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Techmeme
March 19, 2026, 6:45 PM
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Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Bluesky raised a $100M Series B led by Bain Capital Crypto in April 2025, following a $15M Series A in 2024 and an $8M seed in 2023; it now has over 43M users  —  Social network Bluesky is gearing up for big changes with today's news that the company raised $100 million in Series B funding.
Agnee Ghosh / Bloomberg:
OpenAI agrees to acquire Astral, which makes Python tools for developers, to integrate its team into Codex, and says Codex has 2M+ users, up 3x since January  —  OpenAI plans to acquire Astral, a startup that makes Python tools for developers, marking the ChatGPT maker's latest investment …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Google has started consumer beta testing of a dedicated Gemini AI app for the Mac, as it seeks to compete with Mac apps for ChatGPT and Claude  —  Google is ramping up development of a dedicated Gemini AI app for Apple Inc.'s Mac computer lineup, looking to step up competition with OpenAI and Anthropic PBC.
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Google announces a new “advanced flow” for Android sideloading that requires a mandatory 24-hour cooling-off period to install apps from unverified developers  —  The one-time ‘advanced flow’ includes 24 hours of cooling off time. … Google has revealed the “advanced flow” …
New York Times:
Mark Zuckerberg's original metaverse vision is effectively over, after renaming Facebook to Meta and spending ~$80B on the endeavor, as his focus shifts to AI  —  Five years ago, Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that the future of Facebook would be the metaverse.
Janko Roettgers / Lowpass:
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says Meta will keep Horizon Worlds in VR “for existing games”, a day after Meta said Quest owners will lose access from June 15
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Jeff Bezos is in talks to raise $100B for a fund that would buy companies in industrial sectors such as chipmaking and defense and revamp them with AI  —  Amazon.com founder has traveled to Middle East, Singapore in fundraising effort linked to Project Prometheus AI startup
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
Cursor launches Composer 2, an AI agent trained solely on coding-related data to perform autonomous, lengthy coding tasks, to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI  —  Cursor, a leading artificial intelligence startup for coding, is set to release a more efficient AI model for software development …
Rustin Banks / The Keyword:
Google updates Stitch to let users turn natural language prompts into UI designs, introducing an “AI-native” software design canvas and a reasoning design agent  —  Stitch is evolving into an AI-native software design canvas that allows anyone to create, iterate and collaborate on high-fidelity UI from natural language.
John Wang / @j0hnwang:
Figma's stock closed down 7.98% on March 18 after Google updated its Stitch tool for “vibe designing”; FIG is down ~80% since the company's IPO in August 2025
Maria Curi / Axios:
Filing: the Pentagon says Anthropic's use of foreign workers, including from China, poses security risks and that its case is “different” from other companies'  —  The Pentagon is highlighting new national security concerns about Anthropic's use of foreign workers, including from China, according to a court filing.
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Meta plans to reduce its reliance on third-party vendors for content moderation, in favor of AI tools that it says are better at spotting scams and other tasks  —  Meta Platforms Inc. will soon cut back on its use of third-party vendors to help with content moderation, relying instead …
Margi Murphy / Bloomberg:
CISA warns US companies to follow Microsoft's recommendations for fortifying Intune, a tool that manages staff access, after a cyberattack on Stryker last week  —  The US government is warning businesses to secure their corporate accounts within a popular Microsoft Corp. management tool …
Wall Street Journal:
MLB makes Polymarket its official prediction markets platform, giving it exclusive data access; Polymarket will restrict contracts that pose “integrity risk”  —  On the cusp of opening day and under the cloud of a recent betting scandal, MLB reaches a licensing agreement with event-prediction platform
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Uber plans to invest $1.25B in Rivian through 2031, contingent on meeting autonomy milestones, starting with $300M at signing, to deploy 50K Level 4 robotaxis  —  The companies say they plan on deploying 10,000 autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles by 2031. … Uber and Rivian are joining forces …
Brian Danga / The Block:
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek says the company cut ~12% of its workforce, or ~180 roles, saying the layoffs target roles that “do not adapt” as it integrates AI  —  Quick Take  — Crypto.com cut about 12% of its workforce, or roughly 180 roles based on a previously disclosed headcount of over 1,500 employees.
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
DoorDash launches Tasks, a new app that pays delivery couriers in some markets to submit video clips and complete other tasks for training AI models  —  DoorDash Inc. is paying delivery couriers in some markets to submit video clips and complete other digital tasks to help improve artificial intelligence …
Wired:
Signal's Moxie Marlinspike says his privacy-focused AI platform Confer will integrate its encryption tech into Meta AI to provide E2EE for chatbot interactions  —  Moxie Marlinspike says the technology powering his encrypted AI chatbot, Confer, will be integrated into Meta AI.
Mizy Clifton / Politico:
Ofcom fines 4chan £520K for OSA violations, including £450K for not complying with age check requirements, and gives it until April 2 to implement age assurance  —  4chan has until 2 April to implement age assurance, carry out a “suitable and sufficient” illegal harms risk assessment …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Nvidia says it will sell 1M GPUs and a broad mix of other chips, including new Groq chips, to AWS by the end of 2027; financial terms were not disclosed  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) will sell 1 million of its graphics processing unit chips, along with a host of the AI giant's other offerings …
Dara Kerr / The Guardian:
Google co-founder Sergey Brin raises his total contribution to $45M for the Building a Better California Super PAC, which opposes a proposed 5% billionaire tax  —  Sergey Brin gives $25m on top of $20m he's already given to Super Pac trying to block state's proposed 5% wealth tax
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Walmart plans to add its Sparky chatbot into ChatGPT and Gemini, after OpenAI's Instant Checkout conversion rates were 3x lower than those with clicking out  —  After OpenAI's Instant Checkout feature fell short, Walmart is instead embedding its Sparky chatbot directly into ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
More: Financial Times and Search Engine Land
LinkedIn: Tomas Heiskanen.  Bluesky: @shiraovide and @quinnypig.com.  Threads: @eric_seufert
Forums: r/technology and Slashdot

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:45 PM ET, March 19, 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

David Ellison / New York Times:
David Ellison says antitrust suits against Paramount's WBD deal imagine a bygone Hollywood and are really about trust in his CNN stewardship, not market share

Sara Fischer / Axios:
Axel Springer names Business Insider's interim CEO Christian Baesler as the outlet's permanent CEO; he plans to keep focusing on direct sales and subscriptions

Melissa Korn / Wall Street Journal:
Jerry Falade, a grad student whose debut novel initially landed a $2M+ book deal, denies using AI to write it and says such claims are racially motivated

More News

Ryan Felton / Wall Street Journal:
The US NHTSA escalates its investigation into Tesla's FSD to an “engineering analysis”, which could result in a recall campaign or other enforcement action

Earlier Picks

Kati Pohjanpalo / Bloomberg:
The UN-backed World Happiness Report says passively consuming algorithmic social media hurts teens' mental health and heavy use disproportionately affects girls
Shubham Bose:
An analysis of a NYT article load finds 422 network requests totaling 49MB, triggering a sprawling programmatic ad auction, an example of “hostile architecture”
Oma Seddiq / Bloomberg Law:
US Senator Marsha Blackburn releases a draft of the TRUMP AMERICA AI Act, a federal framework to replace state AI laws, incorporating KOSA and the NO FAKES Act
Anthropic:
Anthropic releases a survey of 80,508 Claude users' hopes, dreams, and fears about AI, calling it “the largest and most multilingual qualitative study ever”
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