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August 20, 2026, 9:20 PM
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Top News

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 …
Newcomer:
Sources: Poolside struck a non-exclusive $6B licensing deal with Nvidia, plus a $1B investment at a $12B pre-money valuation; 109 staffers get Nvidia job offers  —  EXCLUSIVE TO NEWCOMER: Poolside AI, the artificial intelligence model-building startup, has struck a non-exclusive licensing deal …
Vlad Fedorov / The GitHub Blog:
GitHub says its 7+ hour August 17 outage was caused by a capacity failure when peak traffic overwhelmed an infrastructure component in a Central US data center  —  An update on the August 17 outage and the steps we're taking to improve reliability.  —  On August 17, GitHub experienced an outage that lasted 7 hours and 47 minutes.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
OpenAI rolls out an Apple Messages plugin for ChatGPT on macOS, letting ChatGPT read, search, and analyze chats, prepare and send messages, and more  —  Well, this seems interesting.  ChatGPT's latest update adds a new Mac integration: the ability to work with conversations from Apple's Messages app.
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.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Slack launches Slack Code, adding dedicated, project-specific code channels that let teams collaborate with AI coding agents “like teammates” across all plans  —  Slack Code provides a dedicated open space for teams to collaborate with AI agents.
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 …
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 …
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 …
Tom Hals / Reuters:
A US judge tosses part of the conviction of ex-Google engineer Linwei Ding, who was found guilty of stealing AI trade secrets to benefit two Chinese companies  —  A federal judge on Thursday tossed part of the conviction of former Google software engineer Linwei Ding, who was found guilty earlier …
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Charter closes its $34.5B Cox acquisition, announced in May 2025, uniting two of the biggest US cable and broadband providers, and completes its Liberty deal  —  “When Liberty first invested in Charter more than a decade ago, we saw an opportunity to build scale behind a great management team and operating model," said John Malone.
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
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

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:20 PM 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

David Ellison / @ellisonskydance:
David Ellison announces that the combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance “to preserve what has made each of these studios iconic”

New York Times:
Sources: Trump personally told his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising his presidency; at least four spots have run at a cost of ~$5.5M

Kristen Hare / Poynter:
Q&A with a co-author of a study on independent US journalism: 40% of respondents got all their income from their sites and ~80% were nearly 100% reliant on ads

More News

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
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

Earlier Picks

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
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
South Korean media: SK Hynix and its union reach a tentative deal, featuring a 6.3% salary increase and profit-sharing bonuses paid as 60% shares and 40% cash
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
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
Virginia's Loudoun County hosts 250+ data centers that bring in huge tax revenues, but in 2025, its board voted to slow construction after residents pushed back
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon plans to expand Prime Air drone delivery to almost 500 cities and towns in the US by the end of 2026, a sixfold increase from its current footprint
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