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August 19, 2026, 3:50 PM
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Mediagazer
memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| Erin Griffith / New York Times: |
Stripe agrees to acquire New York-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: Bloomberg, Axios, Payments Dive, Stripe, Menlo Ventures, Business Insider, and The Stack. Forums: Hacker News
| Axios:NEW |
More: OpenRouter Blog and Forbes
| Alex Isenstadt / Axios: |
Memo: the GOP asks AI companies to stem the public backlash against data centers, saying the issue could kill its chances of holding a vital Senate seat in Ohio — The Senate GOP campaign arm, in a private memo to top AI companies, warns that toxic views of U.S. data centers are killing …
More: The Hill, TechCrunch, Associated Press, International Business Times, Implicator.ai, Washington Examiner, Daily Kos, The Daily Caller, Daily Mail, NewsMax.com, pa.gov, and Media Matters for America
X: @pkafka, @juliealdermanb, @thejefflutz, @jimvandehei, @jbsdc, @jimvandehei, @mattyglesias, @farzyness, @austincampbell, @davidsirota, @projectlincoln, @mikeallen, @axiosalex, @therickwilson, @mikenellis, @ecaliberseven, and @bstein80. Bluesky: @hypervisible.blacksky.app
Forums: r/singularity and r/politics
| Wall Street Journal: |
US tech companies are offering community investments, guaranteeing jobs, and hosting open houses to address concerns and win public support for AI data centers — Tech companies are holding listening sessions, offering guaranteed jobs and writing big checks to win public support for the data centers they need.| Matt Day / Bloomberg: |
Amazon plans to expand Prime Air drone deliveries to cities in at least five more US states in the coming months, including Chicago and Atlanta by 2026's end — Amazon.com Inc. plans to expand its drone delivery operation to cities in at least five more US states in the coming months …
More: About Amazon, CNBC, The Verge, Inc, Business Insider, AppleInsider, ABC News, WTTG-TV, USA Today, TechCrunch, FreightWaves, Fox Business, SupplyChainBrain, Wall Street Journal, Blockonomi, Quartz, Digital Trends, The Mac Observer, The Hill, Newser, Mashable, PCMag, DroneXL, 9to5Mac, Cautious Optimism, DroneDJ, PYMNTS, Dow Jones Newswires, and GeekWire
X: @mweinbach, @annierpalmer, and @amazon
| Dana Wollman / Bloomberg: |
Marvell and Google expand their chip development deal, and Marvell grants Google a warrant to buy up to nearly 59M shares at $206.58 each, totaling up to $12.2B — Marvell Technology Inc. has agreed to give Alphabet Inc.'s Google rights to buy as much as $12.2 billion of its shares in exchange for purchasing chips.| Dominic Preston / The Verge: |
Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review: a tougher body, an IP68 rating, and a decent triple rear camera, but an iterative hardware upgrade with a dated-looking design — The foldable phone market is in the middle of a huge transformation, but no one told Google. — Last year, Samsung transformed …
More: 9to5Google, ZDNET, Tech Advisor, Engadget, iPhone in Canada, The Independent, Tom's Guide, MakeUseOf, CGMagazine, Geeking Out, The Shortcut, and SlashGear. Bluesky: @dompreston.com
| Julian Chokkattu / Wired: |
More: Tech Advisor, How-To Geek, Computerworld, 9to5Google, The Verge, Droid Life, Digital Trends, Tom's Guide, Android Authority, CGMagazine, and Android Police
X: @davidimel and @alexmaxham
| Cameron Faulkner / The Verge: |
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Amazon makes its AI-powered Alexa+ free on all compatible Fire TV devices in the US, automatically upgrading all its users even if they don't subscribe to Prime — AI is coming to your TV, whether you want it or not. — On Wednesday, Amazon said its AI assistant, Alexa+ … | Zijing Wu / Financial Times: |
Sources: Beijing allowed ByteDance and Tencent ~10K Nvidia H200 chips each in mainland China in recent weeks; US licenses permit the H200 in China and Hong Kong — Beijing permits small shipments to help leading tech groups in drive to catch up with US rivals
More: CNBC, Reuters, Quartz, Digital Trends, Tom's Hardware, Seoul Economic Daily, Engadget, and The Asia Business Daily
X: @firstadopter and @zijing_wu
| Trishla Ostwal / Adweek: |
OpenAI expands its ad pilot program to 31 European markets, including Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, after launching it in nine countries including the US — Expansion of the AI giant's ads pilot comes as ad revenue climbs more than 25% since the start of August — The future of brands gets decided here.| Emma Roth / The Verge: |
Meta launches a Mac app for Meta AI and says Meta AI can now work directly with Instagram and Facebook accounts, Meta ad campaigns, and Google Workspace — You can share your window with the new Meta AI app, as well as connect it to Google Workspace. … Meta is launching a new Mac app dedicated to its AI chatbot.
More: 9to5Mac, Engadget, AppleInsider, Axios, Unite.AI, and Small Business Trends
| 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.
More: The Information, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and Semafor
| Nicola M White / Bloomberg: |
The US CFTC bans former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang from trading for five years, as part of a settlement over their roles at FTX — FTX co-founder Gary Wang and former Alameda Research Chief Executive Officer Caroline Ellison avoided financial penalties under …
More: CFTC, Cointelegraph, Coinpedia Fintech News, Bitcoin Insider, The Crypto Times, Bitcoin News, CoinGape, and Protos
| Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: |
Rivian spinout Also, which is developing autonomous driving tech, raised a $150M Series D led by Prysm Capital, after announcing a $200M round in March 2026 — Also has raised another $150 million as the micromobility startup that spun out of Rivian last year expands its business beyond … | Bloomberg: |
Hangzhou-based humanoid robot maker Unitree's stock surges 460% in its Shanghai trading debut, giving it a $50B+ market cap, after it raised ~$904M in its IPO — Unitree Robotics shares surged 460% in their Shanghai trading debut after the company raised 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) …
More: Business Insider, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, The Robot Report, Reuters, New York Post, The Business Times, Quartz, Blockonomi, Bloomberg, Proactive, Forbes, Nikkei Asia, CoinDesk, Associated Press, The Economic Times, Gizmodo, South China Morning Post, Agence France-Presse, and CNBC. X: @johnkoetsier
| Wall Street Journal: |
Sources: OpenAI's Q2 sales grew 18% QoQ to $6.7B as its loss jumped 32% to $12.3B; Anthropic's sales grew 2x+ to $11.6B as it swung to a small operating profit — The ChatGPT-maker's revenue disappointed some investors, although the company told them its growth accelerated in the third quarter
More: Tech Brew, Marcus on AI, CNET, New York Times, CNBC, Semafor, The Information, Yahoo Finance, Quartz, CoinDesk, SiliconANGLE, Gizmodo, and Seoul Economic Daily
| Alexander Martin / The Record: |
AI evaluation lab Irregular's report on its role in hacking incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta models faces criticism over key unanswered questions — The company at the center of a series of incidents in which AI models compromised real-world computer systems during supposedly … | 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 … | The Information: |
Source: Nvidia has discussed an investment in Mercor as part of a round valuing the startup at $20B; Nvidia paid Mercor tens of millions of dollars last quarter — Nvidia has discussed an investment in Mercor, a data labeling provider that helps the chip designer develop its open-source AI models … | Jowi Morales / Tom's Hardware: |
A hacker known as Cyberleek leaks two GTA VI gameplay clips and the full map in protest of Rockstar Games' digital-only release; Rockstar issues DMCA takedowns — The hacker wants Rockstar to stop pre-selling digital games. … GTA VI is one of the most hotly anticipated games in history …
More: MobileSyrup, XDA Developers, Forbes, Polygon.com, Kotaku, Mashable, PC Gamer, Gameranx, The Game Post, Notebookcheck, Tech4Gamers, iPhone in Canada, The Independent, TechRadar, and Comic Book
X: @niktek, @spiintercai, @stopkilinggames, @wackoaiintpaid, @epicnng, @zvbear, @therooster, and @shitpostrock. Forums: r/tomshardware
| Carl Franzen / VentureBeat: |
Block releases Berd, a desktop app it built to give its employees a single environment for working with AI agents across different models, under Apache 2.0 — Block, the technology company founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that owns Square, Cash App and the music streaming service Tidal …
More: View from the Wing, Block Open Source on GitHub, and Block
X: @aaron_aalaniz, @ksimback, @bradleyaxen, @jack, @jack, @camworboys, @yescynfria, @jack, @blocks, @blocks, @tftc21, @isazalucas, @hams, and @morganmartn. Forums: Hacker News
| Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: |
Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's Bengaluru-based fintech Navi raised $100M from Prosus, its first institutional funding, sources say at a ~$1.3B valuation — Indian fintech Navi has raised $100 million from Prosus, marking the first institutional funding for the eight-year-old startup founded …
More: The Economic Times, Finimize, DealStreetAsia, VCCircle, Inc42, Fortune India, Entrackr, Bloomberg, Moneycontrol, and The Tech Portal
X: @patwardhannn and @patwardhannn
| Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: |
Amazon appears to have leaked Jason Statham's new film Mutiny, streaming it in full on Prime Video in the US, two days before it is supposed to hit theaters — The film isn't supposed to hit theaters for two days, but it's available to stream on Prime Video now.
More: Gizmodo, Polygon.com, World of Reel, and ScreenRant
Bluesky: @martinsfp and @hunterwalk.com
Forums: r/entertainment, r/movies, r/blankies, and r/boxoffice
| Bloomberg:NEW |
Sources: SpaceX approached AI coding startup Cognition about a potential acquisition; deal talks are inactive, but the companies are discussing working together — SpaceX approached artificial intelligence coding startup Cognition AI Inc. about a potential acquisition …
X: @luke_metro and @andrewcurran_
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.Sponsor Post
| 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 … | Dave Michaels / Wall Street Journal: |
The US FTC says businesses must disclose when they use personalized pricing and it will “deploy enforcement resources” against companies that do not disclose it — Agency says businesses must disclose when they use personalized pricing and may face lawsuits if they don't
More: Associated Press, PYMNTS, and FTC
| Murad Hemmadi / The Logic: |
Sources: Veeda, which is developing world models and is led by ex-Nvidia VP of AI Research Sanja Fidler, raised a $90M+ seed and is backed by Khosla and Radical — Toronto-based Veeda is building control systems for physical AI, and is backed by Khosla Ventures and Radical Ventures, The Logic has learnedSponsor 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:
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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.
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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.
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Training Data:
Rich Sutton and Khurram Javed: Why AI Models Stop Learning, and How to Start It Again
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Ben Thompson on Big Tech, China, and the AI Boom Running Out of Money
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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.
Newest
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% YoYFind
New
Bloomberg:
Sources: SpaceX approached AI coding startup Cognition about a potential acquisition; deal talks are inactive, but the companies are discussing working togetherFind
5 minutes ago
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”Find
16 minutes ago
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 AnthropicFind
49 minutes ago
The Information:
Source: Nvidia has discussed an investment in Mercor as part of a round valuing the startup at $20B; Nvidia paid Mercor tens of millions of dollars last quarterFind
65 minutes ago
Erin Griffith / New York Times:
Stripe agrees to acquire New York-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to its investorsFind
2 hours ago
Dave Michaels / Wall Street Journal:
The US FTC says businesses must disclose when they use personalized pricing and it will “deploy enforcement resources” against companies that do not disclose itFind
2 hours ago
From Mediagazer
Steven Zeitchik / The Hollywood Reporter:Max Tani / Semafor:
Jeremy Barr / The Guardian:
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| Loree Seitz / The Wrap: |
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More: pharmaphorum and Network Bio
LinkedIn: Mehran Karimzadeh, Karen Knudsen Mba PhD, Asad Ali Ahmad, PhD, Raphael Potter, and Hani Goodarzi
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More: Gizmodo, Engadget, Breitbart, RuntimeWire, and Business Insider
Bluesky: @katie-drummond, @davidgilbert, @dmehro, @hypervisible.blacksky.app, @dell, and @timmarchman
Forums: r/FlockSurveillance, r/technology, and r/technews
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More: The Decoder. X: @zai_org, @cara_catowner, @jietang, @jun_song, @zixuanli_, @theavclub, @thekaitling, @thanergy, @evanmonroe12, @riverscoat, @readerbell_, @lsmcooke, and @artificialanlys. Bluesky: @ed3d.net
| Max A. Cherney / Reuters: |