Wednesday, 19 August 2026
Rillet hits $1B valuation on AI accounting
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AI-native ERP startup Rillet raised a $100M Series C led by ICONIQ at a $1B valuation, its third raise in a year, with 600+ customers and fast ARR growth.
OpenAI reaffirms zero data retention
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OpenAI restated its zero-retention pledge for eligible API customers and previewed Private Safety Processing, a way to screen for abuse without storing content.
Cursor adds subscriptions to cloud agents
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Cursor's update lets cloud agents watch PRs, Slack threads and schedules, pin skills as modes, run subagents on isolated machines, and track long-lived goals.
Meta ran ads for a nonconsensual deepfake app
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Meta ran 32 ads for an app called Kromix that let users generate sexual deepfakes of real women, including one resembling a US politician, before pulling them.
Cerebras launches the CS-4 inference system
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Cerebras unveiled the CS-4, a rack with three WSE-3 Turbo wafer-scale chips it says delivers 30x the per-user inference speed of Nvidia GPUs.
Replit's free mode runs on GPT-5.6 Luna
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Replit made GPT-5.6 Luna the default engine behind a new Free Mode for paying Core and Pro users, after OpenAI cut Luna's API cost 80% in July.
Meta AI gets a dedicated Mac app
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Meta launched a Mac app for its AI chatbot that can see your shared screen and connect to Instagram, Facebook, and Google Workspace accounts.
ChatGPT ads expand to 31 European markets
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OpenAI will launch ChatGPT ads in 31 European countries on August 24, its largest ad expansion yet, shown only to Free and Go users.
Startup raises $22M for faster data-center fiber
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Relativity Networks raised $22M plus a $40M hyperscaler order for hollow-core fiber that cuts data-center-to-data-center latency by about 50%.
Nvidia weighs Mercor stake at $20B
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Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest in AI data-labeling firm Mercor at a $20B valuation, double its October mark, after buying expert Nemotron data.
TerraPower's reactor design targets AI load spikes
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TerraPower's 345MW molten salt reactor stores excess heat to handle AI data-center demand spikes without slowing the reactor, per TechCrunch.
Amazon makes Alexa+ free on Fire TV
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Amazon made its AI-powered Alexa+ assistant free on Fire TV devices, dropping the Prime requirement to widen the assistant's reach.
Robin Williams' kids revive his Instagram vs AI slop
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Robin Williams' children reactivated his Instagram account, 12 years after his death, to push back on AI-generated videos misusing his voice and likeness.
Calendly enters the meeting note-taker market
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Calendly launched a meeting note-taker and Callie, an AI scheduling assistant that pulls context from past meetings to draft follow-ups.
Liquid AI ships quantized LFM2.5 checkpoints
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Liquid AI released Q4_0 quantized checkpoints of its LFM2.5 model family, built via quantization-aware distillation for smaller on-device deployments.
Cline Desktop adds voice input, inline images
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Cline's Desktop v0.0.14 adds voice dictation, inline image generation, streaming terminal output, and native macOS task-completion notifications.