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February 18, 2026, 1:25 PM
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Mediagazer
memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| Todd Haselton / The Verge: |
Google unveils the $499 Pixel 10a, with a Tensor G4 and 8GB of RAM, like the Pixel 9a, an 11% brighter screen, and 128GB or 256GB storage, shipping from March 4 — Google's midrange Pixels have been our top pick for budget Android phones for a while. They offer good cameras and most of what you need at a budget-friendly price.
More: The Keyword, Engadget, Android Police, TechCrunch, Livemint, Forbes, Tech Advisor, Business Standard, Thurrott, Engadget, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, XDA Developers, TechRadar, Android Central, PhoneArena, Android Authority, Wired, MobileSyrup, Tom's Guide, Digit, The Indian Express, The Shortcut, Trusted Reviews, iPhone in Canada, and GSMArena.com
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Google expands Quick Share support with AirDrop to the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold, after introducing it on the Pixel 10 in November 2025 — After introducing on the Pixel 10 last year, Google is expanding Quick Share support with AirDrop to the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold.| Abu Sultan / Reuters: |
Microsoft says it is on pace to invest $50B by 2030 to help expand AI across the Global South, after unveiling $17.5B worth of AI investments in India in 2025 — Microsoft (MSFT.O) on Wednesday said it is on pace to invest $50 billion by the end of the decade to help expand AI to countries across the ‘Global South’.
More: Benzinga, DatacenterDynamics, Fortune India, CNN, Digit, Tech in Asia, Blockonomi, Hindustan Times, and Economic news. Forums: r/technology
| Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: |
| Dylan Butts / CNBC: |
| Shruti Rajagopalan / Get Down and Shruti: |
More: Project Syndicate and Marginal Revolution
X: @mafernando, @apurvasanghi, @pramodbiligiri, @mattooshashank, @pranaykotas, @srajagopalan, and @seemasirohi
LinkedIn: Viren Mahurkar, Vasu Eda, and Shruti Rajagopalan
| Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: |
More: TechCrunch, TechCrunch, Digit, Moneycontrol, Fortune India, Tech in Asia, and The Economic Times. Forums: r/india
| Himanshi Lohchab / The Economic Times: |
More: DatacenterDynamics, NVIDIA, TechCircle, The Hindu BusinessLine, Digit, Business Standard, and NVIDIA
| Joe Miller / Financial Times: |
How US citizens, clergy, and elected officials in conservative communities like Missouri are leading a grassroots rebellion against the Trump-backed AI boom — Republicans fear backlash against White House agenda could undermine support in this year's midterm elections
X: @joemillerjr. Bluesky: @henrymance.ft.com, @justinhendrix, and @henrymance.ft.com. Forums: r/politics
| Alicia Tang / Bloomberg: |
Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $1B from Autodesk, a16z, Nvidia, AMD, Sea, and others to build its world models for robotics, scientific discovery, and more — World Labs, a startup from artificial intelligence pioneer Fei-Fei Li, raised $1 billion in a new round of funding to pursue a novel approach to AI development.| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Audible launches an “immersion reading” feature that lets readers switch between ebook and audiobook versions of a title in their Audible and Kindle libraries — Only days after Spotify announced its foray into physical book sales, which included an audiobook feature that lets …
More: Audible.com, ZDNET, Thurrott, 9to5Mac, The Verge, Publishers Weekly, TechRadar, Jane Friedman, Mashable, and Good e-Reader
| New York Times: |
Meta plans to spend $65M in 2025 to boost state politicians friendly to AI; filings: Meta started two super PACs, one backing the GOP and another for Democrats — Meta's biggest election investment aims to prevent state legislation that it fears could inhibit artificial intelligence development.| The Keyword: |
Google rolls out Lyria 3, a generative music model that can make 30-second tracks with Nano Banana-made cover art, in beta in the Gemini app in eight languages — The Gemini app now features our most advanced music generation model Lyria 3, empowering anyone to make 30-second tracks using text or images in beta.
More: Thurrott, PCMag, Ars Technica, Mercury News, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, The Verge, Android Central, SQ Magazine, Mix 1049, Android Authority, MobileSyrup, Neowin, Tom's Guide, Music Ally, Digital Trends, iPhone in Canada, Campaign Middle East, EFTM, Android Headlines, and Sherwood News
X: @marcelocaporale, @710_eth, @allan_d_clive, @ammaar, @jasonbaldridge, @_philschmid, @google, @googleai, @officiallogank, @synthwavedd, and @joshwoodward. LinkedIn: Debbie W.. Forums: r/singularity
| George Hammond / Financial Times: |
Sources: Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former Google DeepMind Principal Scientist David Silver, is raising a $1B seed led by Sequoia at a ~$4B valuation — Funding deal would value David Silver's start-up Ineffable Intelligence at $4bn — David Silver, one of Britain's top AI researchers …
More: The Economic Times, Telegraph, Sifted, David SIlver, Tech Funding News, Implicator.ai, Capacity, and Semafor. X: @etnshow
| Sophie McEvoy / GamesIndustry.biz: |
Matthew Ball's State of Video Gaming 2026 report: global video game content sales grew 5.3% YoY to $195.6B in 2025 while job losses fell 40% YoY to 9,200 people — Private funding fell a further 55% last year, according to Epyllion's latest State of Video Gaming report
More: MatthewBall.co. X: @loudmouthjulia, @jamesekaplan, @jmoledina, @ballmatthew, @jonahblake, @ballmatthew, @ballmatthew, @ballmatthew, and @jonathanhawkins. LinkedIn: Jamil Moledina
Bluesky: @pedrothedagger, @mayteramarble, @felipepepe, and @hantani
| Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: |
Perplexity says it has no plans to further pursue ads, which it introduced in 2024, after phasing them out in late 2025 over fears they would erode user trust — Leading start-ups have recently embraced sponsors as they search for revenue — AI start-up Perplexity has abandoned advertising …
More: The Information, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Search Engine Land, WinBuzzer, MacRumors, Benzinga, PYMNTS.com, The Verge, and The Decoder
| Leo Schwartz / Fortune: |
Sports-focused prediction market Novig raised a $75M Series B led by Pantera Capital at a $500M valuation; Novig is commission-free for retail traders — As the prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket dominate the attention of investors and regulators, a sports-focused challenger called Novig …
More: Wall Street Journal, FinSMEs, Axios, Forerunner, Blockonomi, Sports Business Journal, Ventureburn, The Crypto Times, Forbes, Sportico, and Economic news
X: @franklinbi, @novig, and @masonnystrom
| Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: |
Microsoft confirms a bug that let Microsoft 365 Copilot summarize confidential emails from Sent Items and Drafts folders, and deployed a fix in early February — Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January …
More: TechCrunch, PCWorld, Windows Latest, Inc.com, and Cyber Security News
| Alex Heath / Sources: |
Sources: while Meta offered OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger more money than OpenAI, he ultimately aligned more closely with OpenAI's overall vibe and vision — Less than a week before he ultimately joined OpenAI, OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger talked about the two job offers …
More: Inc, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and CNET. Bluesky: @alexeheath.com
| Bloomberg: |
Saudi-backed AI startup Humain invested $3B in xAI, becoming a “significant minority shareholder” in a deal that completed just before SpaceX's xAI acquisition — Saudi Arabian artificial intelligence company Humain has invested $3 billion into Elon Musk's xAI … | Krystal Hur / Wall Street Journal: |
A Las Vegas federal appeals court rejects Kalshi's emergency bid for an administrative stay on Nevada's push to block the platform, a major setback for Kalshi — A federal appeals court rejected Kalshi's bid, setting the stage for Nevada's civil-enforcement proceedings| Alexandre Rajbhandari / Bloomberg: |
Filings: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway cut its Amazon stake by 75%+ to ~2.3M shares in Q4 2025; Berkshire bought 5.1M NYT shares, worth ~$352M in December — Berkshire Hathaway Inc. slashed its holding in Amazon.com Inc. by more than 75% in the fourth quarter, while also building … | Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: |
Snap says its direct revenue business has hit a $1B annualized revenue run rate, driven primarily by Snapchat+ surpassing 25M subscribers since its 2022 launch — Snap's direct revenue business has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, the company announced on Wednesday.| Ram Iyer / TechCrunch: |
Kana, which builds AI marketing agents to perform data analysis, audience targeting, campaign management, and more, emerges from stealth and raised a $15M seed — Marketing is one of the few operations no industry can afford to ignore, which is why we have a veritable host of AI-powered marketing tools …
More: Business Wire
| Eugene Kim / Business Insider: |
Sources: Amazon shut down Blue Jay, a multi-armed robotic system launched in October 2025 for same-day delivery warehouses, to focus on small modular warehouses — - Amazon halts Blue Jay robot project amid strategic shift in warehouse technology. — Blue Jay faced high costs and complexities … | Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: |
A look at China's push to become a world leader in brain-computer interfaces, as Shanghai-based startup NeuroXess moves to human trials with Beijing's backing — Looser regulation and new investment are helping groups such as NeuroXess accelerate trials of ‘brain-computer interfaces’
Bluesky: @metacurity.com
| Bloomberg: |
Robinhood launches an IPO for Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a $1B closed-end fund to provide retail investors access to private markets, offering 40M shares at $25 — Robinhood Markets Inc. is seeking to raise $1 billion in an initial public offering of a closed-end fund designed … | David Singleton / flurries of latent creativity: |
Dreamer, founded by former Stripe CTO David Singleton, Hugo Barra, and others, launches in beta to let technical and non-technical users build agentic AI apps — Dreamer is the name of the platform and company I started with Hugo, Nicholas and others a little over a year ago.
More: /dev/agents and Dreamer
X: @joannastern, @dps, @bentossell, @hbarra, @mikeyk, @dps, @paraga, @dps, @dreamer, and @dreamer
Bluesky: @martinsfp and @edzitron.com
| Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg: |
SEC filing: Peter Thiel and Founders Fund have fully exited ETHZilla, after disclosing a 7.5% stake in August 2025; ether is down 60% from its August 2025 peak — Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel and his Founders Fund have fully exited ETHZilla Corp., according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.Sponsor Posts
Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting — You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around. You could ask them to repeat it.
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting — You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around. You could ask them to repeat it.
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.
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
Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
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