Techmeme
February 17, 2026, 1:10 PM

Top News

Anthropic:
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.6 with improvements in coding, consistency, and more, for Free and Pro users; it features a 1M token context window in beta  —  Claude Sonnet 4.6 is our most capable Sonnet model yet.  It's a full upgrade of the model's skills across coding, computer use …
Nathan Bomey / Axios:
CFTC Chair Mike Selig says the commission will file friend-of-the-court briefs to defend its exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets amid state lawsuits  —  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is launching a legal campaign to defend its regulatory turf on prediction markets …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Nicolas Bustamante / @nicbstme:
How LLMs are dismantling the moats that made vertical SaaS defensible, and why the market selloff is structurally justified but temporally exaggerated  —  In the past few weeks, nearly $1 trillion was wiped from software and services stocks.  FactSet dropped from a $20B peak to under $8B.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
The European Commission opens a full DSA investigation into Shein over sales of child-like sex dolls that “could constitute child sexual abuse material”  —  Shein risks hefty European Union penalties after regulators opened a full-scale probe into sales of child-like sex dolls on the Chinese e-commerce platform.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Automattic adds an AI assistant to WordPress.com, enabling users to perform site-wide layout and style modifications via natural language commands  —  WordPress.com, the website hosting platform from Automattic, will now include a built-in WordPress AI assistant, the company announced on Tuesday.
Macarena Munoz Montijano / Bloomberg:
Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez says he asked the country's prosecutor office to investigate X, TikTok, and Meta over the alleged “creation and dissemination” of CSAM  —  Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he is using special public-interest powers to ask the country's prosecutor office …
Pierre Paulden / Bloomberg:
Palantir moves its HQ from Denver to Miami, as the city's leadership aims to turn it into the next Silicon Valley, with backing of billionaires like Ken Griffin  —  Palantir Technologies Inc. said it's moved its headquarters to Miami from Denver as more tech firms seek to base themselves …
Anthony Hughes / Bloomberg:
SEC filing: Liftoff withdraws its IPO filing without specifying a reason, less than two weeks after the mobile ad platform postponed plans to price its IPO  —  Liftoff Mobile Inc. withdrew its IPO filing, less than two weeks after the mobile advertising platform operator said it was postponing plans to raise as much as $762 million.
Chris Metinko / Axios:
Braintrust, which helps companies evaluate and monitor their AI tools' performance, raised an $80M Series B led by Iconiq at an $800M post-money valuation  —  Braintrust, a startup building AI observability and evaluation tools, raised an $80 million Series B led by Iconiq …
Urvi Dugar / Reuters:
Indian conglomerate Adani Group announces plans to invest $100B to build renewable energy-powered AI-ready data centers across India by 2035  —  Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS) said on Tuesday that the group will invest $100 billion to build renewable energy-powered AI-ready data centres by 2035 …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple debuts iOS 26.4 beta 1 for developers, adding limited support for encrypted RCS messages, enhancements to Apple Music, and a Smart List for Reminders  —  iOS 26.4 beta 1 is now available in beta for developers.  The update includes a ton of new features and changes for iPhone users.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
From MCP to billing: Updates that accelerate hiring  —  TL;DRConnect your favorite AI tools to Zoho Recruit with Zoho Recruit MCP.Catch up on conversations faster with Zia email summaries.Review candidate context instantly …
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.

Featured Podcasts

Great Chat:
SPVs have a brand problem
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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Big Technology Podcast:
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth: Our Path To Frontier AI, Renting Models, Consumer AI's Struggles
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
"We're in a Race Against Time," Joe Kahn on Running the New York Times in the Age of AI Slop
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.
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Training Data:
Inside Zipline's Autonomous System: 140M Miles, Zero Incidents
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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Invest Like the Best:
Jeremy Giffon - The Billion Dollar PDF
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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Stuart Biggs / Bloomberg:
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