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October 20, 2026, 11:35 AM
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Top News

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 …
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.
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 …
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Amazon pledges to spend €16B+ in Germany in 2027 on AWS and AI data centers, its Leo satellite program, 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 …
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Apple commits up to $100M over three years to Pennsylvania-based Perryman Company, a titanium supplier for the iPhone Duo, and expands its Qnity partnership  —  Apple is adding a U.S. titanium supplier for its new iPhone Duo and expanding domestic production of camera components for the iPhone 18 Pro …
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:
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 …
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.
Paul Sandle / Reuters:
The UK CMA proposes measures requiring Apple to provide easier access to its contactless tech and reduce access fees, with a consultation until November 17  —  Britain's competition regulator said on Tuesday it was seeking to loosen Apple's grip on contactless payments by proposing …
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.
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.
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 …
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.
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  —  The leaked draft bill is weaker than the FRONTIER Act and makes Anthropic's safety-first pitch ring hollow
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  —  OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments before rival Anthropic's expected public market debut in mid-November …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:35 AM 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

Jake Kanter / Deadline:
Internal email: BBC News will cut 100+ roles, saving £5.5M, taking its total savings to £30.5M; it must contribute £51M toward the BBC's £500M savings target

Alan Livsey / Financial Times:
Specialist lenders are using AdSense data to assess YouTubers and fund them in exchange for a share of future earnings, as mainstream banks shy away

Brian Stelter / CNN:
CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour says she plans to leave in June 2027, after 43 years with the network; her PBS show ends in December

More News

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
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Ted Sarandos complained for months of a lack of new Netflix hit shows and US watch time being down; Netflix just fired its film chief and content chief

Earlier Picks

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
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
Ramp says it applied to the US OCC for a trust bank charter that, if approved, would allow it to offer fiduciary investment management and digital asset custody
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
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Developers and vibe coders are using AI tools like Claude Code to remove sponsored ads on their smart TVs, speed up app launchers, disable tracking, and more
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