying the issue could kill its 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:
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review: a tougher body, an IP68 rating, and a decent triple rear camera, but an iterative hardware upgrade with a dated-looking design  —  The foldable phone market is in the middle of a huge transformation, but no one told Google.  —  Last year, Samsung transformed …
Julian Chokkattu / Wired:
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Hangzhou-based humanoid robot maker Unitree's stock surges 460% in its Shanghai trading debut, giving it a $50B+ market cap, after it raised ~$904M in its IPO  —  Unitree Robotics shares surged 460% in their Shanghai trading debut after the company raised 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) …
CNBC:
Sources: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an all-hands that OpenAI “will be a public company in 2027”, or sooner if “our business continues to inflect”  —  OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees during an all-hands meeting on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence lab …
Bloomberg:
Sources: AI chip startup Fractile is in talks to raise ~$600M at a $6.5B pre-money valuation, up from ~$1B in May, and has an initial ~$250M deal with Anthropic  —  Fractile, a startup developing chips tailored for artificial intelligence use that has a deal to supply Anthropic PBC …
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 …
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
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 …
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 …
The Information:
Source: Nvidia has discussed an investment in Mercor as part of a round valuing the startup at $20B; Nvidia paid Mercor tens of millions of dollars last quarter  —  Nvidia has discussed an investment in Mercor, a data labeling provider that helps the chip designer develop its open-source AI models …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's Bengaluru-based fintech Navi raised $100M from Prosus, its first institutional funding, sources say at a ~$1.3B valuation  —  Indian fintech Navi has raised $100 million from Prosus, marking the first institutional funding for the eight-year-old startup founded …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Amazon appears to have leaked Jason Statham's new film Mutiny, streaming it in full on Prime Video in the US, two days before it is supposed to hit theaters  —  The film isn't supposed to hit theaters for two days, but it's available to stream on Prime Video now.
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
Rachel Yeo / Bloomberg:
Kuaishou reports Q2 revenue up 1% YoY to ~$5.2B, meeting est., net income down 36% YoY to ~$467M, the biggest drop since 2021, and Kling AI sales up 200% YoY  —  Kuaishou Technology earnings fell the most in five years, hit by higher revenue sharing payouts to creators while artificial …

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Earlier Picks

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