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Techmeme
October 20, 2026, 1:15 PM
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Top News

OpenAI:
OpenAI says its new models are better for building and migrating software in low-resource legacy programming languages like COBOL, Fortran, and Visual Basic  —  Our latest model advances bring stronger capabilities for building and migrating software in low-resource programming languages such as COBOL, Fortran, and Visual Basic.
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
DeepSeek open-sources DeepInfer, its high-performance inference framework that powers its production services, starting with support for DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash  —  DeepSeek is opening up the software it uses to run its artificial intelligence models at scale, potentially making its technology cheaper and easier for businesses to run.
Bloomberg:
Google says Cloud services in its London region are recovering after a “power event” caused a multi-hour outage that affected Revolut and several European banks  —  A Google Cloud outage in Europe that knocked out digital bank Revolut Ltd. and other online services for several hours …
Jason Hiner / The Deep View:
Inception debuts Mercury 3, a diffusion LLM that it says tops GPT-6 Luna, Claude Haiku 5.5, and GLM-5.3 Flash on agentic benchmarks while being 4x to 8x faster  —  W  —  hile the AI industry has bet heavily on LLMs and the massive data centers needed to scale them, one of the neolabs betting …
Mike Allen / Axios:
Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, plans to leave in 2027 after 15+ years as Mark Zuckerberg's top DC adviser; Kaplan has close Trump ties  —  Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, will leave Meta next year after 15+ years as Mark Zuckerberg's top Washington adviser.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Apple says it will commit up to $100M over three years to Pennsylvania-based Perryman, a titanium supplier for the iPhone Duo, and expand its Qnity partnership  —  Apple is adding a U.S. titanium supplier for its new iPhone Duo and expanding domestic production of camera components …
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Amazon pledges to spend €16B+ in Germany in 2027 on AWS and AI data centers, its Leo satellite internet, Prime Video media production, and a Berlin robotics lab  —  Amazon.com Inc. said it will invest more than €16 billion ($17.9 billion) next year in Germany for operations including data centers …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify launches paid podcast memberships in 34 markets, including the US; creators can offer perks like bonus content or fewer ads and keep 90% of revenue  —  Spotify on Tuesday launched paid memberships, a new way for podcasters to make money from their biggest fans beyond paywalled bonus episodes.
Politico:
Sources: OpenAI has retreated from advocating for strict export controls on US chipmakers selling to China, a boon for Nvidia and aligning with President Trump  —  OpenAI has changed its tune on China.  Nvidia is a big winner.  —  OpenAI for much of last year advocated for strict limits …
Bloomberg:
The US sanctions Chinese VC firm MiraclePlus for financing Zhisuan, founded by Ding Linwei, who in 2026 was convicted of stealing Google's AI trade secrets  —  Washington has blacklisted a Chinese venture firm established by ex-Microsoft Corp. AI scientist Lu Qi for alleged ties to a startup accused …
Paul Sandle / Reuters:
The UK CMA proposes that Apple lower fees and remove technical barriers to its contactless tech to help Apple Pay rivals; a consultation runs until November 17  —  Britain's competition regulator said on Tuesday it was seeking to loosen Apple's grip on contactless payments by proposing …
Sam Biddle / The Intercept:
Leaked documents detail ECHOTRIBBLE, a nascent US Army Cyber Command program for agentic AI to autonomously navigate networks to identify and neutralize targets  —  Documents obtained by The Intercept show the military is trying to deploy autonomous AI agents to hack its adversaries.
Chris Metinko / Axios:
Firefly, whose AI software connects with existing cameras, radios, and sensors to detect incidents and coordinate real-time responses, raised a $20M Series A  —  Firefly, a physical AI safety startup, emerged from stealth with a $20 million Series A led by Definition Capital, CEO James Batt Buckley tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Shakeel Hashim / Transformer:
Anthropic's leaked federal AI bill draws widespread criticism from AI safety advocates for being significantly weaker than the bipartisan FRONTIER Act  —  Anthropic has always positioned itself as the AI safety company: the one that will take costly actions and push for tough AI regulation, even if that harms its own interests.
Dana Wollman / Bloomberg:
Salesforce agrees to acquire AI-powered marketing platform Braze for nearly $5.7B in enterprise value, paying $47.50 per share, set to close from February 2027  —  Salesforce Inc. has agreed to buy Braze Inc., an artificial intelligence-powered platform for marketers, for almost $5.7 billion in enterprise value.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Eric Schmidt, who owns ~1% of Anthropic after investing tens of millions in its Series A, is poised to have one of the largest windfalls from its IPO  —  Former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt owns around 1% of Anthropic PBC thanks to his early investment in the startup …
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare debuts Clairic, a System One-class extraction model it says processes unstructured data faster, more cheaply, and more accurately than normal LLMs  —  Today, we're announcing a preview of a new class of System One-style models: extraction models.

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Zoho:
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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:15 PM ET, October 20, 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

Rajeev Syal / The Guardian:
A UK jury convicts two Iranians of assisting Iranian intelligence in a plan to “eliminate” journalists at London-based Persian broadcaster Iran International

Finya Swai / The Hill:
In an unprecedented move, Reporters Without Borders calls for impeachment of FCC Chair Brendan Carr, accusing him of politically tinged investigations and more

Mark Stenberg / Adweek:
Q&A with WaPo Executive Editor Matt Murray, who says the outlet is close to breaking even financially and expects 2027 will be its best year in seven years

More News

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Seoul-based data center infrastructure company Elice falls 30%+ in its Kosdaq debut, the worst-ever opening day for a sizable Korean IPO, after raising ~$151M
Reuters:
Sources: OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments before Anthropic's expected mid-November IPO, at a $1.4T+ valuation; source: OpenAI could raise ~$30B
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Ted Sarandos complained for months that Netflix was short on new hit shows and lower US watch time; Netflix just fired its film chief and content chief
John Koetsier / Forbes:
Dream Labs, which offers a public API for its Dream-1 robot foundation model trained on human videos, raised a $90M seed led by B Capital and Kindred Ventures
Bloomberg:
Sources: Nscale is in talks for a second deal with Anthropic worth ~$45B to deliver 460MW of computing power at its West Virginia campus using Vera Rubin chips
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:
Town, which develops enterprise AI assistants, raised a $108M Series B at a $1B valuation led by Forerunner and Menlo, after announcing a $55M Series A in June
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