Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors
Techmeme
February 20, 2026, 9:55 AM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times:
Sources: Amazon's AI tools have caused at least two AWS outages, including a 13-hour disruption in December after Kiro AI deleted and recreated an environment  —  Tech giant blames ‘user error, not AI error’ for incident in December involving its Kiro tool  —  Amazon's cloud unit has suffered …
Robert Burnson / Bloomberg:
A US grand jury indicted two former Google engineers and one of their husbands for allegedly stealing trade secrets relating to the Tensor chip for Pixel phones  —  Two former Google engineers and one of their husbands were indicted for allegedly stealing trade secrets relating to the company's Tensor processor for Pixel phones.
Financial Times:
Sources: Nvidia is close to finalizing an up to $30B investment into OpenAI, replacing 2025's long-term $100B commitment; the deal could be closed this weekend  —  Chipmaker swaps last year's complex framework with AI start-up in favour of equity cheque  —  Nvidia is close to finalising …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google rejected 1.75M policy-violating Android apps and blocked 80K+ developer accounts from Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36M apps and 158K accounts in 2024  —  Fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, the company says, a shift that the tech giant credits …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta says it is “explicitly separating” Quest VR from its Worlds platform, making Worlds “almost exclusively mobile” to better compete with Roblox and Fortnite  —  Horizon Worlds is now going to be a platform that's ‘almost exclusively mobile.’
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Sony shuts down Bluepoint Games, the PlayStation subsidiary behind remakes of older games like Demon's Souls and Uncharted; ~70 employees will lose their jobs  —  The PlayStation subsidiary previously made remakes of games like 'Demon's Souls'  —  Sony Group Corp. is shutting down Bluepoint Games …
Chris Metinko / Axios:
Pepper, which provides a digital storefront for independent food distributors, raised a $50M Series C led by Lead Edge, bringing its total funding to $100M  —  Pepper, a business platform developer for independent food distributors, raised a $50 million Series C led by Lead Edge Capital, CEO Bowie Cheung tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Evan Halper / Washington Post:
Tech companies are increasingly building private power plants to fuel off-grid data centers, a move some warn faces reliability challenges and climate risks  —  Tech companies are building data centers with their own private power plants, a risky bet that will increase carbon emissions and other pollution.

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:
From MCP to billing: Updates that accelerate hiring  —  TL;DRConnect your favorite AI tools to Zoho Recruit with Zoho Recruit MCP.Catch up on conversations faster with Zia email summaries.Review candidate context instantly …
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.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Channels with Peter Kafka:
 "We're in a Race Against Time," Joe Kahn on Running the New York Times in the Age of AI Slop
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.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Training Data:
 Inside Zipline's Autonomous System: 140M Miles, Zero Incidents
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
 Jeremy Giffon - The Billion Dollar PDF
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Big Technology Podcast:
 Who Wins The AI Superapp Battle?, Apple's Consumer AI Victory, World Cup Automation Mistake
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
 Fable Ban Reversed + Dr. Dana Suskind on Parenting With A.I. + Prediction Market Drama
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
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.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:55 AM ET, February 20, 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

Alice Brooker / Press Gazette:
Ex-Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre calls Prince Harry's phone hacking case a “conspiracy” to destroy the Mail and the verdict is a “vindication” of its journalism

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

Jonathan Lloyd / NBC Los Angeles:
Los Angeles County sues Roblox, alleging it engaged in deceptive business practices that exposed children to sexual content, exploitation, and online predators
Makena Kelly / Wired:
Docs: DHS has signed a five-year, $1B blanket purchase agreement with Palantir, allowing agencies like ICE to skip the competitive bidding process
Wall Street Journal:
CZ returned to the US for the first time since his 2024 prison release to attend a World Liberty Financial event at Mar-a-Lago with Brian Armstrong and others
Reece Rogers / Wired:
Block employees describe a deteriorating culture, as morale plunges amid rolling layoffs and Jack Dorsey pushes generative AI tools to maximize productivity
More: The Hans India.  X: @rtehrani.  Bluesky: @rjrjr.com, @prietschka, and @thiccreese.  Forums: r/technews

Earlier Picks

Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Toronto-based chip startup Taalas, which hardwires AI models into custom silicon to achieve faster inference, raised $169M, bringing its total funding to $219M
The Information:
Sources: AMD agrees to backstop a $300M loan from Goldman Sachs for Crusoe to buy AMD's AI chips, the first known example of AMD chips used as debt collateral
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
New York pulls a proposal that would have allowed robotaxi services outside NYC, a blow to Waymo, which aims to reach 1M paid weekly US rides by the end of 2026
Zoë Bernard / Wired:
Inside the “gay tech mafia” that mixes social and professional lives, as 51 investors, entrepreneurs, and executives detail gay influence in Silicon Valley
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google rolls out Gemini 3.1 Pro, which it says is “a step forward in core reasoning”, for all users in the Gemini app; the .1 increment is a first for Google
Kalley Huang / New York Times:
West Virginia's AG sues Apple for allegedly violating consumer protection law by not implementing tools like PhotoDNA to detect CSAM stored and shared on iCloud
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter