Techmeme
February 17, 2026, 1:00 PM

Top News

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:
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
The Economic Times:
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.
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 …
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 …
Manus:
Manus launches Manus Agents, allowing users to access Manus directly inside messaging apps, starting with Telegram and coming soon to other platforms  —  Today, we're introducing Manus Agents — a new way to access and use Manus directly inside your messaging apps.  Telegram is the first supported channel.

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:
Simplifying benefits management in Zoho People  —  Let's consider a new hire on their first day of orientation.  They receive a brief introduction to the benefits plans, and almost immediately, questions start to surface …
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

Channels with Peter Kafka:
Inside Podcasting's Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and Creator Control
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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Uncapped with Jack Altman:
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Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Training Data:
Anthropic's Katelyn Lesse & Angela Jiang: Building an Ecosystem, not a Walled Garden
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:
John Kim - How to Raise a Few Billion Dollars
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Grit:
The Sales Framework Every Founder Needs | Mark Roberge
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
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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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More News

Stuart Biggs / Bloomberg:
Caroline Hyde / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: