Techmeme
February 9, 2026, 9:55 AM

Top News

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
A look at the 2026 Super Bowl ads from Anthropic, Meta, Amazon, Google, and others, as AI continued to take center stage in ad creation and AI product promotion  —  Following last year's trend of showcasing AI in multimillion-dollar ad spots, the 2026 Super Bowl advertisements took …
Stevie Bonifield / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
The European Commission sends a statement of objections to Meta over WhatsApp blocking rival AI chatbots, warning it will take measures to avoid “serious” harm  —  Meta Platforms Inc. was given a European Union warning over policies that block the use of rival Artificial Intelligence assistants …
CNBC:
Slack message: Sam Altman tells staff that ChatGPT is “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth”, and OpenAI plans to release “an updated Chat model” this week  —  As OpenAI faces intensifying pressure from rival Anthropic's improved coding tools, CEO Sam Altman …
Juro Osawa / The Information:
ByteDance debuts Seedance 2.0, a new version of its AI video generation model that can produce multi-shot scenes, available to select Jimeng and Jianying users  —  ByteDance's new AI video generation model Seedance 2.0, unveiled over the weekend, is generating a lot of buzz on social media, with some calling it a game changer.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
YouTube launches a Premium paywall for song lyrics on YouTube Music, after testing it in recent months; users get five free lyrics before they have to subscribe  —  After testing in recent months, YouTube Music looks to be widely rolling out a Premium paywall for lyrics.
Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph:
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek launches ai.com in beta during the Super Bowl and opens username registration to let users get a private, personalized AI agent  —  Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek's goal with ai.com is to build “a decentralized network of autonomous, self-improving AI agents …
Miles Kruppa / The Information:
Sources: Apollo nears a $3.4B loan deal to a Valor-led investment vehicle to buy and lease Nvidia chips to xAI; through fall 2025, xAI was burning $1B per month  —  Apollo Global Management, one of Wall Street's biggest private credit firms, is nearing a deal to lend about $3.4 billion …
More: Reuters
Amanda Chu / Politico:
How Oura won over DC by growing its lobbying spend to $1M+ per year, as RFK Jr. touts wearables for health and the US DOD makes the rings an employee benefit  —  It's paying off.  The Defense Department, Oura's largest customer, now provides rings to certain soldiers and civil servants as an employee benefit.
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Q&A with YouTube VP of Subscription Products Christian Oestlien on YouTube TV's future, the NFL and Oscars deals, its friendly rivalry with Netflix, and more  —  YouTube is going to start selling cheaper TV bundles for sports fans, news junkies  —  Happy Super Bowl Sunday …
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
Moltbook was peak AI theater, offering less of a glimpse at the future and more of a mirror simply reflecting society's current obsession with AI  —  For a few days this week the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots.
Dominic Chopping / Wall Street Journal:
PE firm Advent, FedEx, A&R, and PPF agree to acquire Polish automated parcel delivery company InPost for €7.8B; the company has 61K automated parcel lockers  —  The consortium says there is a clear path to significantly grow InPost's network and extend its reach across Europe
Julie Bort / TechCrunch:
Gather AI, which builds “curious” AI for drones and cameras to autonomously monitor warehouses, raised a $40M Series B, taking its total funding to $74M  —  Gather AI, a startup that offers an AI platform for warehouse cameras and drones, has raised a $40 million Series B funding round led by Smith Point Capital.
More: FinSMEs and Pulse 2.0
Alexandra Alter / New York Times:
How AI is impacting the romance novel industry, with authors failing to disclose AI use and using pen names more, bogging down the publishing ecosystem  —  The romance industry, always at the vanguard of technological change, is rapidly adapting to A.I. Not everyone is on board.

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Earlier Picks

Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Siddhant Khare:
The Hacker News:
Bloomberg:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: