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February 18, 2026, 10:15 AM
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Abu Sultan / Reuters:
Microsoft says it is on pace to invest $50B by 2030 to help expand AI across the Global South, after unveiling $17.5B worth of AI investments in India in 2025  —  Microsoft (MSFT.O) on Wednesday said it is on pace to invest $50 billion by the end of the decade to help expand AI to countries across the ‘Global South’.
Shruti Rajagopalan / Get Down and Shruti:
A look at India's sensible AI regulation, promising foundation models, chip ambitions, energy constraints, startup ecosystem, and blossoming venture funding
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Perplexity says it has no plans to further pursue ads, which it introduced in 2024, after phasing them out in late 2025 over fears they would erode user trust  —  Leading start-ups have recently embraced sponsors as they search for revenue  —  AI start-up Perplexity has abandoned advertising …
Joe Miller / Financial Times:
How US citizens, clergy, and elected officials in conservative communities like Missouri are leading a grassroots rebellion against the Trump-backed AI boom  —  Republicans fear backlash against White House agenda could undermine support in this year's midterm elections
Financial Times:
Meta commits to buying millions of Nvidia Blackwell and Rubin GPUs in a multiyear deal; a source says Meta's in-house AI chip strategy had technical challenges  —  Social media group will purchase millions of chips even as it tries to develop its own AI hardware
Anthropic:
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.6 with improvements in coding, computer use, instruction following, and more; 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 …
More: The Register, Every, Claude, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, The Decoder, The Indian Express, Latent.Space, Help Net Security, Digit, Business Standard, Cyber Security News, Neowin, XDA Developers, Moneycontrol, Silicon Republic, iClarified, The Economic Times, crypto.news, VentureBeat, The Deep View, Runtime, InfoWorld, Simon Willison's Weblog, Mashable, MacRumors, Android Headlines, WinBuzzer, Axios, The Verge, Forbes, TechRepublic, Claude, Tom's Guide, CNET, CNBC, ZDNET, The New Stack, SiliconANGLE, ITPro, and About Amazon
X: @clairevo, @zck, @levie, @andonlabs, @artificialanlys, @scaling01, @aakashgupta, @jack_raines, @boringbiz_, @chatgpt21, @blondesnmoney, @claudeai, @sleepinyourhat, @therundownai, @felixrieseberg, @abcampbell, @alexalbert__, @claudeai, @kimmonismus, @alexalbert__, @scaling01, @bcherny, @scaling01, @scaling01, @daniellefong, @dejavucoder, @trungtphan, @artificialanlys, @alexalbert__, @github, @alexfinn, @isidoremiller, @awscloud, @benbajarin, @davidondrej1, @mweinbach, @birdyword, @llmjunky, @inductionheads, @daniel_mac8, @chongdashu, @artificialanlys, @zapier, @juanpa, @lexnlin, @felixrieseberg, @gregkamradt, @scaling01, @alexpalcuie, @jkeatn, @cnbc, @wadefoster, @box, @chatgpt21, @thezachmueller, @arcprize, @kimmonismus, @andonlabs, @aibattle_, @openrouter, @adocomplete, @scaling01, @danshipper, @willccbb, @iruletheworldmo, @danshipper, @sean_t_strong, @claudeai, @andrewcurran_, @claudeai, @claudeai, and @lentils80
LinkedIn: Thomas Li, Artificial Analysis, Cal Rueb, and Claude
Bluesky: @timkellogg.me, @mergesort.me, and @pekka
Forums: Hacker News, r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, r/singularity, r/ClaudeAI, Slashdot, and MacRumors Forums
Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
Q&A with Synthesia co-founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli on growing the London-based enterprise AI video platform, hitting a $4B valuation, regulation, and more  —  The founder of the $4bn UK start-up talks about his mission to reinvent content creation and how Europe can compete in the global AI race
Rachel Swan / San Francisco Chronicle:
Tesla agrees to stop using the term “autopilot” to market its EVs in California to avoid a 30-day suspension by the state's DMV, resolving a long-running battle  —  Tesla has stopped using the term “autopilot” to market its electric vehicles in California in order to avoid a 30 …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google schedules I/O 2026 for May 19 to 20 in Mountain View, teasing the “latest AI breakthroughs and updates” in Gemini, Android, and more  —  Following the puzzle this morning, Google has announced that I/O 2026 is taking place May 19-20.  —  I/O 2026 will feature …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $200M from Autodesk, part of a larger round; the companies are exploring integrating World Labs' AI models in Autodesk products  —  Fei-Fei Li's World Labs has secured a $200 million investment from software design giant Autodesk.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Canva COO Cliff Obrecht says the company hit $4B in ARR at the end of 2025, had 265M+ MAUs and 31M+ paid users, and expects to IPO in the next “couple of years”  —  Creative company Canva ended 2025 on a high note with a 20% increase in monthly active users, growth that was partially propelled by adoption of its AI tools.
Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:
SEC filing: Peter Thiel and Founders Fund have fully exited ETHZilla, down from a 7.5% stake in August 2025; ether is down 60% from its August 2025 peak  —  Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel and his Founders Fund have fully exited ETHZilla Corp., according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Alexandre Rajbhandari / Bloomberg:
Filings: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway cut its Amazon stake by 75%+ to ~2.3M shares in Q4 2025; Berkshire bought 5.1M NYT shares, worth ~$352M in December  —  Berkshire Hathaway Inc. slashed its holding in Amazon.com Inc. by more than 75% in the fourth quarter, while also building …
Krystal Hur / Wall Street Journal:
A Las Vegas federal appeals court rejects Kalshi's emergency bid for an administrative stay on Nevada's push to block the platform, a major setback for Kalshi  —  A federal appeals court rejected Kalshi's bid, setting the stage for Nevada's civil-enforcement proceedings
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Digital savings startup Vestwell raised a $385M Series E co-led by Blue Owl and Sixth Street, after a $125M Series D in 2023, taking its total funding to $660M  —  Vestwell, a digital savings platform, has raised $385 million in a Series E funding round co-led by Blue Owl Capital and Sixth Street Growth.
More: Axios and FinSMEs
David Singleton / flurries of latent creativity:
Dreamer, founded by former Stripe CTO David Singleton, Hugo Barra, and others, launches in beta to let technical and non-technical users build agentic AI apps  —  Dreamer is the name of the platform and company I started with Hugo, Nicholas and others a little over a year ago.

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From Mediagazer

Joe Flint / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: David Ellison has asked CNN CEO Mark Thompson to stay on after the WBD acquisition closes; Thompson's current deal extends into 2027

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Disney plans a TV restructuring that is expected to result in more layoffs and consolidation of divisions as it pivots from linear TV toward streaming

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
The UK's Independent reports 2025 revenue up 4% YoY to £55.1M, of which £13.3M is from the US and Canada, and pre-tax profit up 9% YoY to £3.5M

More News

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
YouTube fully restores its services after resolving a brief outage on February 17 starting at around 7:45pm ET due to a recommendations system issue
TechCrunch:
Emergent, which offers an AI-powered software development service, says it is generating annual run-rate revenue of $100M+, just eight months after launch

Earlier Picks

Elias Schisgall / Wall Street Journal:
Palo Alto Networks reports Q2 revenue up 15% YoY to $2.6B, above $2.58B est., and projects Q3 adjusted EPS below estimates; PANW drops 7%+
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Stripe's stablecoin firm Bridge wins conditional approval from the US OCC to form a national trust bank, which would allow it to issue and manage stablecoins
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is ramping up work on AI wearables with cameras and Siri, such as smart glasses, AirPods, and a pendant that can be worn as a necklace or pinned
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