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Techmeme
February 18, 2026, 12:00 PM
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Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
At India's AI Summit, Alphabet announces the America-India Connect Initiative, which will build new fiber optic lines between India, the US, and other countries
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
Todd Haselton / The Verge:
Google unveils the $499 Pixel 10A, with a Tensor G4 and 8GB of RAM, like the Pixel 9A, an 11% brighter screen, and 128GB or 256GB storage, shipping from 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.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google expands Quick Share support with AirDrop to the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold, after introducing it on the 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.
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 while 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
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 …
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 …
Alicia Tang / Bloomberg:
Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $1B from a16z, Nvidia, AMD, and others to advance its world models focused on robotics and scientific discovery  —  World Labs, a startup from artificial intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li, raised $1 billion in a new round of funding to pursue a novel approach to AI development.
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
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 …
The Keyword:
Google rolls out Lyria 3, a generative music model that can make 30-second tracks with Nano Banana-made 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.
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 …
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
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 …
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.
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
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.
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
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 …
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.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:00 PM ET, February 18, 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.

From Mediagazer

Michael Savage / The Guardian:
Prince Harry and six other prominent figures face an up to £50M legal bill after losing their phone-hacking case against Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers

Rick Porter / The Hollywood Reporter:
Early Nielsen numbers show 30M people watched the US-Belgium World Cup match through Fox, clearing the record for an English-language soccer telecast in the US

Scott Nover / Washington Post:
A US district court judge dismisses Trump Media and Technology Group's $3.8B defamation lawsuit filed in 2023 against WaPo; TMTG is considering an appeal

More News

Earlier Picks

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
YouTube fully restores its services after a 2.5-hour outage on February 17, which started at around 7:45pm ET and was caused by 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 its launch
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon's stock closed up 1.2% on February 17, ending a nine-day slide that wiped out $450B+ in market cap after Amazon said it would spend $200B in 2026 capex
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
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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