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Techmeme
February 20, 2026, 10:50 AM
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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 …
Alex Heath / Sources:
Scott Myers, the SVP of Snap's AR glasses unit Specs, leaves after six years; sources say Myers left after a “blow-up” with Evan Spiegel over Snap's strategy  —  My chat with CEO Dylan Field ahead of today's earnings call.  Also: Snap loses its head of Specs right before the big launch …
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.
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
Perplexity's retreat from ads signals a strategic shift as it recognizes its product is not for a mass audience and expects growth to come from enterprise sales  —  The AI search startup once predicted advertising would be a massive business.  Now it's betting on a smaller, more valuable audience.
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 …
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.
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 …
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI has 200+ people working on AI devices, including a smart speaker priced between $200 and $300, possibly smart glasses and a smart lamp  —  OpenAI has more than 200 people working on a family of AI-powered devices that will include a smart speaker and possibly smart glasses and a smart lamp …
More: Reuters
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.’

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:50 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

New York Times:
White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was forced out of her role on Friday, after five days on the job and hosting only one press briefing

Page Six:
Sources: Bela Bajaria was “blindsided” by her firing and only found out at 5pm on Wednesday after Netflix had repeatedly reassured her that her job was secure

Washington Post:
Israeli settlers attacked WaPo photographer Heidi Levine, who wore a “PRESS” vest, in the West Bank, kicking her repeatedly and taking her cameras and phone

More News

Evan Halper / Washington Post:
Tech companies are increasingly building private power plants to fuel off-grid data centers, a move some warn has reliability challenges and hurts climate goals
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
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
Makena Kelly / Wired:
Docs: the US DHS has signed a five-year, $1B blanket purchase agreement with Palantir, letting agencies like CBP and ICE skip the competitive bidding process

Earlier Picks

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
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
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
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