This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
Mark Zuckerberg is taking the stand as social media goes on trial
18 Feb 2026, 1:00 pm by Lauren Feiner
Lori Schott didn’t care what it took to haul her way from her small town in Eastern Colorado to show up to a Los Angeles courtroom where Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify Wednesday. “I don’t care if I had to hire a pack mule to get me here, I was going to be here,” she told The Verge outside the courthouse Tuesday.
Schott’s daughter Annalee died by suicide at age 18 in 2020, after struggling with body image issues that her mother says were heightened by social media. After her death, Schott found journal entries where Annalee disparaged her own looks and compared herself to other girls’ profiles. “I was so worried about what my ch …
Perplexity joins anti-ad camp as AI companies battle over trust and revenueÂ
18 Feb 2026, 11:02 am by Robert Hart
AI search startup Perplexity is distancing itself from ads amid fears users won’t trust chatbots with an agenda to upsell. The move highlights an emerging crossroads for the AI industry as the sector’s biggest players hunt for stable sources of income to bankroll massive spending, with giants like OpenAI leaning into ads and others like Anthropic promising to keep them out.
Perplexity began phasing out ads late last year and isn’t exploring any new ad deals at the moment, executives said on Monday at a roundtable event, according to Business Insider and the Financial Times. It is a noteworthy U-turn for the US startup, which became one of …
Tesla won’t use the term ‘Autopilot’ in California anymore
18 Feb 2026, 10:21 am by Jess Weatherbed
Tesla is no longer using the term “Autopilot” to describe the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles in California, avoiding a 30-day sales suspension in the state. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) announced that Tesla has taken corrective action after finding in December that the EV manufacturer’s marketing was violating state law and misleading customers into thinking its cars would drive autonomously.
The DMV’s complaint is connected to written marketing materials for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) features that Tesla started publishing in May 2021, which later led to the EV maker appending “(Supervised)” …
Meta’s new deal with Nvidia buys up millions of AI chips
18 Feb 2026, 12:27 am by Stevie Bonifield
Meta has struck a multiyear deal to expand its data centers with millions of Nvidia’s Grace and Vera CPUs and Blackwell and Rubin GPUs. While Meta has long been using Nvidia’s hardware for its AI products, this deal “represents the first large-scale Nvidia Grace-only deployment,” which Nvidia says will deliver “significant performance-per-watt improvements in [Meta’s] data centers.” The deal also includes plans to add Nvidia’s next-generation Vera CPUs to Meta’s data centers in 2027.
Meta is also working on its own in-house chips for running AI models, but according to the Financial Times, it has run into “technical challenges and rollout …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
