Techmeme
February 11, 2026, 12:40 PM

Top News

Matt Shumer:
GPT-5.3-Codex and Claude Opus 4.6 can meaningfully contribute to the improvement of AI models, a sign of what's coming for most knowledge work within five years  —  Think back to February 2020.  —  If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas.
Alex Heath / Sources:
Q&A with Fidji Simo on ChatGPT ads, OpenAI's efforts to ship a new model soon to end Sam Altman's Code Red, Anthropic's Super Bowl ads, Sora, Codex, and more  —  How ads in ChatGPT will work, what will end the Code Red, those Anthropic attack ads, working with Sam Altman, and much more...
Matthias Bastian / The Decoder:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI fired VP Ryan Beiermeister in January for alleged sexual discrimination; she had earlier raised concerns about the upcoming launch of adult mode  —  The executive, who was accused of sexual discrimination against a male employee, had raised concerns about upcoming launch of erotic content
New York Times:
xAI all-hands meeting: Elon Musk told employees that xAI needs a factory on the moon to build AI satellites and a massive catapult to launch them into space  —  In a meeting with employees at his company xAI, Mr. Musk revealed a vision for a facility that includes a giant catapult to launch his satellites into space.
Financial Times:
xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba says he is leaving, the sixth co-founder to depart; sources and social media posts show at least six researchers left in recent weeks  —  Jimmy Ba will be the sixth member of the founding team to depart  —  A sixth co-founder of Elon Musk's xAI is leaving …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
T-Mobile announces a network-level, AI-based Live Translation feature that supports 50+ languages, coming “this spring” in beta and available on 4G LTE and 5G  —  Live Translation will be available to beta testers ‘this Spring.’  —  T-Mobile is preparing to test …
Zoë Hitzig / New York Times:
An OpenAI researcher who helped shape how models were built and priced says she quit after two years due to “deep reservations” about ads and OpenAI's strategy  —  This week, OpenAI started testing ads on ChatGPT.  I also resigned from the company after spending two years …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok US launches an opt-in Local Feed for content tied to travel, news, events, shopping, and dining near the user's current location, after changing its ToS  —  TikTok on Wednesday announced the launch of a new “Local Feed” in the U.S. version of the app, which displays content related to travel …
More: The Verge, Engadget, and 9to5Mac
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Source: to catch leakers, OpenAI security staff use a custom ChatGPT with access to Slack, email, and docs by cross-referencing news articles with access logs  —  Here at The Information, we're always trying to break through the hype to understand how folks are actually using AI in the real world.
Isomorphic Labs:
Tim De Chant / TechCrunch:
Inertia, cofounded by ex-Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson to build one of the world's most powerful lasers for a grid-scale fusion power plant, raised a $450M Series A  —  Inertia Enterprises has raised $450 million to build one of the world's most powerful lasers, which it hopes will serve as the foundation …
More: Axios and Bloomberg
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Docs: London-based AI chip startup Olix, founded by James Dacombe, CEO of brain monitoring startup CoMind, raised $220M led by Hummingbird at a $1B+ valuation  —  London-based Olix targets development of AI chips that are faster and cheaper than Nvidia's  —  A 25-year-old British entrepreneur …
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch:
Meridian, which uses AI to make financial modeling and spreadsheets more “predictable and auditable”, exits stealth and raised a $17M seed at a $100M valuation  —  The fight to tame spreadsheets with AI isn't over yet.  A new company called Meridian has emerged from stealth …
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
A study of 596 Indian high-tech startups suggests that homegrown entrepreneurs fare better over the long run than returning diaspora with overseas experience  —  India's fiercely competitive startup field has provided evidence to suggest that homegrown entrepreneurs fare better over the long run …
Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg:
Austin-based humanoid robot startup Apptronik raised $520M led by Google and others at a $5.5B+ valuation, up ~3x from when it raised $415M in February 2025  —  Apptronik, a fast-growing startup that makes artificial intelligence-powered humanoid robots, has secured about $520 million …
Deborah Sophia / Reuters:
Shopify reports Q4 revenue up 31% YoY to $3.7B, vs. $3.59B est., net income down 43% YoY to $743M, and forecasts Q1 revenue growth above est; SHOP drops 10%+  —  Shopify (SHOP.TO) projected quarterly revenue well above market estimates on Wednesday, as the e-commerce platform benefits …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Planned India Data Center Maintenance on 14th and 15th November 2026 from 06.00 AM to 07:00 AM IST for Zoho Payments  —  Dear customers,Our bi-annual infrastructure maintenance for our India Data Center is scheduled …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
The $1.4B Startup Deciding What You See When You Shop Online | Sequen's Zoë Weil
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.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
Too soon to call it a vibe shift?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
Storm Clouds Ahead For Apple?, Debating Amazon's Bee Frontier, AI as UI
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
Jensen Huang's Nvidiotic Spy Scandal + Can Dems Pass AI Regulation?
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Encore: Chuck Klosterman on Why Football Owns TV (and Why It Won't Forever)
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Invest Like the Best:
Zach Reitano - Building Ro and Why Healthcare Should Be 50% of GDP
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:40 PM ET, February 11, 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.

More News

Amy Feldman / Forbes:

Earlier Picks

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Gideon Lewis-Kraus / New Yorker:
Max Buondonno / The Shortcut:
The Verge:
New York Times: