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Techmeme
February 16, 2026, 4:01 AM
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Top News

Sam Altman / @sama:
Sam Altman says Peter Steinberger, founder of OpenClaw, is joining OpenAI “to drive the next generation of personal agents”; OpenClaw will remain open source  —  Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple tweaked its Maps app for Tesla before the EV maker's planned addition of CarPlay; low-cost MacBook will get an aluminum chassis in playful colors  —  Tesla's plan to start supporting CarPlay in its vehicles has been held back by the need for changes in iOS 26's Maps app.
Zack Abrams / The Block:
Vitalik Buterin, who backed Polymarket, says he's “starting to worry” that prediction markets “seem to be over-converging to an unhealthy product market fit”  —  Quick Take  — Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that prediction markets are “over-converging” …
Muhammad Zuhair / Wccftech:
Western Digital said on its Q2 earnings call it had “pretty much sold out” its 2026 HDD capacity, and that the consumer sector accounted for 5% of total revenue
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Former NPR host David Greene sues Google for allegedly replicating his voice in NotebookLM without permission; Google says the voice is based on a paid actor  —  NPR's David Greene says he was “completely freaked out” when he heard an AI voice that sounded just like his own, and he's suing over it.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Following Disney, Paramount sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging its AI-generated Seedance videos and Seedream images infringed Paramount's IP  —  Disney also sent a legal demand to Chinese internet company  —  Paramount Skydance accused ByteDance of engaging in …
Omar Abdel-Baqui / Wall Street Journal:
Sensor Tower: dating app downloads in Saudi Arabia have risen annually for five years, hitting 3.5M in 2025, as liberalization enables more casual relationships  —  Liberalization has opened the door to more casual relationships, but society is still catching up
Bloomberg:
Credit derivatives trading on specific tech companies continues to rise, amid concerns that they may be borrowing too much to fuel AI development  —  Debt investors are worried that the biggest tech companies will keep borrowing until it hurts in the battle to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence.
More: Motley Fool
Matthew Chin / CNBC:
Sensor Tower: TikTok's US DAUs are at ~95% of the week of Jan. 19, with engagement metrics showing little sign of a mass exodus since its Jan. 23 US takeover  —  TikTok's U.S. joint venture seems to have survived a turbulent rollout with minimal change in usership, as early narratives …
Baiju Kalesh / Bloomberg:
India-based AI cloud startup Neysa plans to raise up to $600M in equity led by Blackstone, plus $600M in debt, to deploy 20K+ GPUs in India for AI training  —  A group of investors led by Blackstone Inc. plans to make an equity investment of up to $600 million in India's artificial intelligence cloud startup Neysa.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman says that India has 100M weekly active ChatGPT users, the app's second-largest userbase after the US, ahead of the AI Impact Summit  —  India has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, making the country one of OpenAI's largest markets globally, CEO Sam Altman said ahead of a government-hosted AI summit.
Financial Times:
Abhishek Singh, CEO of IndiaAI Mission, says India will seek international agreement on a “global AI commons” at this week's AI Impact Summit in New Delhi
Mari Novik / Financial Times:
Keir Starmer says no platform “should get a free pass”, as the UK moves to tighten online safety laws covering AI chatbots and social media, to protect children  —  Keir Starmer to warn tech companies that ‘no platform gets a free pass’ after deepfake scandal involving Grok
New York Times:
Researchers outline Iran's digital surveillance capabilities, integrated across communications and internet networks, and recently used to track down protesters  —  As Iranian authorities restore some online services after crushing antigovernment demonstrations, they are using a technological dragnet …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:01 AM ET, February 16, 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

Nancy Scola / Washingtonian:
A deep look at FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's moves favoring the Trump administration; former chair Tom Wheeler warns against the agency becoming a political tool

Lucia Moses / Business Insider:
WaPo opinion editor Adam O'Neal says he's stepping down after a year in the role; his hiring was part of a push to promote “personal liberties and free markets”

Stephen Council / Business Insider:
Sensor Tower estimate: ChatGPT advertisers grew from around 300 in April to more than 820 in July; retail shopping remains the biggest sector by ad spend

More News

Peter Wayner / New York Times:
Professor David J. Farber, whose work on academic experimental computer networks helped define the evolution of the early internet, died on February 7 at age 91

Earlier Picks

Margaret-Anne Storey:
As AI and agents are adopted to accelerate development, cognitive load and cognitive debt are likely to become bigger threats to developers than technical debt
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