Techmeme
August 21, 2026, 12:30 PM

Top News

Diana Olick / CNBC:
CBRE: NYC becomes the top tech talent market for the first time with 394,300 jobs, beating the Bay Area's 375,730, amid SF job cuts and NYC finance sector hires  —  It should come as no surprise that the number of artificial intelligence-specific tech workers is growing rapidly …
Bloomberg:
DeepSeek unveils an experimental multimodal version of its V4 Flash model, saying it nears the performance of Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on multimodal agentic tests  —  DeepSeek unveiled an experimental AI model that can understand visual prompts, saying the tool nears the performance of an advanced model by US rival Anthropic PBC.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Walmart, which has long resisted contactless Tap to Pay payments, says it will soon start rolling out the tech, which supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more  —  Apparently, hell has frozen over.  Walmart on Friday said it will finally accept payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay at its stores, including Walmart and Sam's Club.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Nevada approves permits letting Tesla deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in the Las Vegas area over the next year, while Waymo and Uber are each allowed up to 1,000  —  Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis.  —  The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla …
CNBC:
How the memory boom is reshaping Micron's hometown of Boise, Idaho: new millionaires, job growth, traffic, soaring housing costs, and uneven wealth distribution  —  Dave Petso has been a wealth manager in Boise, Idaho since the 1980s.  His business has survived multiple recessions …
Jenny Lee / CNBC:
Samsung unveils a $65.1B-$79.5B shareholder return package for 2026, combining dividends and share buybacks, calling it “the largest ever by a Korean company”  —  Samsung Electronics has announced a shareholder return package, marking a blockbuster week for shareholder returns …
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch:
Space data center startup Starcloud raised a $250M extension, at a $2.3B valuation, to its March $170M Series A; source: Nvidia invested $25M  —  Starcloud, a startup developing satellites that can perform AI inference in orbit, told TechCrunch that it has added a $250 million extension to its March $170 million Series A funding round.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
OpenAI debuts an Apple Messages plugin for ChatGPT on macOS, letting ChatGPT Work and Codex read, search, and analyze chats, draft and send messages, and more  —  Well, this seems interesting.  ChatGPT's latest update adds a new Mac integration: the ability to work with conversations from Apple's Messages app.
Kristin Robinson / Billboard:
Email: Apple tells music industry partners that songs tagged as “materially generated using AI” by content providers will now be visibly labeled on Apple Music  —  The news builds on Apple's recent announcement of AI Transparency Tags for songs.  Now, the service will soon make those disclosures visible to users.
Dawn Kopecki / Reuters:
How crypto, AI, and online betting companies emerged as the biggest industries shaping the 2026 US midterm races, as corporate spending reaches a record $517M  —  A handful of billionaires and companies are driving corporate spending in U.S. midterm elections this year …

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
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Featured Podcasts

Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let's Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
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Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
 

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Earlier Picks

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Newcomer:
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