Techmeme
February 26, 2026, 7:00 PM

Top News

CNBC:
Netflix walks away from a deal to buy WBD's studio and streaming assets after WBD deemed Paramount's $31/share bid to be superior; NFLX up 9%+ after hours  —  Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed …
Naina Raisinghani / The Keyword:
Google rolls out Nano Banana 2, aka Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, with faster image generation, advanced world knowledge, and precision text rendering and translation  —  Our latest image generation model offers advanced world knowledge, production-ready specs, subject consistency and more, all at Flash speed.
Axios:
Anthropic says new DOD “contract language” made “virtually no progress” on preventing Claude's use for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons  —  Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Thursday said there has been “virtually no progress” on negotiations with the Pentagon.
Brendan Bordelon / Politico:
Some AI policymakers and lawyers warn that DOD's threats to Anthropic are contradictory and could chill partnerships between the government and Silicon Valley  —  Dean Ball, a former AI adviser in the Trump administration, said the Pentagon is contradicting itself by forcing Anthropic …
Jennifer Jacobs / CBS News:
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Block says it is laying off more than 4,000 of its 10,000+ employees; XYZ jumps 23%+ in extended trading  —  Block said Thursday it's laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its headcount.  The stock skyrocketed more than 24% in extended trading.
Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET:
Apple says iPhone and iPad on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 have become the first consumer devices NATO approved for use up to the “restricted” level of classified data  —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — iPhone and iPad are approved to handle NATO ‘restricted’ classified data.
Frank Flight / Citadel Securities:
Citadel rebuts Citrini's viral article, arguing that AI deployment is constrained by the marginal cost of compute vs. human labor, and needs far more compute  —  The year is 2026.  The unemployment rate just printed 4.28%, AI capex is 2% of GDP (650bn), AI adjacent commodities are up 65% since Jan-23 …
Financial Times:
Anthropic:
Anthropic retired Claude Opus 3, its first model to undergo a new “retirement interview” process, and says Opus 3 asked to write weekly essays for a newsletter  —  As we develop increasingly capable AI models, it's currently necessary to deprecate and retire our past models due …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Burger King launches Patty, an OpenAI-powered voice chatbot in headsets that offers coaching, meal prep help, and evaluates interactions for “friendliness”  —  AI chatbot ‘Patty’ is going to live inside employees' headsets. … Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees.
Andrej Karpathy / @karpathy:
AI coding agents made a huge leap forward since December, completing complex projects with minimal oversight, meaning “programming is becoming unrecognizable”  —  It is hard to communicate how much programming has changed due to AI in the last 2 months: not gradually and over time in the …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Instagram says it will alert parents if their teen repeatedly searches for terms related to self-harm or suicide in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia  —  Meta is planning something similar for its chatbots later this year.  —  Starting next week, Instagram will notify parents …
Patrick Coffee / Wall Street Journal:
Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity is partnering with brands like Gap, Visa, and Tinder to market its World ID human verification product  —  Tools for Humanity aims to promote World ID beyond the tech and crypto sets via partnerships with household names  —  Sam Altman's project …
More: Gizmodo
Associated Press:
Social media addiction trial: 20-year-old plaintiff KGM testifies her social media use, which began in childhood, exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts  —  A young woman who is battling against social media giants took the stand Thursday to testify about her experience using the platforms …
Kritika Lamba / Reuters:
IDC: global smartphone shipments will fall 12.9% YoY to 1.12B units in 2026, the market's largest-ever decline, as surging memory prices drive up device costs  —  The global smartphone market is poised to suffer its biggest decline ever in 2026, sinking to a more than decade low in shipments …
Tim Anderson / The Register:
A Cloudflare engineer rebuilt Next.js from scratch in one week using AI, reimplementing 94% of its API and spending $1,100 on Claude tokens  —  Uses Vite and Claude to sidestep Vercel lock-in  —  A Cloudflare engineer says he has implemented 94 percent of the Next.js API by directing Anthropic's Claude …
Kelly Cloonan / Wall Street Journal:
Intuit reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $4.65B, vs. $4.53B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue growth of ~10% and EPS below expectations; INTU drops 5%+ after hours  —  The company's profit guidance for its third quarter - which overlaps with peak tax season - came in short of Wall Street's expectations
Reuters:
CoreWeave reports Q4 revenue up 110% YoY to $1.57B, vs. $1.55B est., and adjusted loss of $284M, vs. $258.9M est.; CRWV drops 5%+ after hours  —  CoreWeave (CRWV.O) beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, benefiting from the artificial intelligence boom that has driven companies …
Jo Constantz / Bloomberg:
eBay says it plans to cut ~800 jobs, or ~6% of its full-time employees, after laying off ~500 people in early 2023 and ~1,000 staff in early 2024  —  EBay Inc. is cutting about 800 jobs, or 6% of its full-time employees, saying the layoffs are needed to align its workforce with strategic priorities.

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
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Niantic Spatial:
World models need real-world data  —  Scaniverse is the gateway to spatial services — self-serve and built for AI and robotics.  Large-area 3D reconstruction from 360° cameras and precise localization, anywhere machines operate.
Zoho:
Q1 Updates from Bigin: MCP support, AI-powered lead enrichment, Add-in for Outlook and more!  —  Hello!  And welcome to another round of quarterly updates from the world of Bigin, the easy, affordable …
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.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
The Pentagon's AI Plan + Behind the Anthropic Fight — With Under Secretary of War Emil Michael
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.
Great Chat:
Developer marketing when everyone is a developer
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Social Radars:
Justin Kan, Cofounder, Twitch
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Cheeky Pint:
The world of voice AI, with Mati Staniszewski of ElevenLabs
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Invest Like the Best:
Scott Nolan - SpaceX, Founders Fund, and Rebuilding American Uranium Enrichment
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
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.
 

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Earlier Picks

Reece Rogers / Wired: