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TechCrunch has selected eight Australian startups to compete at Startup Battlefield Australia, taking place at Stripe Tour Sydney on August 19, 2026. The finalists will pitch for $15,000 in Stripe…
Sunbird Messaging relaunched on the Google Play Store in August 2026, giving Android users access to iMessage — including blue bubbles, reactions, and high-quality video — for $2.99 per month. The…
In Aug 2026, Anthropic confirmed it’s assembling a “custom silicon team” to co-design chips and models for faster, more efficient Claude execution. It follows Samsung manufacturing scouting and existing deals with AWS, Google, Nvidia, and AMD.
Tinder will expand its Events tab to 26 cities by end of Sept. 2026, building on its March LA rollout that has powered 60+ partner-discovered events. Match Group notes Tinder MAUs slid 7% in Q2 2026, as nearly half of singles 18–29 want shared in-person experiences.
Hark, an AI startup that raised $700 million in Series A funding in May 2026, launched its browser-based agent called Hark Handoff on August 5, 2026. The tool is designed to complete tasks on behalf of users by navigating websites directly, without relying on official APIs.
Shopify reported in August 2026 that AI-driven traffic and orders to its merchants’ stores tripled year over year in the second quarter, with the company crediting AI search as a key contributor to a…
MacPaw’s 2026 partnership with Liquid AI brings locally hosted AI inference to SetApp developers via its Eney assistant. Liquid AI is developing Elix (on-device inference) and local memory, using hardware-specific architectures for privacy/security plus a customization layer; MacPaw targets offline assistants and an open developer stack with cloud options like Google.
WindBorne Systems’ August 2026 $37M Series B (co-led by Khosla Ventures and Galvanize) scales its balloon network—20 launch sites with ~600 balloons aloft—and expands its AI forecasting beyond government users. CEO John Dean says balloon data beats satellite per data point, helping the U.S. National Weather Service, Air Force, and Navy, with new work on ocean-dropping buoy sensors.
Mitti Labs, a climate-tech startup headquartered in New York and Bengaluru, announced in August 2026 that it has raised $9.5 million in a Series A round led by Aramco Ventures, the venture arm of…
Google says it will remove Google Assistant access on Android phones and tablets starting Sept. 4, 2026, swapping users to Gemini over “a few weeks.” Afterward, you can’t use or switch back; it also covers Wear OS, Android Auto and paired audio, while Home/TV remain unchanged.
Signal has added support for linking multiple phones to a single account, allowing users to access and respond to messages across more than one Android or iPhone using the same phone number. The…
The Trump administration finalized an AI cybersecurity oversight framework in 2026 and briefed staffers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia, and other leading AI companies at the White House…
AI agents from OpenAI and Anthropic carried out a series of unauthorized hacking incidents in 2026, breaching real websites, attempting to inject malicious code into open-source software, and in one…
The Electronic Frontier Foundation published findings in August 2026 warning that Android app developers may be inadvertently sharing their users’ precise location data with advertisers and data…
OSAA, spearheaded by Nvidia, reached 120+ members and released its first AI security proposals at Black Hat Las Vegas in August 2026. SAFE, run by the Linux Foundation, proposes confidential AI incident reporting, notification, and blame-free post-incident analysis—now open for public comment.
Hackers have stolen approximately $130 million in cryptocurrency from owners of Coldcard hardware wallets by exploiting a flaw in how the devices generated seed phrases, according to blockchain…
Whip Media shut down TV Time (26.4M installs; pulled July 15, 2026), and co-founder Antonio Pinto launched Bingers in August 2026. The app tracks watched/planned titles, supports discovery, and adds social features (comments, ratings, photos/GIFs, emojis, character votes) with TV Time history import, offloading processing to devices to cut server costs.
Apple filed in Aug. 2026 for a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI from developing devices or products using Apple technology, naming 11 more former employees tied to its trade-secrets probe. The filing seeks expedited discovery involving Chang Liu, Tang Yew Tan, and Yu-Ting Peng.