February 19, 2026

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

The boys' club no one was supposed to write about: Reporter Zoë Bernard spent months talking to 51 people (31 of them gay men) to map out a subculture that's been an open secret in Silicon Valley for years: gay men, at the upper echelons of tech, quietly raising up their own networks the way powerful people have always done. Read More

SpaceX's Starbase city is getting its own court: Elon Musk's company town already has a volunteer fire department, and is forming a Starbase Police Department. Now it wants its own court, too. 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.

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

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 onstage obliged, except OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, who held their hands conspicuously apart. Read More

An AI data center boom is fueling Redwood's energy storage business: Redwood Materials says its new energy storage business is the fastest growing unit within the company. Read More

Reddit is testing a new AI search feature for shopping: A small group of users in the U.S. will start to see search results that include interactive product carousels with pricing, images, and direct where-to-buy links. Read More

New York hits the brakes on robotaxi expansion plan: The governor of New York pulled a robotaxi expansion proposal that was viewed as a win for Waymo. Read More

At Disrupt, founders find momentum, VCs discover their next investment, and operators take their next leap. October 13–15 in San Francisco, 10,000 tech leaders converge at San Francisco’s Moscone West to connect and hear from 250+ industry-defining voices across 200+ sessions. Save up to $680 on your pass by February 27. Or save up to 30% when you bring a group.

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

Meta is shutting down Messenger's standalone website: The move comes a few months after Meta shut down Messenger’s standalone desktop apps for Windows and Mac. Read More

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