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Techmeme
February 18, 2026, 8:30 PM
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Reuters:
Sources: the US State Department is developing an online portal at “freedom.gov” to let users in Europe and elsewhere view content banned by their governments  —  The U.S. State Department is developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned …
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.
CNBC:
Social media addiction trial: Mark Zuckerberg says increasing engagement on Instagram is not a company goal and that Meta removes underage users it identifies  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back against the notion that the social media company made increasing time spent on Instagram a company goal.
Alicia Tang / Bloomberg:
Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $1B from Autodesk, a16z, Nvidia, AMD, Sea, and others to build its world models for robotics, scientific discovery, and more  —  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.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple adds support for third-party voice-based conversational apps in CarPlay starting with iOS 26.4, letting CarPlay users access apps like AI chatbots  —  With iOS 26.4, CarPlay users will be able to use third-party chatbots with CarPlay.  AI services like Claude, Gemini …
Todd Haselton / The Verge:
Google unveils the $499 Pixel 10a, with a Tensor G4 and 8GB of RAM like the Pixel 9a, Satellite SOS, an 11% brighter screen, but no Pixelsnap, 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.
The Record:
Texas AG Ken Paxton sues TP-Link, alleging it deceptively markets its products as secure while allowing the CCP to hack into consumers' devices  —  Texas is suing networking equipment company TP-Link Systems for allegedly allowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to hack into consumers' devices …
Niko Gallogly / New York Times:
eBay agrees to acquire secondhand clothing app Depop from Etsy for ~$1.2B in cash; Etsy bought Depop in 2021 for $1.6B; ETSY jumps 17%+ after hours  —  The $1.2 billion deal comes as eBay looks to expand its appeal among younger users.  —  Secondhand clothing apps hit a stride during …
New York Times:
Meta plans to spend $65M in 2026 to boost state politicians friendly to AI; filings: Meta started two super PACs, one backing the GOP and another for Democrats  —  Meta's biggest election investment aims to prevent state legislation that it fears could inhibit artificial intelligence development.
OpenAI:
OpenAI and Paradigm announce EVMbench, a benchmark that measures how well AI agents can detect, exploit, and patch high-severity smart contract vulnerabilities  —  Making smart contracts safer by evaluating AI agents' ability to detect, patch, and exploit vulnerabilities in blockchain environments.
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Sports-focused prediction market Novig raised a $75M Series B led by Pantera Capital at a $500M valuation; Novig is commission-free for retail traders  —  As the prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket dominate the attention of investors and regulators, a sports-focused challenger called Novig …
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 …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Audible launches an “immersion reading” feature that lets readers switch between ebook and audiobook versions of a title in their Audible and Kindle libraries  —  Only days after Spotify announced its foray into physical book sales, which included an audiobook feature that lets …
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
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 …
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.
Bloomberg:
Crypto lending firm Ledn sold $188M in securitized bonds backed by bitcoin loans, making it the first deal of its kind in the market for asset-backed debt  —  Crypto lending firm Ledn Inc. has sold $188 million of securitized bonds backed by Bitcoin, making it the first ever deal of its kind in the market for asset-backed debt.
Bob Van Voris / Bloomberg:
A US judge rules ex-Palantir employees likely violated confidentiality and non-solicitation agreements in founding Percepta, but declines to stop their work  —  A judge agreed with Palantir Technologies Inc. that a trio of former employees likely violated confidentiality and non-solicitation agreements …
More: Reuters
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
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 …
The Guardian:
The UK proposes new rules requiring tech firms to remove nonconsensual abusive content within 48 hours or risk blocking and fines of up to 10% of global revenue  —  PM says measure, also applied to deepfake nudes, is needed owing to a ‘national emergency’ of online misogyny

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:30 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

Julianna Bragg / Axios:
Colbert's interview on YouTube with US Senate candidate James Talarico has drawn over 6M views as of Wednesday afternoon in the US, after it was posted Monday

Gene Maddaus / Variety:
Sony sends ByteDance a C&D letter over Seedance 2.0, joining Netflix, Paramount, WBD, and Disney in condemning the model's AI-generated copyright infringement

Pranav Baskar / New York Times:
Journalists say an AP reporter and three other journalists were detained in Cameroon while probing a secretive US program that deports migrants to Cameroon

More News

Julia Black / Vanity Fair:
OpenAI hires Instagram's VP of global partnerships, Charles Porch, as its first VP of global creative partnerships, seeking to win over a skeptical Hollywood
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 funding to $53M
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

Earlier Picks

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
At India's AI Summit, Google announces the America-India Connect Initiative, which will build new fiber optic lines between India, the US, and other countries
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
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
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