Techmeme
June 16, 2026, 8:00 PM

Top News

Reuters:
SpaceX agrees to acquire Cursor in a merger valuing the AI coding startup at $60B, set to close in Q3 2026, or pay a $4B to $10B termination fee  —  Elon Musk's SpaceX (SPCX.O) said on Tuesday it would acquire Anysphere, the software firm behind the popular AI coding agent Cursor …
CNBC:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google launches Android 17 and Wear OS 7, first on Pixel devices, with support for the latest AI models, a bubble bar UI, and live updates on Wear OS  —  Google on Tuesday released the final version of its Android 17 operating system, as well as its counterpart for smartwatches, Wear OS 7.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's AirPods with cameras for AI are scheduled to launch in 2027 alongside the 20th anniversary pro iPhones and a second-generation foldable iPhone  —  Apple Inc.'s upcoming camera-equipped AirPods, a product meant to vault the company into the AI device market …
Ed Zitron / Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At:
Docs: audited financial figures show OpenAI spent $34B in 2025, up 172% YoY, including $19B on research and development and nearly $6B on sales and marketing  —  Today, I can exclusively report, based on audited financial documents viewed by this publication that have been independently verified …
Financial Times:
Z.ai:
Z.ai debuts GLM-5.2, saying it has significant improvements for coding, agentic, and long-horizon tasks, with a 1M context window and MIT-licensed open weights  —  We're introducing GLM-5.2, our latest flagship model for long-horizon tasks.  It marks a substantial leap in long-horizon task capability …
James Franey / New York Post:
Leo Schwartz / The Information:
Reuters:
Sources: Binance is set to lose permission to offer services to EU clients from the start of July as its application for a license is about to be turned down  —  Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, is set to lose permission to offer services to European Union clients within weeks …
Helen Partz / Cointelegraph:
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says the company is “proactively” reducing its full-time workforce by ~10%, or ~290 employees, in a “flattening” of its org structure  —  Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism.  This news article is produced …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta says Threads now has 500M MAUs, adds a “Your Algo” tool that lets users privately control what they see in their feed, and launches Communities out of beta  —  Nearly three years after launching as a competitor to Twitter (now X), Threads has reaches 500 million monthly active users, the company announced Tuesday.
Molly Taft / Wired:
Filing: the US DOJ asks the court to dismiss an NAACP lawsuit over xAI's gas turbines, saying xAI is integral to the US' military operations, like the Iran War  —  In a bid to dismiss a lawsuit over xAI's polluting gas turbines, the Justice Department claimed the company is integral to military operations—including the Iran War.
Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg:
France plans €655M in AI investments through 2030 and a Mistral-powered chatbot for state services; its security service will replace Palantir with Chapsvision  —  France's domestic intelligence agency, DGSI, will replace Palantir Technologies Inc. data tools with a local alternative …
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Microsoft upgrades Surface Pro and Surface Laptop with Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 chips; Pro starts at $1,499 and Laptop at $1,599, both $100 higher than last-gen  —  New colors and high prices. New colors and high prices. … Microsoft is launching new Surface Laptops …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Microsoft is moving Copilot Cowork to usage-based pricing and is considering a Microsoft-hosted version of DeepSeek as a cheaper option  —  Microsoft is moving Copilot Cowork to usage-based pricing as it expands access to the enterprise AI tool — and is considering a Microsoft-hosted version of DeepSeek as a cheaper model option.
Ben Weiss / Fortune:
Sources: PayPal to shutter its 10-year-old PayPal Ventures arm amid a broader shakeup under a new CEO and has hired Jefferies to explore selling some positions  —  PayPal is shuttering its 10-year-old venture team amid a broader corporate shakeup, according to five sources familiar with the matter.
The Information:
Sources: DeepSeek closed a ~$7.4B round at a $50B+ valuation under an unusual structure requiring investors to put capital into an LP run by CEO Liang Wenfeng  —  Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has closed its first funding round that raised more than 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) …
Simon van Zuylen-Wood / New York Magazine:
An interview with SBF about life in prison, his serialized prison memoir titled Manfred, and more, as he praises Trump, becomes a Republican, and seeks a pardon  —  Sam Bankman-Fried is incarcerated at a federal prison in Lompoc, California, which sits northwest of Santa Barbara and is dubbed “the City of Arts and Flowers.”
More: New York PostForums: r/TrueAnon
Emele Onu / Bloomberg:
Ripple acquires a stake in Flutterwave as part of the African payments startup's Series E, valuing Flutterwave at $3.2B  —  Flutterwave Inc., one of Africa's most valuable financial-technology startups, sold an equity stake to Ripple, as it seeks to accelerate growth through payments expansion and strategic partnerships.
Ashley Stewart / Business Insider:
Sources: Microsoft is adding AWS capacity to GitHub after AI-driven growth strained its infrastructure and contributed to dozens of major GitHub outages in 2026  —  Microsoft is turning to its biggest cloud rival, Amazon, to help address capacity issues on its GitHub coding platform following …

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