2026 in Techmeme — OrangeBot.AI Archive

Eliza Triantafillou / OCCRP : Intellexa's founder says his firm sells surveillance tech exclusively to governments, reviving claims of state spying in Greece after being sentenced last month —  The founder of the commercial spyware firm Intellexa, recently convicted in a landmark wiretapping trial …

Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek : Scanner, which helps organizations build cloud-native security data lakes for threat hunting, detection, and response, raised a $22M Series A led by Sequoia —  The company connects AI agents to security data lakes for interactive investigations, detection engineering, and autonomous response.

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch : Indian edtech startup upGrad plans to acquire rival Unacademy in an all-stock deal; Unacademy was valued at less than $500M in 2025, down from $3.5B in 2021 —  Unacademy, once a one of India's most valuable edtech startups, is set to be acquired by rival upGrad in an all-stock deal …

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch : Objection, which aims to use AI and experts to evaluate claims in news stories, debuts with funding from Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan; evaluations cost $2,000 —  After helping lead the lawsuit that bankrupted media firm Gawker, Aron D'Souza says he saw something broken in the American media system …

Chris Metinko / Axios : NY-based Auctor, which uses AI to curate resource plans and process flows to help companies adopt new software, raised $20M in a combined seed and Series A —  Auctor, a startup helping companies adopt new software, raised $20 million in a combined seed and Series A, CEO William Sun tells Axios Pro first.

NBC News : A jury finds that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally maintained monopoly power in the ticketing market, in a case brought by state AGs after the DOJ settled —  The federal government struck a settlement with Live Nation in March, requiring Ticketmaster to divest up to 13 amphitheaters …

Bill Gurley / Bill's Substack : How tech companies are using open source initiatives to achieve critical strategic goals and how such efforts are reshaping industries like AI, AVs, and more —  How the Smartest Executives Are Using Open Source Techniques to Optimize Corporate Strategy  —  Nearly 27 years ago, on July 12 …

Julie Bort / TechCrunch : In a viral X post that parodies the old Mac vs. PC commercials, General Catalyst posted a “VC vs GC” video, with the VC apparently modeled after Marc Andreessen —  One of the most entertaining moments in VC this week was a piece of rage-bait marketing from General Catalyst.

Mauro Orru / Wall Street Journal : Semiconductor stocks fell globally on Friday after the Trump-Xi summit concluded without major chip deals; Nvidia closed down 4.42% and AMD closed down 5.69% —  Beijing hasn't formally approved Nvidia shipments of its H200 chips to China  —  Global semiconductor stocks skidded …

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg : Sources: several Xbox studios, including Hellblade maker Ninja Theory, are in talks with Microsoft to buy themselves back and go independent to avoid closure —  The studios, which include Compulsion Games and Double Fine, are in active negotiations with Xbox and may be given the chance to go independent.

The Information : Source: Qualcomm is in talks to buy AI chip designer Tenstorrent for $8B to $10B; Tenstorrent discussed raising $800M at a ~$3.2B valuation last year —  Qualcomm has been in talks to buy Tenstorrent, a startup that designs chips for AI, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal.

Brian Thomas / OpenRouter Blog : OpenRouter debuts Fusion, a tool for prompting multiple AI models in parallel, claiming it can achieve “Fable-level intelligence at half the price” —  We've found that synthesizing the results of multiple models can significantly outperform what individual models are capable of.

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News : Venture funding of fintech startups grew 22.7% YoY in H1 2026 to $28.6B globally, but deal count fell 25.7% and funding fell 17.3% vs. H2 2025's $34.6B funding —  Venture funding into fintech startups climbed nearly 23% year over year in H1 2026, even as deal count fell more than 25% …

Daniel Kuhn / The Block : Coinbase's Jesse Pollak says Jordan Fish, aka “Cobie”, will now lead the Base app team after acknowledging some of Base's bets on social features fell short —  Quick Take  — Cobie will now lead the Base app team as Base creator and Coinbase executive Jesse Pollak focuses …

Samantha Subin / CNBC : SpaceX shares fell for a fourth-straight session on Wednesday, briefly dropping below their $135 IPO price for the first time before closing at $135.27 —  SpaceX shares fell for a fourth-straight session on Wednesday, briefly dropping below their $135 initial public offering price …

Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg : Sources: data center operator Switch filed confidentially for a US IPO, and a listing could take place as soon as November; Ben Horowitz is joining its board —  Switch Inc. filed confidentially for a US IPO, according to people familiar with the matter, joining its data center peers …

Arriana McLymore / Reuters : Retailers are updating their websites to rank highly in chatbot results, while making sure purchases are done on their own sites to collect customer data —  As shoppers increasingly turn to ChatGPT and Google's Gemini for product recommendations, retailers are racing to appear in chatbot results …

Sara Fischer / Axios : TMTG interim CEO Kevin McGurn says the company is pulling back from a pair of Crypto.com deals to focus on its media arm and its pending merger with TAE —  Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group, is pulling back from a pair of Crypto.com deals as its new leadership looks …