Techmeme
August 20, 2026, 2:55 PM

Top News

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Kate Clark / Wall Street Journal:
Stripe's OpenRouter acquisition, its largest yet, is a bet on a future where users turn to a mix of AI models and tokens are the central currency for businesses  —  The Stripe deal for OpenRouter, founded by an NFT entrepreneur, is a bet on a future where users turn to a mix of AI models
Douglas Gillison / Reuters:
Study: 150+ Polymarket wallets may have traded on internal US military information, making $8M overall with a 97.2% average win rate and attracting copycat bets  —  More than 150 wallets on Polymarket International may have traded on inside U.S. military information, attracting copycat bets …
Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg:
Waymo says it has built an ASIC chip that will improve its robotaxis' reflexes and navigational skills and help it diversify away from third parties like Nvidia  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo has built a custom chip that the company said will improve the performance of its robotaxis …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Anthropic expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's record-setting IPO, as it prepares to file publicly for its IPO as soon as the end of August  —  Anthropic PBC expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's record-setting initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter …
More: Quartz and Motley Fool.  Bluesky: @jordanswinter
Google:
Google DeepMind says its Gemma family of open models has surpassed 1B downloads and developers have published 100K+ Gemma model variants over the past two years  —  From outer space to underwater, here's how developers are bringing a positive impact with our open models.
Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba reports Q1 revenue up 9% YoY to ~$39.64B, meeting est., and net income down 75% to ~$1.54B due to heavy AI spending and weak domestic retail consumption  —  Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s profit plunged more than 75% after the Chinese company ratcheted up quarterly capital spending …
Michael Martina / Reuters:
How Unitree's Go series, which helped the company dominate the quadruped robot market, drew on openly published US university research funded by the US military  —  China's Unitree Robotics - among the world's biggest producers of humanoid and quadruped robots - based designs …
Alexander Gladstone / Wall Street Journal:
A bankruptcy court delays Google's $10M purchase of Spirit Airlines' data after former flight attendants objected, seeking assurance their info would be removed  —  The flight attendants want assurance that their confidential information will be removed from the sale of the defunct airline's digital records
Bloomberg:
Trump urges Congress to pass the Clarity Act at a White House event with execs, including the CEOs of Coinbase and Robinhood; the bill has stalled in the Senate  —  President Donald Trump pressed Congress to pass digital asset market structure legislation that is a top priority for the industry …
Bloomberg:
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Binance launches Agent OS, a platform that lets AI agents analyze markets and execute trades on users' behalf; users have to limit AI agents' access and trades  —  Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange with more than 300 million registered users, on Thursday launched a platform …
Bloomberg:
London-based Callosum, whose software matches AI tasks with models and chips, raised a $100M seed led by Atomico; the UK's Sovereign AI Fund also invested  —  Callosum, a startup that makes software to match specific artificial intelligence tasks with different models and chips …
Julia Hornstein / The Information:
Anthropic-backed enterprise AI venture Ode acquires four-year-old AI consultancy Casper Studios for an unknown amount; Ode employs 100+ after buying Fractional  —  A joint venture established by Anthropic and Wall Street firms such as Blackstone has made its first acquisition since its July launch …
More: PYMNTS

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More News

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Earlier Picks

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Reuters:
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