Techmeme
August 21, 2026, 5:00 AM

Top News

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 …
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.
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 …
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.
Kristin Robinson / Billboard:
Email: Apple Music tells industry partners that songs tagged as “materially generated using AI” by content providers will be visibly labeled on the service  —  The news builds on Apple's recent announcement of AI Transparency Tags for songs.  Now, the service will soon make those disclosures visible to users.
Matt G. Southern / Search Engine Journal:
Google rolls out an embeddable “Preferred Sources” button, natural language Discover controls, and custom audio briefings in the Google News app on Android  —  Google is rolling out a new embeddable Preferred Sources button, natural language Discover controls, and customizable audio briefings in the Google News app.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Nevada approves permits letting Tesla deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in the Las Vegas area over the next year, while Waymo and Uber are each allowed up to 1,000  —  Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis.  —  The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Meta rolls out Pocket, an experimental vibe-coding app that lets users create and share small games, in the US, after launching it in Brazil last month  —  Meta's experimental vibe-coding gaming app, Pocket, is now rolling out to everyone in the U.S. The app, which arrived quietly last month …
Dawn Kopecki / Reuters:
How crypto, AI, and online betting companies emerged as the biggest industries shaping the 2026 US midterm races, as corporate spending reaches a record $517M  —  A handful of billionaires and companies are driving corporate spending in U.S. midterm elections this year …
Marcela Ayres / Reuters:
Brazil announces ~$444.2M in AI investments split between US and Chinese companies, including ~$250.3M for a supercomputing project with Huawei and iFlytek  —  Brazil's government announced on Thursday investments of about 2.3 billion reais ($444.2 million) to bolster its artificial intelligence ecosystem …
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
Source: Anthropic plans a change for later this year that still requires enterprises to retain data for 30 days but lets them do so on their own cloud systems  —  Anthropic PBC plans to allow business customers to keep greater control of their data when using its most capable artificial intelligence models …
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.
More: Unite.AIX: @google, @osanseviero, @_philschmid, @o_lacombe, @ollama, @cockerillbill, and @ai_for_successLinkedIn: Harshad P.Bluesky: @gusthemaForums: r/Bard
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Source: AI training data startup Micro1's gross annual run rate grew from $100M to $500M in the past eight months, putting net annual run rate at $150M-$200M  —  The near-bottomless demand for unique AI training data from top labs and corporations is driving a massive boom for a cohort of data-labeling startups.
More: AdExchanger

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Featured Podcasts

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More News

Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:

Earlier Picks

Alexander Gladstone / Wall Street Journal:
Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg:
Douglas Gillison / Reuters:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: