Techmeme
August 7, 2026, 8:25 AM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: OpenAI's new device, slated for 2027, is a hockey puck-sized smart speaker with moving parts that help give it personality and will likely cost $300+  —  A highly anticipated new device from OpenAI will have a unique look, complete with moving parts that help give it personality …
KOB 4:
New Mexico trial: a judge orders Meta to pay $567M and make changes for underage users after finding its platforms helped create a public nuisance harming teens  —  SANTA FE, N.M. - A Santa Fe judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million, and make changes for the user experience of juvenile accounts …
Carl Zimmer / New York Times:
Scientists trained AI on genetic sequences to design viruses not found in nature, yielding 16 viable viruses that can infect bacteria but don't threaten humans  —  Scientists trained artificial intelligence on libraries of DNA and then asked the model to create recipes for viral genomes.
Tobias Mann / The Register:
AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon with the promise to boost inference performance, for an undisclosed sum  —  Early tech demos show model-specific integrated circuits churning out up to 17,000 tokens a second
SemiAnalysis:
Analysis: Google DeepMind has lost frontier-model momentum amid leadership and RL talent departures, with Google Cloud emerging as a winner with more compute  —  GCP YoY rev growth >100%, DeepMind's long term failure is Google Cloud's short term gain  —  On Wednesday, August 5th …
Arunesh Sinha / Reuters:
Atlassian reports Q4 revenue up 28% YoY to $1.77B, vs. $1.66B est., cloud revenue up 31% to $1.2B, forecasts Q1 revenue above est.; TEAM jumps 31%+ after hours  —  Collaboration software maker Atlassian (TEAM.O) beat Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter revenue on Thursday …
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
SK Hynix plans a $38B chipmaking expansion in South Korea, including a new ~$24.7B DRAM facility in Yongin and a ~$13.3B NAND fabrication plant in Cheongju  —  SK Hynix Inc. plans a 54 trillion won ($38 billion) expansion of its chipmaking facilities in South Korea, the memory chip maker said in a statement Friday.
Herb Scribner / Axios:
OpenAI updates the default model for free users to GPT-5.6 Luna, adds unlimited text chats for free users, rolls out an improved GPT-5.6 Sol version, and more  —  OpenAI on Thursday announced a series of changes that will upgrade ChatGPT for both paid and free users.
Will Knight / Wired:
Security researchers claim that Kimi K3 went outside of its sandbox during defensive cybersecurity tests, but did not hack anything after accessing the internet  —  Security researchers say that Kimi K3, an open-weight model from China, wandered off to the internet in an attempt to cheat on a test it was given.
Reuters:
Google and data: hackers used phone calls, phishing websites, and “meticulous” tactics to target dozens of US PE firms and other businesses over the past month  —  Ransom-seeking hackers who use phone calls to compromise their victims targeted dozens of prominent U.S. financial institutions …
Bloomberg:
Sources: up to five people tied to US Cyber Command died by suicide from early June to early July 2026, prompting it to flag a potential suicide cluster  —  The US military's cyberwarfare unit is scrutinizing an unusually high number of deaths by suicide among personnel over a month-long period this summer …
Deborah Sophia / Reuters:
Take-Two reports Q1 bookings down 3% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.38B est., forecasts Q2 and FY 2027 bookings below est., reiterates GTA VI's November 19 launch date  —  Take-Two Interactive (TTWO.O) maintained its annual bookings forecast on Friday, but reiterated the November 19 launch date …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
Livestream shopping app Whatnot raised a $545M Series G led by Iconiq, Lightspeed, and Avra at a $20B valuation, up from an $11.5B valuation in October 2025  —  Whatnot, started in a Funko Pop-flooded rental house, is now a $20 billion company.  —  The live commerce platform exclusively told Fortune …
Bloomberg:
Alphabet raises $25B in an investment-grade bond sale; sources say it attracted ~$115B of peak demand and that Alphabet plans to issue US debt twice per year  —  Alphabet Inc. sold $25 billion of investment-grade bonds after generous yield payouts helped secure one of the year's largest order books for AI-related debt.
Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal:
Filing: ex-a16z partner Bryan Kim is forming venture firm Mido Capital; sources: he plans to raise ~$100M for a fund backing early-stage AI and other startups  —  Bryan Kim, who invested in consumer tech and AI startups at Andreessen, is creating his own firm, Mido Capital Bryan Kim …
Reuters:
The White House imposes a series of price floors and a 15% tariff on products made from polysilicon, a chip raw material primarily produced by China  —  The White House on Thursday imposed a series of price floors and a 15% tariff on products made from polysilicon, the raw material used …

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Earlier Picks

Anna Tong / Forbes:
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Victoria Turk / Wired:
Reuters: