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February 18, 2026, 11:50 AM
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| Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: |
OpenAI partners with six Indian education institutions, including IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad, and AIIMS New Delhi, to provide ChatGPT Edu access to 100K+ students — OpenAI is expanding its footprint in India and moving into the country's higher-education system through partnerships with leading academic institutions.
More: Microsoft, Digit, Moneycontrol, and Business Standard
| 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’.
More: Benzinga, DatacenterDynamics, CNN, Fortune India, Digit, Economic news, Tech in Asia, Blockonomi, and Hindustan Times. Forums: r/technology
| Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: |
| Shruti Rajagopalan / Get Down and Shruti: |
More: Project Syndicate and Marginal Revolution
X: @mafernando, @apurvasanghi, @pramodbiligiri, @mattooshashank, @pranaykotas, @srajagopalan, and @seemasirohi
LinkedIn: Vasu Eda, Shruti Rajagopalan, and Viren Mahurkar
| Himanshi Lohchab / The Economic Times: |
More: DatacenterDynamics, NVIDIA, TechCircle, The Hindu BusinessLine, Digit, Business Standard, and NVIDIA
| Todd Haselton / The Verge: |
Google unveils the $499 Pixel 10A, offering the same Tensor G4 chip as the 9A, 8GB of RAM, and an 11% brighter display, in 128GB and 256GB, shipping March 4 — Google's midrange Pixels have been our top pick for budget Android phones for a while. They offer good cameras and most of what you need at a budget-friendly price.
More: Livemint, Forbes, Tech Advisor, Business Standard, How-To Geek, Thurrott, CNET, Ars Technica, XDA Developers, Gizmodo, Engadget, Engadget, 9to5Google, The Keyword, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, Bloomberg, Android Authority, MobileSyrup, Android Central, PhoneArena, Wired, Digit, Android Headlines, iPhone in Canada, The Shortcut, Droid Life, and GSMArena.com
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Google expands Quick Share support with AirDrop to the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold, after launching it for Pixel 10 in November 2025 — After introducing on the Pixel 10 last year, Google is expanding Quick Share support with AirDrop to the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold.
More: Google Support, The Verge, Thurrott, Android Headlines, nextpit, PhoneArena, and Android Authority
| 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| Sophie McEvoy / GamesIndustry.biz: |
Matthew Ball's State of Video Gaming 2026 report: global video game content sales grew 5.3% YoY to $195.6B in 2025; job losses fell 40% YoY to 9,200 people — Private funding fell a further 55% last year, according to Epyllion's latest State of Video Gaming report
More: MatthewBall.co. X: @loudmouthjulia, @jamesekaplan, @jmoledina, @ballmatthew, @jonahblake, @ballmatthew, @ballmatthew, @ballmatthew, and @jonathanhawkins. LinkedIn: Jamil Moledina
Bluesky: @pedrothedagger, @mayteramarble, @felipepepe, and @hantani
| George Hammond / Financial Times: |
Sources: Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former Google DeepMind Principal Scientist David Silver, is raising a $1B seed led by Sequoia at a ~$4B valuation — Funding deal would value David Silver's start-up Ineffable Intelligence at $4bn — David Silver, one of Britain's top AI researchers …
More: The Economic Times, Sifted, Implicator.ai, David SIlver, Tech Funding News, and Capacity. X: @etnshow
| Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: |
Microsoft confirms a bug that let Microsoft 365 Copilot summarize confidential emails from Sent Items and Drafts folders, and deployed a fix in early February — Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January … | 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 …
More: The Information, Business Insider, Search Engine Land, PYMNTS.com, MacRumors, The Decoder, The Verge, and Benzinga
| 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 into Autodesk products — Fei-Fei Li's World Labs has secured a $200 million investment from software design giant Autodesk.| 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: eWeek, The Register, Every, Claude, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, The Decoder, The Indian Express, Latent.Space, Help Net Security, Business Standard, Cyber Security News, Digit, Neowin, XDA Developers, Silicon Republic, Moneycontrol, iClarified, The Economic Times, crypto.news, The Deep View, VentureBeat, Runtime, InfoWorld, Simon Willison's Weblog, MacRumors, Android Headlines, TechRepublic, Claude, Axios, The Verge, Forbes, Tom's Guide, CNET, CNBC, ZDNET, The New Stack, SiliconANGLE, ITPro, and About Amazon
X: @clairevo, @zck, @levie, @andonlabs, @willccbb, @aakashgupta, @jack_raines, @chatgpt21, @blondesnmoney, @artificialanlys, @boringbiz_, @scaling01, @claudeai, @sleepinyourhat, @therundownai, @felixrieseberg, @abcampbell, @alexalbert__, @kimmonismus, @claudeai, @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, @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
| Alex Heath / Sources: |
Sources: while Meta offered OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger more money than OpenAI, he ultimately aligned more closely with OpenAI's overall vibe and vision — Less than a week before he ultimately joined OpenAI, OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger talked about the two job offers …
More: Fast Company, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur. Bluesky: @alexeheath.com
| Bloomberg: |
Saudi-backed AI startup Humain invested $3B in xAI, becoming a “significant minority shareholder” in a deal that completed just before SpaceX's xAI acquisition — Saudi Arabian artificial intelligence company Humain has invested $3 billion into Elon Musk's xAI …
More: The Information, Reuters, Capital Brief, HUMAIN, Nairametrics, arabnews.jp, New York Times, and Semafor
| Ram Iyer / TechCrunch: |
Kana, which builds AI marketing agents to perform data analysis, audience targeting, campaign management, and more, emerges from stealth and raised $15M — Marketing is one of the few operations no industry can afford to ignore, which is why we have a veritable host of AI-powered marketing tools … | Eugene Kim / Business Insider: |
Sources: Amazon shut down Blue Jay, a multi-armed robotic system launched in October 2025 for same-day delivery warehouses, to focus on small modular warehouses — - Amazon halts Blue Jay robot project amid strategic shift in warehouse technology. — Blue Jay faced high costs and complexities … | The Keyword: |
Google rolls out Lyria 3, a generative music model that can make 30-second tracks with Nano Banana cover art, in beta in the Gemini app in eight languages — The Gemini app now features our most advanced music generation model Lyria 3, empowering anyone to make 30-second tracks using text or images in beta.
More: PCMag, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, The Verge, Android Central, Android Authority, MobileSyrup, Neowin, Tom's Guide, Music Ally, Digital Trends, iPhone in Canada, Campaign Middle East, EFTM, and Android Headlines
X: @allan_d_clive, @ammaar, @jasonbaldridge, @_philschmid, @officiallogank, @synthwavedd, and @joshwoodward. LinkedIn: Debbie W.
| Bloomberg: |
Robinhood launches an IPO for Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a $1B closed-end fund to provide retail investors access to private markets, offering 40M shares at $25 — Robinhood Markets Inc. is seeking to raise $1 billion in an initial public offering of a closed-end fund designed … | Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: |
A look at China's push to become a world leader in brain-computer interfaces, as Shanghai-based startup NeuroXess moves to human trials with Beijing's backing — Looser regulation and new investment are helping groups such as NeuroXess accelerate trials of ‘brain-computer interfaces’
Bluesky: @metacurity.com
| 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 … | 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
More: Nvidia Newsroom, HotHardware, Engadget, Axios, DatacenterDynamics, The Verge, Watcher Guru, Yahoo Finance, City A.M., CNBC, Silicon Republic, Meta Newsroom, WinBuzzer, Blockonomi, Barron's Online, Capacity, Evertiq, Digit, Benzinga, DigiTimes, SiliconANGLE, BERNAMA, The Information, Livemint, Investor's Business Daily, Yahoo Finance, and Reuters
X: @patrickmoorhead, @firstadopter, @ianandrewsdc, @nvidianetworkng, @nvidianewsroom, @benitoz, @davealtavilla, @amitisinvesting, @jimcramer, @kakashiii111, @theaustinlyons, and @mattrosoff. LinkedIn: David Altavilla. Bluesky: @marypcbuk
Forums: r/stocks, r/wallstreetbets, and r/NVDA_Stock
| Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: |
Snap says its direct revenue business has reached a $1B ARR, driven primarily by Snapchat+ surpassing 25M subscribers since its 2022 launch — Snap's direct revenue business has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, the company announced on Wednesday.| Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: |
Cogent Security, which aims to use AI agents to decide which software bugs to remediate, raised a $42M Series A led by Bain, taking its total raised to $53M — Cogent Security has raised a $42 million Series A just six months after launch. Their bet? That AI agents can finally fix …
More: FinSMEs
| Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg: |
SEC filing: Peter Thiel and Founders Fund have fully exited ETHZilla, after disclosing 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.| 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
More: The Verge, Reuters, cftc.gov, Business Insider, CoinGeek, CoinGape, crypto.news, Event Horizon, Cointelegraph, The Nevada Independent, and Yahoo Finance. X: @govcox
| 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| 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.| 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.
More: /dev/agents and Dreamer
X: @dps, @bentossell, @joannastern, @hbarra, @mikeyk, @dps, @paraga, @dps, @dreamer, and @dreamer
Bluesky: @martinsfp and @edzitron.com
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