Techmeme
June 17, 2026, 11:55 AM

Top News

Anhata Rooprai / Reuters:
Shoe company Allbirds changes its name to Smartbird as it pivots to an AI infrastructure company and names ex-AWS exec Nadia Carlsten as CEO; BIRD jumps 20%+  —  Allbirds (BIRD.O) changed its name to Smartbird on Wednesday and appointed former Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O) …
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Google's $99 Google Home Speaker, which is built for Gemini for Home and works as a Matter controller, will ship on June 29, nine months after it was announced  —  The Google Home Speaker is designed for Gemini for Home and its more conversational smart home assistant.
Nikhil Pahwa / @nixxin:
India's Telegram ban until June 22 over exam paper leak concerns is a terrible look for the country, sets a precedent, and could happen again if unchallenged  —  A few additional thoughts on the Telegram ban in India: 1. Is this a permanent ban? It's unusual for the Indian government to issue a press release about the telegram ban: the precedence that I remember is when Chinese apps were banned in India in June 2020 including tiktok. A
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch:
Pramaana Labs, which uses the LEAN programming language to build a deterministic verification layer on top of LLMs, raised a $27M seed led by Khosla Ventures  —  As enterprises struggle to turn AI pilot programs into functional parts of their business, reliability has taken center stage.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
WordPress survey: 60% of US consumers say “AI” in a brand's messaging is a turnoff, and 86% always or sometimes check the source after receiving an AI summary  —  Getting cited by AI is easier than earning consumers' trust, according to a new report from WordPress VIP …
Ben Bergman / Business Insider:
Convey, which is building AI “teammates” to automate manual work at clients like NBCUniversal, raised a $38M Series A led by a16z  —  Convey, a startup founded last year that builds AI “teammates,” has raised $38 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Khosla Ventures and Pear VC.
More: The Next Web and a16z
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google launches Android 17 and Wear OS 7, available 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.
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch:
XDOF, which is building data pipelines, collection tools, and annotation systems for robot training data, emerges from stealth with $70M  —  Two weeks ago, OpenAI said it would relaunch the robotics program it shuttered in 2021 — the latest signal that the biggest AI labs are racing to teach machines to operate in the physical world.
Financial Times:
Sources describe Huawei's efforts to rebuild its chip business seven years after the US cut Huawei off from advanced US chips, as it bets on logic-stacking tech  —  Seven years after being written off the Chinese tech giant is making technical advances that appear to sidestep Washington curbs.
Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg:
Nasdaq Private Market sues Hiive, claiming Hiive stole trade secrets and infringed on its IP, poaching two employees in part to access confidential information  —  Trading platform Nasdaq Private Market alleged that its Vancouver-based competitor Hiive has stolen trade secrets and infringed on its intellectual property in a lawsuit.
Financial Times:
Dealogic: investors have poured $58B across 42 data center deals YTD; Oxford Economics says nearly 850 data centers worth ~$7T are under construction globally  —  Sector remains hot despite some investors' wariness about tenants such as ByteDance  —  Data centre deals are weathering a storm …
Ryan Lawler / Axios:
Andera, which uses AI to automate corporate audit and compliance testing, raised a $37M Series A led by Lightspeed  —  Andera, which uses AI to automate corporate audit and compliance testing, raised $37 million in Series A funding, CEO Aryo Patel tells Axios exclusively.

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Do you need a Zoho Partner?  Here's why working with one can benefit you.  —  Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case.  From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …
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

The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'What's in Louie's Wallet', With Louie Mantia
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Big Technology Podcast:
Leopold Blows Up, OpenAI Drastically Cuts Prices, Microsoft's Best Day
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:
Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight
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.
Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
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.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
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 11:55 AM ET, June 17, 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

Mitchell Armentrout / Chicago Sun Times:
CNBC:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Z.ai:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company: