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March 19, 2026, 9:30 PM
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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
Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
OpenAI plans to unify ChatGPT, Codex, and its browser into a desktop “superapp” to simplify the user experience and focus on engineering and business customers  —  The AI company will combine ChatGPT, Codex app and browser in an effort to focus and streamline its resources
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 …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
US prosecutors charge three people affiliated with Super Micro, including a co-founder, with smuggling Nvidia chips to China; SMCI drops 11.85% after hours  —  The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker …
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
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.
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.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
MiniMax releases M2.7, a proprietary “self-evolving” LLM that the company used to build, monitor, and optimize the model's own reinforcement learning harnesses  —  In the last few years, Chinese AI startup MiniMax has become one of the most exciting in the crowded global AI marketplace …
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.
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” …
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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 …
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
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:30 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

The Hollywood Reporter:
Nexstar says it has closed its Tegna acquisition after the DOJ and FCC approved it; CEO Perry Sook says Nexstar is grateful to Trump and the FCC's Brendan Carr

Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:
Sony Music exec Dennis Kooker says the company has sent 135K+ takedown notices for deepfakes of its artists, but sees opportunities in AI with proper licensing

James Faris / Business Insider:
Source: CBS News is planning to lay off dozens of employees as part of an overhaul led by Bari Weiss; 11 employees of CBS Evening News took buyouts in February

More News

Earlier Picks

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
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
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”
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