Analysis: Google DeepMind has lost frontier-model momentum amid leadership and RL talent departures, with Google Cloud emerging as a winner with more compute (SemiAnalysis)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 05:20:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: Google's AI shakeup is a seismic shift in the works for months and cements Sergey Brin's influence, after execs became frustrated with Demis Hassabis (Financial Times)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 05:05:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: up to five people tied to US Cyber Command died by suicide from early June to early July 2026, prompting it to flag a potential suicide cluster (Bloomberg)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 04:05:02 -0400 · Techmeme

Filing: ex-a16z partner Bryan Kim is forming venture firm Mido Capital; sources: he plans to raise ~$100M for a fund backing early-stage AI and other startups (Yuliya Chernova/Wall Street Journal)

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 02:16:06 -0400 · Techmeme

SpaceX and Tesla plan to initially invest $16.8B to build Terafab in Grimes County, Texas; combined demand from SpaceX and Tesla is forecast to top 1 TW (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:50:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: DeepSeek has resumed its funding round, seeking $8B at a $74B valuation, after pausing talks following the leak of Liang Wenfeng's remarks to investors (Bloomberg)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:30:37 -0400 · Techmeme

Meta's Muse Spark 1.2 scores 54 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, putting Meta next to SpaceXAI in a tie for third place amongst US labs (Artificial Analysis)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:20:00 -0400 · Techmeme

Filing: DeepSeek has invested ~$20.8M in Unitree Robotics' Shanghai IPO and agreed to jointly develop AI models for humanoid machines (Eduardo Baptista/Reuters)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:10:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Ooredoo, Nvidia, Nokia, and Indosat launch Zankore, Indonesia's first dedicated AI compute and neocloud platform; Ooredoo, which owns a 49% stake, commits $800M (Melissa Hancock/Fortune)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:01:14 -0400 · Techmeme

Chainalysis: violent crypto attacks stole $30M+ in H1 2026, on track to exceed 2025's $58M total; France is the primary hotspot with 30 publicly known cases (Naga Avan-Nomayo/The Block)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:55:08 -0400 · Techmeme

Google is expanding its Gemini-powered Ask Maps feature in English to 130+ countries and adds agentic food ordering, hotel booking, and attraction searching (Jada Jones/ZDNET)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:42:20 -0400 · Techmeme

Rockstar says it will show an "extended look" at Grand Theft Auto VI on August 27, premiering on Netflix at 3pm ET before streaming on YouTube at 9pm ET (Andrew Webster/The Verge)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:30:33 -0400 · Techmeme

Lumilens, which is building data center optical-interconnection tech to replace wires with light, raised $700M at a $5.5B valuation, for $900M in total funding (Anissa Gardizy/Wall Street Journal)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:10:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Filing: Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics prices its Shanghai IPO at ~$22/share, aiming to sell 40.4M shares to raise $904M; Unitree shipped 5,500+ robots in 2025 (Bloomberg)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:40:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Defense tech company Hadrian raised a $1.37B Series D at an $8B valuation to expand its factories and Opus software platform, after a $260M Series C in 2025 (Colin Demarest/Axios)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 06:20:01 -0400 · Techmeme

China launches a formal national security review of Palo Alto Networks products sold in the Chinese market, citing a need to protect critical infrastructure (Alan Wong/Bloomberg)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 06:05:01 -0400 · Techmeme

SoftBank reports Q1 net profit down 18% YoY to ~$2.2B, above ~$761M est., an ~$8.2B gain on its Intel stake, and Vision Fund up $1.7B due to its ByteDance stake (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 05:50:00 -0400 · Techmeme

Google centralizes its AI leadership at Mountain View in a bid to catch its rivals; Sebastian Borgeaud, who led a major AI coding effort, moved from the UK (Bloomberg)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 05:40:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Nintendo reports Q1 revenue down 10% YoY to ~$3.3B, above $2.8B est., net income of ~$933M, above ~$495M est., and Switch 2 sales down 34.4% YoY to 3.82M (Jenny Lee/CNBC)

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 05:25:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Developers in Africa are increasingly choosing Chinese open-source AI models over US models, saying they are downloadable, easier to customize, and much cheaper (New York Times)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:45:00 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming told employees at an all-hands last month that the company will not use model distillation to accelerate capabilities (The Information)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:40:14 -0400 · Techmeme

How Pringles maker Kellanova is using AI and a partnership with Siemens to improve production of the chip in Europe, including making digital twins of its dough (Isabelle Bousquette/Wall Street Journal)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:25:04 -0400 · Techmeme

Anthropic confirms it is building an in-house silicon team to design custom chips for Claude, co-designing hardware and models and using a "multi-chip approach" (Tom Carter/Business Insider)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:01:03 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: Google is in talks with AI coding agent startup Mechanize on a possible deal, potentially worth $1.5B+, to hire some of its talent and license its tech (Business Insider)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:30:02 -0400 · Techmeme

FanDuel parent Flutter says CEO Peter Jackson is stepping down, replaced by President Dan Taylor, and reports a lower profit outlook as its US business falters (Wall Street Journal)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:25:02 -0400 · Techmeme

The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal rejects Google's bid to block a class action alleging it overcharged businesses for search ads and abused its dominance (Upmanyu Trivedi/Bloomberg)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:20:03 -0400 · Techmeme

Google says it will begin removing Google Assistant from Android and Wear OS devices on September 4, replaced by Gemini; Assistant will remain on connected cars (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:10:02 -0400 · Techmeme

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says the company plans to spend $10B+ "over the coming years" to deploy 120K driverless vehicles, aiming to be in 15+ cities in 2026 (Financial Times)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:35:02 -0400 · Techmeme

Shopify reports Q2 revenue up 34% YoY to $3.58B, above $3.45B est., GMV up 32% YoY to $115.57B, and forecasts Q3 revenue growth above est.; SHOP jumps 15%+ (Deborah Sophia/Reuters)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:25:02 -0400 · Techmeme

Uber reports Q2 revenue up 12% YoY to $14.19B, below $14.24B est., Gross Bookings up 24% YoY to $58B, above $57B est., and forecasts Q3 adjusted EPS below est. (Lora Kolodny/CNBC)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:18:53 -0400 · Techmeme

Circle reports Q2 revenue up 7% YoY to $701M, below $712M est., net income of $48M, vs. $43M est., and USDC circulation at $73.4B on June 30; CRCL fell 20% YTD (Olga Kharif/Bloomberg)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:45:02 -0400 · Techmeme

Study: Palantir's European units made €440.5M in 2024 revenue but reported far smaller profit margins than its US operations, helping cut its European tax bills (Antoaneta Roussi/Politico)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:35:15 -0400 · Techmeme

Disney announces a global deal with TikTok to bring "thoughtfully curated" fan-created short-form videos based on Disney's IP to Disney+'s vertical feed Verts (Brooks Barnes/New York Times)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:20:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Dubai-based vehicle fleet management startup Moove raised $250M led by Abu Dhabi's Mubadala at a $2.1B valuation to build autonomous vehicle "nests" for docking (Loni Prinsloo/Bloomberg)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:15:07 -0400 · Techmeme

A World Bank report says developing economies stand to benefit more from AI boosting their workers' output than they will lose in jobs being replaced by AI (Joseph Cotterill/Financial Times)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:25:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Convex, which provides an AI-optimized application backend for developers, raised a $57M Series B led by Insight Partners, taking its total funding to $110.5M (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:20:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Analysis: in 2026 so far, US police arrested at least 37 people in connection to data center protests and intervened to prevent confrontations in 12 more cases (Joe Wilkins/Futurism)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:55:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Obsidian Security, which helps companies secure AI agents, raised an $85M Series D at a $1.1B valuation, after raising a $90M Series C in April 2022 (Akash Sriram/Reuters)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:15:01 -0400 · Techmeme

HappyRobot, which uses AI to automate freight operator communications, raised a $150M Series C at a $1.2B valuation, after a $44M Series B in September 2025 (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:05:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: Polymarket is in early talks with prospective investors to raise ~$1B at a $20B+ valuation, up from $15B in April 2026 and $9B in October 2025 (Todd Gillespie/Bloomberg)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:40:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: Anthropic agreed to a $10B deal for computing capacity in Norway from Nvidia-backed AI cloud startup Volta Infra, which says the deal is for six years (Bloomberg)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:25:29 -0400 · Techmeme

AI cloud startup Volta Infra raised $300M led by a16z and Altimeter at a $2.4B valuation and says it landed a $10B contract with an unnamed leading AI developer (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:35:03 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: CXMT is set to manufacture small quantities of LPDDR6 smartphone memory around 2026's end, as it seeks to compete with Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung (Bloomberg)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:20:00 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: the FCC is drafting a restriction on US imports of new models of Chinese data center optical transceivers, set to take effect upon publication in 2026 (Alexandra Alper/Reuters)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:10:03 -0400 · Techmeme

Uber is defending 4,000+ rider sexual-violence lawsuits by aggressively examining plaintiffs' drinking, clothing, and more, after promising to protect survivors (Emily Steel/New York Times)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:00:36 -0400 · Techmeme

In a rare interview, Huawei's top chip scientist, Liao Heng, warns of the looming physical limits Western chipmakers face and lauds Huawei's Tau Scaling Law (Bloomberg)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:50:01 -0400 · Techmeme

Sources: the US is focused on promoting US AI models to be more competitive, after officials considered taking a more interventionist approach to open-source AI (New York Times)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:35:02 -0400 · Techmeme

Bending Spoons agrees to acquire Airtable in an all-cash deal valuing the US software company at $1.285B, set to close by 2026's end, its first post-IPO deal (Reuters)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:30:00 -0400 · Techmeme

How Wall Street learned to love the blockchain, as US regulators accept tokenized assets and other tech can offer significant advantages in speed and efficiency (Nikou Asgari/Financial Times)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:25:19 -0400 · Techmeme