This Week in Tech (Week Ending Apr 17, 2026)
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Happy Friday! đ Tech news below!
đ Macro (Economic) and Trends
đThe S&P 500 reached a new all-time high. The market confidence comes even as energy prices remain elevated and economists warn of lasting effects from the war in the Middle East. â
đŽđˇDifferences over Iranâs nuclear program were the main roadblock during peace talks this past week. The U.S. and Iran disagree on the length of a proposed halt for Iranâs uranium enrichment program. The U.S. proposed a 20-year stoppage. The Iranians countered with a shorter âsingle-digitâ period.
đđşHungarian voters have ousted Prime Minister Viktor OrbĂĄn after 16 years in power. Corruption and self-dealing were major reasons for OrbĂĄnâs defeat.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to open a city-owned grocery store.
đŹ Micro (Tech Companies)
đ Meta is set to overtake Google as the worldâs top digital ad business. Ad research firm eMarketer says Meta will hit over $243.5 billion in net ad revenue this year, topping Googleâs $239.5 billion
Meta Platforms is reorganizing its hardware division, Reality Labs, in a bid to âadapt and execute faster.â
Apple is sending a portion of its Siri programmers back to coding school just two months before the company is expected to unveil a major, AI-powered revamp of the voice assistant. The move suggests that Apple feels that a portion of the Siri organization needs to tune up its skills to take advantage of fast-moving changes in programming.
Google is negotiating an agreement with the Department of Defense that would allow the Pentagon to deploy Googleâs Gemini AI models in classified settings.
Salesforce has launched a tool that lets its customers connect other companiesâ AI agents with their Salesforce data
Live Nation and Ticketmaster lost their antitrust case. Why it matters: Itâs likely to embolden state attorneys general to prosecute other antitrust cases.
đThe new big 3 in auto - đ Whoâs out: GM, Ford and Chrysler. đ Whoâs in: Waymo, Tesla and Uber.
Allbirds is ditching wool sneakers for AI servers, rebranding as NewBird AI after locking in a $50M convertible financing facility.
âď¸ Starbucks is rolling out a new AI-powered feature in ChatGPT that suggests drinks based on your mood, cravings or even a photo.
Hacks - Booking.com suffered a hack that accessed customersâ data. Express, the fashion retailer, left customersâ personal data and order details exposed to the internet.
Layoffs: Disney announced job cuts â reportedly about 1,000 positions â as the company streamlines itself under its new C.E.O., Josh DâAmaro. Snap is cutting 1,000 jobs, 16% of its workforce:
đ¤AI News
Google is adding âSkillsâ to Chrome, letting users save and reuse AI prompts across websites. The feature builds on Geminiâs browser integration.
OpenAI unveiled new AI models built to help life sciences researchers work faster. The company says the models wonât replace scientists, but rather speed up some of their most time-intensive and analytically demanding work.
OpenAI has agreed to pay Cerebras more than $20 billion to use servers powered by the firmâs chips over the next three years, double the figure that was previously associated with the deal.
Anthropic
Anthropic is preparing its next flagship model, Claude Opus 4.7, along with a new AI-powered tool for designing websites and presentations,
Anthropic CPO is leaving Figmaâs board after reports he will offer a competing product.
AI power users are complaining in online forums that Claude appears to have regressed. Much of the speculation centers on whether Claude has been deliberately scaled back either to control costs or to redirect scarce compute toward Mythos and other frontier efforts.
Nearly 8 in 10 executives say their company couldnât pass an AI governance audit right now, meaning âthey canât explain, measure or defend their AI, and theyâre not prepared to handle the fallout if it fails.â Why it matters: A mismatch between adoption and accountability raises the risk of regulatory scrutiny, legal exposure and costly mistakes as AI plays a bigger role in high-stakes decisions at work.
đ¤ Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
âď¸United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby is pitching a megadeal to merge with American Airlines and create the worldâs largest airline.
Amazon is getting deeper into the space race, buying satellite-based telecom company Globalstar for around $11.6 billion.
Hollywood stars released a letter opposing Paramount Skydanceâs acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, warning that the $111 billion deal would result in fewer jobs, higher costs and less audience choice.
The Information - âconsumer investing is experiencing a revivalâ: Unilever acquired GrĂźns, known for its gummy vitamins, for $1.2bn; Quince recently raised at $10bn valuation, as did Ouraâs competitor Whoop.
The distillery giant Sazerac is said to have offered about $15 billion to buy Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Danielâs, in a bid to break up its rivalâs merger talks with Pernod Ricard.
Fundraising
Fluidstack, an AI datacenter startup, is in talks for a $1B round at $18B valuation months after hitting $7.5B.
Partnerships
CoreWeave, a provider of cloud computing for AI, late last week said it had struck a multi-year deal to develop and run Anthropicâs Claude AI models.
âąď¸ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
đď¸ââď¸Rory McIlroy won the Masters again, becoming just the fourth man to successfully defend his title at Augusta National.
đ¨ A Parisian software salesman entered a charity raffle for $236 and came away with a Picasso painting worth $1.2 million.
đšA pair of pilots were scolded for making cat and dog noises over an air traffic control frequency â and the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the now-viral incident.
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