|
August 20, 2026, 9:15 AM
|
Mediagazer
memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| Erin Griffith / New York Times: |
Stripe agrees to acquire NYC-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to its investors — The deal is significant for the artificial intelligence industry, uniting Stripe's payments business with OpenRouter's helping businesses direct their spending on A.I. models.
More: Stripe, Financial Times, OpenRouter Blog, CNBC, The Information, SiliconANGLE, Payments Dive, Payments Dive, Bloomberg, and Business Insider
X: @patrickc, @quinnypig, @regulatorynerd, @lishali88, @trekedge, @maria_rcks, @a16z, @gavinsbaker, @kentherogers, @a16z, @skeptrune, @davefontenot, @anshublog, @cclark, @ernietedeschi, @shaunmmaguire, @seanmullaney, @matthuang, @officiallogank, @backseatvc, @sternhenri, @mattshumer_, @netcapgirl, @aleximm, @liangsays, @sarahdingwang, @segall_max, @shaunmmaguire, @cryptopunk7213, @stitesclay, @a16z, @moore, @martin_casado, @jeff_weinstein, @zixuanli_, @alexatallah, @pingtoven, @varunsrin, @john_piazzaiv, @levie, @menloventures, @openrouter, @openrouter, and @itsnoahd
LinkedIn: Daniel Rich, Patrick Collison, Laela Sturdy, and William Gaybrick
Forums: Hacker News, r/openrouter, and Slashdot
| Axios: |
Letter: Stripe told investors January 1 marked the “beginning of the singularity”, a major inflection point in long-term trends, and H1 revenue rose 41% YoY — Stripe on Wednesday told investors that January 1st marked the “beginning of the singularity,” which it refers …
More: Business Insider, RuntimeWire, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, The Rundown AI, PitchBook, The Information, Menlo Ventures, Stripe, and Forbes
X: @ericnewcomer, @danprimack, @fchollet, @emollick, @kimmonismus, @garymarcus, @bryce, @cjc, @alanadlevin, @jvisserlabs, @ianandrewsdc, @benspringwater, @packym, @levie, @peterberezinbca, @miles_brundage, @andrewcurran_, @ruxandrateslo, and @edzitron. LinkedIn: Brandon Lewis
Bluesky: @carnage4life and @ruoshuiresearch
Forums: r/singularity and r/accelerate
| William Langley / Financial Times: |
China's humanoid robot makers derive much of their revenue from government-backed training centers that sell training data back to them, raising demand concerns — Companies are selling machines to government-backed centres that then sell training data back to robot makers.
More: Reuters, Reuters, The Decoder, and Forbes
| 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 …
More: Barron's Online, Reuters, Unchained, Reuters, Fast Company, Quartz, Wall Street Journal, Bitcoin Insider, Forbes, Coinpedia Fintech News, Cointelegraph, Blockonomi, crypto.news, CryptoNinjas, One America News Network, The Crypto Times, Barron's Online, CoinDesk, Bitcoin News, Yahoo Finance, CHOSUNBIZ, Washington Post, New York Times, StockStory, Bitcoin Magazine, CNBC, Cointelegraph, Dow Jones Newswires, Wall Street Journal, Bitcoin Insider, The Crypto Times, Investor's Business Daily, and Investor's Business Daily
X: @whitehouse, @eleanorterrett, @onemorepeter, @rapidresponse47, @rapidresponse47, @patrickjwitt, @rapidresponse47, @rapidresponse47, @senmccormickpa, @rapidresponse47, @rapidresponse47, @rapidresponse47, @rapidresponse47, @billkingtm, @brian_armstrong, @rapidresponse47, @rapidresponse47, and @rapidresponse47
| Reuters: |
Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testifies that Mark Zuckerberg prioritized growth and engagement over child safety on Facebook and Instagram — A former engineering director at Meta Platforms (META.O) testified on Wednesday that CEO Mark Zuckerberg fostered a culture …
More: The Guardian, NPR, EasternEye, Associated Press, KQED, ANI News, Implicator.ai, Courthouse News Service, Yeni Şafak English, Telegraph, New York Post, The Times, CBS News, NC Newsline, Agence France-Presse, Fox News, Quartz, and News 12 New Jersey
X: @jonhaidt, @awinston, @ncago, @awinston, @tylerkatzen, @pweiser, @marshablackburn, and @jason_kint. Bluesky: @jessefelder.com. Mastodon: @Lazarou@mastodon.social
Forums: Hacker News, r/BetterOffline, r/ABoringDystopia, r/Fauxmoi, r/business, r/technology, r/USNEWS, and Slashdot
| Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: |
Slack launches Slack Code, adding dedicated, project-specific channels that let teams collaborate with AI coding agents “like teammates” across all Slack plans — Slack Code provides a dedicated open space for teams to collaborate with AI agents.
More: Unite.AI and RuntimeWire
X: @benioff, @scobleizer, @nrmehta, @eltintero, @jordienr, @kimmonismus, and @sawyerhood
| CNBC: |
Sources: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an all-hands that OpenAI “will be a public company in 2027”, or sooner if “our business continues to inflect” — OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees during an all-hands meeting on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence lab …
More: Quartz, Gizmodo, MarketWatch, PYMNTS, The New Stack, The Daily Caller, and Wall Street Journal
X: @firstadopter, @cpmou2022, @kr00ney, @jun_song, @chrisgpt, @downingark, @firstadopter, @marcelolima, @firstadopter, @kimmonismus, and @edzitron
Forums: r/technology, r/wallstreetbets, and r/BetterOffline
| Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: |
Sources: YouTube is offering top creators millions to post videos exclusively on YouTube for a period and will penalize those that post to Netflix concurrently — YouTube will pay creators to post their videos to YouTube before any other service. If creators post to YouTube and Netflix at the same time, they will face consequences.
More: The Economic Times, Newser, The Drum, The Hans India, Punch Newspapers, Digital Trends, Business Insider, Tubefilter, and Semafor
X: @jacksettleman, @lucas_shaw, @kirbyslastsnack, @knowsworthy, @nickbyt_, @tvgrimreaper, and @shadetv. Bluesky: @counternotions
Forums: r/MediaMergers and r/technology
| Amanda Caswell / Tom's Guide: |
Google announces new study tools, including a student hub, notebooks, and interactive 3D visualizations in Gemini, plus student offers for Google AI plans — Head back to school equipped with AI tools for studying, researching and more — Once again, Google is giving eligible college students … | Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: |
Binance launches Agent OS, a platform that lets AI agents analyze markets and execute trades on users' behalf; users set limits on AI agents' access and trades — Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange with more than 300 million registered users, on Thursday launched a platform …
More: API Evangelist, The Paypers, diginomica, Unite.AI, AI News, and Memeburn. Bluesky: @thefarce.org
| Bloomberg: |
Sources: AI chip startup Fractile is in talks to raise ~$600M at a $6.5B pre-money valuation, up from ~$1B in May, and has an initial ~$250M deal with Anthropic — Fractile, a startup developing chips tailored for artificial intelligence use that has a deal to supply Anthropic PBC … | Bloomberg: |
London-based Callosum, whose software matches AI tasks with different models and chips, raised a $100M seed from Atomico, the UK Sovereign AI Fund, and others — Callosum, a startup that makes software to match specific artificial intelligence tasks with different models and chips … | Bloomberg: |
Sources: SpaceX approached Cognition about a potential acquisition, but Cognition didn't engage; Cognition CEO Scott Wu says the company is “not for sale” — SpaceX Attempted to Buy AI Coding Startup Cognition — Video Player is loading. — Unmute — Current Time 0:00 Loaded: 26.60% Playback Rate
More: Bitcoin Insider, TechCrunch, and RuntimeWire
X: @scottwu46, @nmasc_, @elonmusk, @luke_metro, @andrewcurran_, and @rebeccatorrenc5
| Julia Hornstein / The Information: |
Anthropic-backed enterprise AI venture Ode is acquiring four-year-old AI consultancy Casper for an undisclosed fee; Ode has 100+ staff 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 … | Christine Chen / Reuters: |
Australia passes the News Bargaining Incentive, which will tax tech giants 2.5% on their Australian ad revenue unless they strike deals with local news media — Australia passed legislation on Thursday that will force tech giants to pay millions of dollars in levies if they fail … | Jacob Parry / Politico: |
The EU appears to be shifting from outsized regulatory fines against Big Tech to technical DMA orders that force compliance, such as sharing search data — BRUSSELS — The European Commission's days of outsized fines against Big Tech appear to be over. — When Brussels fined Google €890 million … | Paul Kiernan / Wall Street Journal: |
PitchBook: California-based startups have raised ~$366B in 2026 so far across 4,000+ companies, more than triple the total of all other 49 states combined — California-based companies have announced a record haul in startup funding, despite billionaire-tax fears
More: Implicator.ai
| Luz Ding / Bloomberg: |
Alibaba reports Q1 revenue up 9% YoY to ~$40B, meeting est., and net income down 75% to ~$1.6B due to heavy AI spending and weak domestic retail consumption — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s profit plunged more than 75% after China's e-commerce leader ratcheted up AI spending while grappling with a broad Chinese consumption slowdown.| Hugo Lowell / Wired: |
Sources: Trump officials expect Elon Musk to spend $100M to $200M in the November midterm elections, with a focus on voter turnout in key races, including Texas — Sources tell WIRED that Elon Musk is expected to spend up to $200 million in the midterms. It could be a big boost … | Daniel Thomas / Financial Times: |
Pornhub says the UK's new internet age checks have boosted non-compliant porn sites, which occupied seven of the top 10 search results for “free porn” in June — Country's most-visited porn website lobbies MPs for changes to flagship Online Safety Act| Robert Purchese / Eurogamer.net: |
GTA 6 leaker CyberLeek releases more footage, including a video of a character spelling “leek” with bullet holes in a wall, suggesting direct access to the game — A real plane. — Follow Grand Theft Auto VI — UPDATE 1PM BST: A previous version of this article erroneously suggested … | Brody Ford / Bloomberg: |
Source: Meta is spending hundreds of millions per year on Azure to consume trillions of AI tokens weekly, becoming one of Microsoft's largest AI customers — Meta Platforms Inc. has become one of Microsoft Corp.'s biggest AI customers, underscoring how demand for the emerging technology remains concentrated in the tech industry.
More: The Asia Business Daily
| Ina Fried / Axios: |
OpenAI is testing Private Safety Processing, a new technique to identify misuse patterns while preserving zero data retention protections, with early customers — OpenAI said Wednesday that it believes a new technique will allow it to safely serve its most advanced models to businesses without needing to retain their data.| Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: |
South Korea media: SK Hynix and its union reach a tentative deal on a 6.3% wage hike and paying out 60% of profit-sharing bonuses in shares and 40% in cash — SK Hynix Inc. and its labor union have reached a tentative wage and collective bargaining agreement, featuring a 6.3% salary increase … | Douglas Gillison / Reuters: |
Study: 150+ Polymarket wallets may have traded on inside US military information, attracting copycat bets and making $8M overall, with a 97.2% average win rate — More than 150 wallets on Polymarket International may have traded on inside U.S. military information, attracting copycat bets …
Bluesky: @jacobsilverman.com
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.
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.
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:
Cliq 7.0: Built to keep work flowing — Work feels seamless when information is available when you need it, wherever you're working, and without extra clicks. This year, our main goal was to cut through the noise …
Cliq 7.0: Built to keep work flowing — Work feels seamless when information is available when you need it, wherever you're working, and without extra clicks. This year, our main goal was to cut through the noise …
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.
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
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The $12.5 Billion Lakers, the NFL's TV Fight, and Sports Media's Big Split
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Big Technology Podcast:
Nick Bostrom: Worries About AI Existential Risk Just Became More Concrete
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.
Training Data:
Rich Sutton and Khurram Javed: Why AI Models Stop Learning, and How to Start It Again
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Ben Thompson on Big Tech, China, and the AI Boom Running Out of Money
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
OpenAI's Head of Design: This is the best time in history to be a designer | Ian Silber
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
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 9:15 AM ET, August 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.
From Mediagazer
Katie Kilkenny / The Hollywood Reporter:Todd Spangler / Variety:
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Upcoming Tech Events
More News
| Cecilia Kang / New York Times: |
More: RedState, New York Post, and The Asia Business Daily
| Wall Street Journal: |
More: NewsMax.com and The Defense Post
X: @noahcrothman, @cbarbermd, @hammerstonemar3, and @laraseligman. Bluesky: @paleofuture. Mastodon: @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social
Forums: r/politics, r/Military, r/LessCredibleDefence, and r/army
Earlier Picks
| Emma Roth / The Verge: |
More: TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, BMI, NPowerUser, Social Media Today, Social Media Today, Tech in Asia, Engadget, MacRumors, Digital Trends, and Axios
X: @dps, @spencerbarnett, @pratanchandani, and @naomigleit
Threads: @eshumarneedi, @mwi.invest, @vishalshahis, and @vishalshahis
| Alex Isenstadt / Axios: |
More: TechCrunch, Implicator.ai, Washington Post, American Prospect, SiliconANGLE, Deseret News, Bisnow, ABC News, The Hill, The Post Millennial, Truthout, The Columbus Dispatch, and pa.gov
X: @andrewcurran_, @pkafka, @bstein80, @projectlincoln, @austincampbell, @davidsirota, @mikenellis, @mattyglesias, @ecaliberseven, @juliealdermanb, @jbsdc, @farzyness, @therickwilson, @thejefflutz, @axiosalex, @jimvandehei, @mikeallen, and @jimvandehei
Bluesky: @tyleraking.com, @hypervisible.blacksky.app, and @enjohnston. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
Forums: r/Ohio, r/politics, r/singularity, and r/neoliberal
| Murad Hemmadi / The Logic: |
More: SiliconANGLE, The SaaS News, Globe and Mail, and RuntimeWire
X: @igilitschenski, @khoslaventures, @mascobot, @abursuc, @huanling6, and @zgojcic. LinkedIn: Sanja Fidler
| Matt Day / Bloomberg: |
More: About Amazon, SiliconANGLE, Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica, Forbes, The Verge, The Daily Upside, ZeroHedge News, The Daily Wire, Fortune, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, and GeekWire
X: @lexnfx, @de_gifford, @mweinbach, @amazon, @itschrisray, and @annierpalmer
LinkedIn: Eve Jakubowski, Jason Patrao, Sam Bailey, Teresa Uthurralt, Annie Palmer, and Courtney Trimble. Bluesky: @peark.es. Forums: r/technology