Daily Tech & GNSS News Digest - February 18, 2026

The AI infrastructure arms race reached new heights as Meta announced a sweeping multi-generational partnership with Nvidia worth tens of billions of dollars, while Saudi Arabia’s Humain secured a stake in Elon Musk’s combined xAI-SpaceX empire. Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in what’s being called Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco moment,” and in the positioning world, concerns about America’s GPS vulnerability made headlines as companies accelerate adoption of LEO-based alternatives.

Tech News

Meta Deepens Nvidia Partnership with “Millions” of Chip Commitment

Meta Platforms announced a sweeping multi-year, multi-generational partnership with Nvidia that will see the social media giant deploy millions of the chipmaker’s GPUs and, notably, become the first Big Tech company to commit to Nvidia’s standalone CPUs. The deal spans Meta’s on-premises, cloud, and AI infrastructure as the company races to deliver what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “personal superintelligence to everyone in the world.”

Financial terms were not disclosed, but industry analyst Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies estimated the deal is “certainly in the tens of billions of dollars.” Meta will deploy millions of Nvidia Blackwell and Rubin GPUs across hyperscale data centers optimized for both AI training and inference. The agreement also marks the first significant deployment of Nvidia Grace standalone CPUs, which the company claims will bring “notable performance-per-watt enhancements” to Meta’s data centers. Nvidia’s next-generation Vera CPUs are planned for Meta deployment in 2027.

The partnership is part of Meta’s broader commitment to spend $600 billion in the US by 2028 on data centers and supporting infrastructure. In January, Meta announced plans to spend up to $135 billion on AI in 2026 alone, with 30 data centers planned—26 of which will be US-based.

Saudi Arabia’s Humain Invests $3 Billion in xAI Ahead of SpaceX Merger

Saudi Arabian AI company Humain, backed by the kingdom’s trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund, invested $3 billion into Elon Musk’s xAI as part of the startup’s $20 billion Series E funding round. The investment, announced February 18, positions Saudi Arabia as a significant minority shareholder in xAI just before its acquisition by SpaceX, giving the kingdom roughly 0.24% ownership in the combined $1.25 trillion company.

The deal deepens ties between Musk and Saudi Arabia that began last November when Humain and xAI announced a 500-megawatt data center in the kingdom, along with plans to deploy xAI’s Grok models across Saudi Arabia. Humain, created in 2025 at the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is central to Vision 2030’s strategy to position Saudi Arabia as a global AI hub.

Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s MGX were previously named as investors in xAI’s Series E round. Musk is reportedly planning an initial public offering of the combined SpaceX-xAI entity later this year—a deal that would give Saudi Arabia a stake in a key American government contractor.

Zuckerberg Testifies in Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in Los Angeles Superior Court in what’s being called Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco moment”—a bellwether trial whose outcome could impact thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies. Under cross-examination, Zuckerberg pushed back against claims that Instagram is designed to be addictive to children, though he acknowledged some users lie about their age to bypass the platform’s 13-and-older requirement.

Plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier confronted Zuckerberg with internal evidence including emails and slide decks showing Instagram’s engagement goals. Documents from Instagram chief Adam Mosseri revealed targets to increase daily user engagement time to 40 minutes in 2023 and 46 minutes in 2026. The Meta CEO appeared “visibly irritated” during questioning about whether the company prioritizes engagement metrics.

The trial produced courtroom drama when Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl threatened contempt charges against anyone using AI smart glasses during testimony after Zuckerberg’s escorts were spotted wearing Meta Ray-Bans. Meta and Google’s YouTube are the remaining defendants after TikTok and Snap settled. A verdict requires agreement from 9 of 12 jurors and could lead to both monetary damages and platform-wide design changes.

Autodesk Bets $200 Million on Spatial AI Startup World Labs

Autodesk made a $200 million strategic investment in World Labs, the spatial intelligence AI company co-founded by Stanford AI luminary Dr. Fei-Fei Li, as part of a broader $1 billion funding round. Other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, AMD, and Fidelity, though the company declined to confirm whether the round boosted its valuation from the $1 billion mark set when it emerged from stealth in 2024.

The partnership grants Autodesk an advisory role and close collaboration at the research and model level. World Labs’ flagship product, Marble, generates spatially coherent, interactive 3D environments from a single image, video, or text prompt. As Dr. Fei-Fei Li stated: “If AI is to be truly useful, it must understand worlds, not just words.”

The collaboration will initially focus on entertainment use cases, with potential expansion to Autodesk’s core markets in architecture, engineering, and construction. For Autodesk, the investment represents a bet that future AI must reason about geometry, physics, materials, and three-dimensional space—not just text.

Additional Headlines

• Google Announces America-India Connect: Google unveiled a $15 billion five-year infrastructure initiative establishing new fiber-optic routes and a subsea gateway in Visakhapatnam connecting India to the US, Singapore, South Africa, and Australia across four continents.
• Uber Commits $100 Million to Robotaxi Charging: Uber will spend over $100 million building DC fast-charging stations at autonomous vehicle depots and throughout priority cities, starting in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Dallas.
• YouTube Outage Hits 340,000 Users: YouTube experienced a widespread outage affecting nearly 340,000 users worldwide, with blank homepages and failed video loading across YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids.
• Macron Slams Social Media “Free Speech” Defense: French President Emmanuel Macron called social media platforms’ free speech arguments “pure bullshit” as momentum builds across Europe for youth social media restrictions.

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GNSS News

Topcon Secures Early Access to Xona’s LEO Navigation Constellation

Topcon Positioning Systems signed a commercial agreement with Xona Space Systems on February 12 to secure early-adopter access to Pulsar, Xona’s low Earth orbit satellite navigation constellation. The deal positions Topcon among Xona’s first commercial customers as the company prepares to launch its first batch of production-operational satellites in 2026.

Xona’s Pulsar constellation promises 100x signal strength compared to GPS, enabling coverage where traditional satellite navigation fails—under dense foliage, in jammed environments, and even indoors. The planned 258-satellite constellation will deliver sub-meter accuracy optimized for global coverage and network resiliency. Xona has raised $150 million in total funding, including $92 million in its Series B round and a $20 million Space Force award.

The partnership addresses growing customer demands for reliable positioning in challenging GNSS environments. “Customers are increasingly working in environments where satellite connection can be challenging, such as dense urban environments, and need consistent, reliable positioning to maintain productivity,” explained Ron Oberlander, head of the Topcon Geomatics Platform. Topcon also announced a collaboration with Fixposition at Geo Week 2026 to develop visual-aided positioning solutions for GPS-challenged environments.

GPS Vulnerability Concerns Escalate as Attacks Spread

A GPS World report highlighted growing concerns about America’s preparedness for GPS attacks, citing warnings from Admiral Michael Rogers that GPS jamming currently occurring across Eastern Europe and the Middle East “could happen over Chicago or Atlanta tomorrow.” The alarm follows a Royal Institute of Navigation report documenting how GNSS interference increasingly threatens maritime safety.

The shipping industry received new guidance on GNSS-denied navigation as incidents of GPS jamming and spoofing now regularly affect merchant ships at sea and near ports. Meanwhile, the US Space Force canceled the Resilient GPS (R-GPS) experimental program that would have added a proliferated layer of small navigation satellites on top of the core GPS constellation, citing budget priorities.

Baltic and North Sea nations, along with Iceland, issued an open letter declaring they are “done tolerating” regular GNSS disruption in the region—specifically calling out Russia’s interference with satellite signals. The warnings underscore accelerating industry interest in LEO-based alternatives and multi-constellation receivers capable of operating in degraded GNSS environments.

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Key Takeaways

• AI Infrastructure Race Reaches New Scale: Meta’s multi-billion dollar Nvidia partnership and Saudi Arabia’s $3 billion xAI investment demonstrate that AI competition now requires nation-state-level capital commitments, reshaping geopolitical relationships around technology access.
• Big Tech Accountability Era Arrives: Zuckerberg’s testimony in the social media addiction trial and EU enforcement against TikTok’s addictive design signal that regulators and courts are no longer accepting platform claims that engagement-maximizing features are neutral.
• GPS Alternatives Accelerate: Topcon’s Xona partnership, Space Force budget decisions, and mounting GPS vulnerability concerns are pushing the positioning industry toward LEO-based and multi-constellation resilience strategies faster than previously anticipated.