Techmeme
May 20, 2026, 1:25 PM

Top News

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
GitHub confirms ~3,800 internal repositories were breached after one of its employees installed a malicious VS Code extension; TeamPCP claims responsibility  —  GitHub has confirmed that roughly 3,800 internal repositories were breached after one of its employees installed a malicious VS Code extension.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI is preparing to file confidentially for an IPO as early as Friday; the company plans to be ready to go public as early as September  —  The artificial-intelligence giant is working with bankers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley  —  ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has been working …
Katie Paul / Reuters:
Internal memo: Mark Zuckerberg told employees that he does not expect more company-wide layoffs this year  —  Meta (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in an internal memo on Wednesday that he does not expect more company-wide layoffs this year, according to a copy of the memo seen by Reuters.
New York Times:
Meta begins laying off 8,000 employees, or 10% of its staff, in a push to become an AI-first company; another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to AI initiatives  —  Employees have signed petitions against being tracked by A.I. and were trying to figure out who had been let go on Wednesday …
Jessica Conditt / Engadget:
Google adds Street View integration to Project Genie, its interactive world builder, and expands Genie from the US to adult Google AI Ultra subscribers globally  —  Ground your snow-globe worlds in real-world locations from Google Maps.  —  Project Genie is rolling out today …
Jackson Chen / Engadget:
Reuters:
Samsung Electronics and its South Korean labor union reach a preliminary pay deal; the union says it has suspended a general strike and put the deal to a vote  —  Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and its South Korean labour union reached a preliminary pay deal on Wednesday …
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Kickstarter retracts its stricter rules on mature content after creator backlash, and says it adopted the tougher rules because of its payment processor Stripe  —  It explained that it created the new rules due to Stripe's policy.  —  Kickstarter has retracted the new set of rules around mature content …
Hugh Son / CNBC:
Mercury, which provides banking services to startups, raised a $200M Series D led by TCV at a $5.2B valuation, up from $3.5B in March 2025  —  Mercury, a fintech firm that provides banking services to startups, has raised $200 million in funding at a $5.2 billion valuation, CNBC has learned exclusively.
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
The Take It Down Act, a US law forcing social networks to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours of reporting or face fines, took effect on May 19  —  The Take It Down Act is in full force, but it could be a gift to government censors — not victims of image-based sexual abuse.
The Register:
Cloud provider Railway says Google Cloud suspended its account without cause, resulting in an outage; in 2024, GCP deleted an Australian pension fund's account  —  PaaS platform Railway says Google temporarily suspended its account on Wednesday without cause, inducing a major outage.
Jess Kinghorn / PC Gamer:
Brendan Bordelon / Politico:
OpenAI's Chris Lehane says he is pursuing “reverse federalism”, lobbying blue states to pass AI safety laws and create a de facto US standard, as DC dithers  —  OpenAI's effort comes after nearly a year in which the tech lobby has pressured Congress to block states from passing AI laws …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
S. “Soma” Somasegar, who led Microsoft's Developer Division for 12 years as part of his 27-year tenure at the company before leaving in 2015, has died at age 59  —  S.  “Soma” Somasegar, a fixture in the Seattle tech community who led Microsoft's Developer Division as part …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Threat actors published 600+ malicious versions to npm as part of the Shai-Hulud supply chain campaign; most of the affected packages are in the @antv ecosystem  —  Threat actors earlier today published more than 600 malicious packages to the Node Package Manager (npm) index as part of a new Shai-Hulud supply-chain campaign.
Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba's chipmaking unit T-Head unveils the Zhenwu M890 for AI training and inference, saying it is well-suited for agentic tasks, and plans annual upgrades  —  Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. added a new processor to its expanding AI technology stack, enhancing a push to cover every aspect of artificial intelligence development.
Jemima McEvoy / The Information:
Sam Altman says OpenAI offered to invest $2M in tokens in each startup in the current YC batch; a source says the offer is in exchange for equity via a SAFE  —  OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman late Tuesday offered to invest $2 million in every startup currently in the Y Combinator startup …
Reuters:
Ubisoft reports a record operating loss of $1.40B for the year to March and says sales in 2026-27 would fall by about 8% to 9%; UBI falls 6%+  —  French videogame publisher Ubisoft warned on Wednesday of another year of losses and lower sales after a record annual operating loss, deepening pressure on the company as it restructures.
Wired:
Hands-on with Google and Samsung's Android XR smart glasses, with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster frames, and with Xreal's Project Aura, all coming this fall  —  Here's your first look at smart glasses coming from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, powered by Google and Samsung's XR platform.
Nan Ransohoff / Nan's Substack:
An analysis based on OpenAI's and Anthropic's current valuations suggests ~$370B of philanthropic assets tied to the two AI companies could soon become liquid  —  AI is about to generate hundreds of billions in new philanthropic funding.  We have a huge amount of work to do to make the most of it.
Reuters:
Trump signs an EO calling on regulators and the Fed to review policies that could support fintech growth, including expanding fintech access to payment accounts  —  U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday calling on regulators and the Federal Reserve to review rules …
George Hammond / Financial Times:
Q&A with Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg on launching the legal AI startup in 2022, how AI could shake up law firms' business models, legal AI competition, and more  —  The co-founder of the legal start-up talks about how AI could shake up law firms' business models and how he plans to stay ahead of rivals
John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Two research papers describe how Google's Co-Scientist and nonprofit FutureHouse's AI tools can succeed at drug retargeting by developing and testing hypotheses  —  Both tools generate hypotheses; one goes on to analyze some of the data.  —  On Tuesday, Nature released …

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Zoho named an overall leader in Dresner's 2026 Wisdom of Crowds® BI Market Study  —  Zoho Analytics has once again earned top honors in the analytics and business intelligence space.
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:
Zuckerberg's Disappointment, OpenAI's Equity Gamble, Alex Karp's Rally Cry
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.
Hard Fork:
Fable Ban Reversed + Dr. Dana Suskind on Parenting With A.I. + Prediction Market Drama
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Blitzy's Brian Elliott: Cursor And Claude Code Are Looking At Your Enterprise Code 'Through A Straw'
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Re-Release: The Death of Hollywood? W/ Allan Loeb
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Great Chat:
Maybe Twitter isn't real life
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:25 PM ET, May 20, 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: