February 19, 2026

OpenAI reportedly finalizing $100B deal at more than $850B valuation: OpenAI is reportedly getting close to closing a $100 billion deal, with backers including Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Microsoft. The deal would value the ChatGPT-maker at $850 billion. Read More

This VC's best advice for building a founding team: This season on Build Mode, we're diving into what it takes to build a world-class founding team.  To kick off season two, Isabelle Johannessen is joined by Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst and former founder, YC partner, and seed investor at Wayfinder Ventures. Sagalov has worked with hundreds of pre-seed and seed-stage companies and has seen firsthand the best (and worst) ways to hire in the early days. Read More

Current is a new RSS reader that's more like a river than an inbox: Current introduces a stress-free, totally reimagined RSS news reading app as a one-time paid download. Read More

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Cap table. Pitch deck. Investor updates. Diligence. The Fundraise-Ready Startup Kit equips you with the core materials founders can use to raise with confidence.

Altman and Amodei share a moment of awkwardness at India's big AI summit: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi prompted speakers at the event to join hands and raise them in a show of unity, all executives on stage obliged, except OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, who held their hands conspicuously apart. Read More

OpenAI taps Tata for 100MW AI data center capacity in India, eyes 1GW: OpenAI also plans to expand its presence in India with new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru later this year. Read More

Sex toys maker Tenga says hacker stole customer information: The Japanese sex toy maker said a hacker broke into an employee's inbox and stole customer names, email addresses, and correspondence, including order details and customer service inquiries. Read More

Bug in student admissions website exposed children's personal information: Ravenna Hub, which lets parents apply and track the status of their kids' applications across thousands of schools, allowed any logged-in user to access the personally identifiable data associated with any other user, including their children. Read More

Rivian owners will soon be able to access vehicle controls using their Apple Watch: Rivian is launching a companion app that pairs with Apple Watch in the coming week. Read More

AI-native applications are dynamic, unpredictable, and moving at machine speed. Evo by Snyk introduces a new era of "agentic security"—using specialized AI agents to discover, test, and protect your AI ecosystem.

OpenAI, Reliance partner to add AI search to JioHotstar: The rollout includes two-way integration that surfaces streaming links directly inside ChatGPT. Read More

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February 18, 2026

World Labs lands $1B, with $200M from Autodesk, to bring world models into 3D workflows: The partnership will see the two companies exploring how World Labs' models can work alongside Autodesk's tools, and vice versa, starting with a focus on entertainment use cases.  Read More

Amazon halts Blue Jay robotics project after less than 6 months: Amazon said Blue Jay's core tech will be used for other robotics projects and the employees who worked on it were moved to other projects. Read More

Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, plans to target creators with new features: Mastodon is looking to grow its open source, decentralized social network with new features aimed at creators. Read More

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See the breakthroughs redefining AI across industries. Join Microsoft at NVIDIA GTC to explore physical AI, AI factories, and agentic AI and experience the ideas driving the next era of innovation. Full conference passes for March 16–19 in San Jose are sold out, but single-day passes are still available. Get yours now.

Data breach at fintech giant Figure affects close to a million customers: The Figure data breach allowed hackers to steal customer names, dates of birth, physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Read More

Kana emerges from stealth with $15M to build flexible AI agents for marketers: Kana, a new AI marketing startup from the founders of Rapt and Krux, has raised $15 million to build customizable, agent-based marketing tools. Read More

Hacking conference Def Con bans three people linked to Epstein: The Def Con hacking conference banned hackers Pablos Holman and Vincenzo Iozzo, as well as former MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito, from attending the annual conference after their reported connections with Jeffrey Epstein. Read More

Microsoft says Office bug exposed customers' confidential emails to Copilot AI: Microsoft said the bug meant that its Copilot AI chatbot was reading and summarizing paying customers' confidential emails, bypassing data-protection policies. Read More

Google adds music-generation capabilities to the Gemini app: Users will be able to use text, images, and videos as a reference to generate music. Read More

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Kindred talks home-swapping platform for travelers, Chef Robotics introduces AI into commercial kitchens, and Character.AI addresses chatbot safety with teens.

Google debuts $499 Pixel 10a: The smartphone is available for preorder now with shipments starting March 5. It comes in Lavender, Berry, Fog, and Obsidian. Read More

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