Equity

Apple filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI last Friday, and it's not messing around. The complaint alleges a pattern of misconduct reaching all the way up to OpenAI's chief hardware officer and claims more than 400 former Apple employees now work at the company. OpenAI's response so far has been carefully hedged, and the timing couldn't be worse with the company reportedly eyeing an IPO as early as later this year.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the lawsuit could mean for OpenAI's own hardware ambitions and IPO timeline, plus a bigger theme running through the week's news: how much should anyone trust AI companies with their data?    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is warning enterprises about handing data over to AI labs, and whether open source is really a way out of the “Trojan horse” data-trust problem  How forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) are changing the relationship between AI labs and their enterprise customers  Why General Catalyst just handed David Beckham's health drink startup a $1 billion customer value fund  The scoop on a new $200M drug-discovery startup from an ex-OpenAI researcher  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro   00:40 Would you want Sam Altman listen

Can a handful of engineers really do the work of an army of consultants? That’s the bet behind Ode with Anthropic — the joint venture dedicated to embedding forward-deployed engineers in enterprise firms, backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs and others.     On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Ode’s leaders Chris Taylor and Eddie Siegel, who founded Fractional AI, the applied AI services startup that Ode acquired earlier this year to serve as the new venture’s core. The three discuss why so many enterprise AI pilots never make it to production and why they think AI-native services are about to become one of the biggest categories in tech.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The case for AI-native services, and why Ode believes small teams of applied AI engineers can unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in business value.  Why the company is hiring experienced generalists and former founders instead of AI researchers, and how it's turning them into elite FDEs.  Whether an AI services company can scale like software, yet maintain a boutique feel, and why Taylor believes Ode could one day become a trillion-dollar business.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro   00:30 Fractional AI becomes "Ode with Anthropic"  1:13 Why non-AI companies are the real AI winners  2:04 Working with Blackstone, Anthropic, and beyond  3:05 Inside a real project: fixing LogicGate's bottleneck  7:29 How long does it take from hypothesis to production?  9:19 Measuring ROI: revenue, efficiency, and evals  16:37 Model choice vs. workflow redesign, and why it's Claude-first  23:10 Hiring generalists over specialized AI talent  26:39 Can this scale without turning into another consulting firm?  30:49 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Open source AI is booming, according to Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again and again: companies start out on frontier APIs, but as they scale, the costs push them towards open source models.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talked to Delangue about why the open vs closed source fight matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he's worried about the possibility that a handful of big companies could end up controlling everything.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  How Chinese labs are producing the majority of open models being downloaded in the U.S., and why Delangue thinks that's a problem worth fixing rather than a reason to distrust open source itself.  How Hugging Face is choosing capital efficiency over the usual Silicon Valley fundraising playbook, including why the company turned down a large investment from Nvidia last year.  Why he sees robotics as an even more urgent case for open, transparent AI than chatbots or coding tools, given how much of your home and family life a robot ends up seeing.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:33 Breaking down open source growth data  04:34 What's driving the open source resurgence  08:47 Who’s using Hugging Face, and how?  10:28 China overtakes the US in open model downloads  16:34 Safety, access, and the risk of AI power concentration  24:03 Hugging Face's approach to legal risk  28:00 Turning down Nvidia  31:47 Underinvested opportunities: local AI, bio, robotics  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), large language models just don’t have what it takes. Models like ChatGPT and Claude are great at text, but they're less skilled at understanding how things actually move through space and time — an essential skill for producing intelligence that generalizes. That gap, it turns out, might be filled by gaming data. That's the bet behind General Intuition, a Bezos-backed, New York-based startup valued at $2.3 billion that just closed a $320 million round with Coatue, Eric Schmidt, and researchers at MIT and Google DeepMind joining its list of investors.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte joins Rebecca Bellan to dig into why world models trained on gaming data might be the next big leap in physical AI, how the company spun out of gaming platform Medal TV, and where the ethical red lines are when your models could end up being used for defense applications.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  How eight minutes of real-world data was enough to get a robot navigating an office cold.  Why General Intuition turned down an acquisition offer reportedly from OpenAI to stay independent, and why having investors who back your mission is essential to building a generational company.  How the company is trying to get ahead of AI job displacement by building Nerve, a marketplace connecting gamers to data labeling and teleoperations work.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Instead of our usual news rundown, Equity is sending you off into the 4th of July weekend with a special episode of our sister podcast Build Mode. Season 3 launches July 9th, but before it does, Build Mode is revisiting some of the best fundraising and startup advice from the investors featured in last season. From choosing the right investors to building a differentiated go-to-market strategy, these venture capitalists and founder-turned-investors share hard-earned lessons on fundraising, portfolio dynamics, investor-founder relationships, and what separates the companies that successfully raise their next round from those that don't. In this episode, you'll hear from: ⁠⁠Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Ross Fubini, managing partner at XYZ Venture Capital⁠ and Leslie Feinzaig, founder and general partner at Graham & Walker⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Paul Irving, partner at GTMfund⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Leah Solivan, founder of TaskRabbit and founder of Precedent VC⁠⁠ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:19 Yuri Sagalov (General Catalyst): The three types of investors and who founders should avoid 03:29 Ross Fubini (XYZ VC) & Leslie Feinzaig (Graham & Walker): What great investors actually bring to the table 08:36 Paul Irving (GTMfund): The go-to-market signals investors look for 12:30 Leah Solivan (TaskRabbit / Precedent VC): Understanding the competition inside your investors' portfolios 14:30 Outro Subscribe to Build Mode on⁠⁠ ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠ ⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠, or⁠⁠ ⁠wherever you like to listen⁠⁠⁠. And watch the full videos on⁠⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: the autonomous vehicle space is starting to feel like a repeat of the 2016 hype cycle. Travis Kalanick is back building a robotics company, and the talent wars and capital are heating up the same way they did the first time around. The money's flowing back, and it's the people who lived through that first wave who are building the next one.  Humble Robotics founder and CEO Eyal Cohen is one of them. Cohen was at Otto when Uber came calling, later followed Anthony Levandowski to Pronto, and after two decades bouncing between deep tech bets in the Bay Area, his new company came out of stealth in April with $24 million to build a fully autonomous, cabless electric hauler for freight.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Cohen joins Kirsten Korosec to talk about AV déjà vu and what he's learned from 15 years of building startups across electrification, solar, and robotics.     Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The bet behind Humble's cabless design and why "the simplest possible robotics platform" was the starting point  How vision models are replacing months of hand-built engineering work that used to go into recognizing things like traffic cones and stop signs  Why Cohen thinks culture beats out compensation when it comes to securing talent in robotics these days  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nvidia has dominated the AI chip market for years, but the era of total dependence might be ending.   OpenAI just shared its plans to spice things up with Jalapeño, its custom inference chip built with Broadcom, joining Google, Apple, and SpaceX in a growing list of companies building their way out of single-supplier risk. The goal isn't a clean break so much as a hedge. Custom silicon means more control, hardware tuned to specific needs, and the kind of performance gains Apple unlocked when it ditched Intel.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the custom chip trend means for the industry and a few deals of the week worth watching. Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  How Groq’s $650M raise after Nvidia swept away its top talent might be the comeback story of the year  AI agents getting loopy and why Claude Code creator Boris Cherny thinks these loops are “just as important and as big a step” as the leap from source code to agents  Whether the public markets are warming up to humanoid robots as Agility Robotics plans to go public via SPAC  A24 taking investment from Google DeepMind to develop a new AI toolkit for filmmakers  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos talks with Goodwater Capital co-founder Chi-Hua Chien, whose career spans some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology shifts, from helping source Accel’s investment in Facebook as a young associate to backing a new generation of consumer and AI startups. While much of the venture world is focused on models, chips, and infrastructure, Chi-Hua argues that history suggests the biggest long-term winners of the AI era may be the application companies built on top of them. They talk about why AI startups are reaching unprecedented revenue levels with remarkably small teams, what’s driving today’s soaring valuations, and why he believes many infrastructure businesses will eventually face the same commoditization pressures seen in previous technology cycles. He also shares what he’s seeing inside consumer AI, from hyper-personalized entertainment and women’s health platforms to new products built around voice, agents, and individualized experiences. And they discuss the increasingly public tensions between founders and VCs, why some of the most interesting fintech innovation is happening outside the U.S., and why Chi-Hua believes one of the biggest opportunities in consumer technology may be helping people reconnect in the real world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just as last week was ending, the US government forced Anthropic to pull its two newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns after Amazon researchers allegedly found a way to bypass Fable 5's guardrails.  Cybersecurity researchers have since signed an open letter calling the move dangerous, and Anthropic itself noted the same jailbreaks exist in other models. So is this a genuine security concern, or just the latest chapter in a messy relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration?  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane, and Rebecca Bellan unpack what the ban means for developers building on Anthropic's platform and for anyone watching the IPO, why it might accidentally be good for the company, and more of the week’s headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why the UK's social media ban for users under 16 might be the lesser of two evils  What the SpaceX-Cursor acquisition tells us about xAI's strategy (and its gaps)  Jeff Bezos's $12B bet on physical AI with Prometheus, the startup trying to build an "artificial engineer"  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tokenmaxxing was the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, with CEOs encouraging employees to push AI usage as far as it would go. Then the bill came due. Uber reportedly blew through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their org, and Meta killed its internal leaderboard.  This tension between hype and ROI is exactly where NEA partner Tiffany Luck lives these days. She got her start convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, and now she's all in on AI, especially when it comes to the possibilities for "magic moments" in the consumer business.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Luck joins Rebecca Bellan to talk about the future of personal agents, her thoughts on this year's AI IPOs, and how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  What the tokenmaxxing-to-ROI shift means for how companies measure AI spend.  Why forward deployed engineers are becoming a "Trojan horse" for AI adoption.  How enterprises are mixing and matching models instead of committing to one provider.  Why Tiffany thinks value is being created at every layer of the AI stack, not just at the model layer.    Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:51 Tiffany Luck's path from Lot18 to Amazon to VC  3:45 Magic moments: Waymo, healthcare, and the gap in personal agents  7:36 Privacy, security, and trusting AI with your life  10:39 IPO outlook: Anthropic vs. OpenAI on public markets  13:58 Compute, infrastructure, and where the value sits  15:41 What’s the ROI on tokenmaxxing?  27:07 Forward deployed engineers as a ‘Trojan horse’  32:49 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The biggest IPO in history dropped this morning on the Nasdaq — a debut so big, our team thought it deserved its own bonus Equity podcast episode.   On this special bonus episode, Senior Reporter Sean O'Kane called up our AI Editor Russell Brandom to help him break down the $2 trillion valuation, Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire, and what it all means for Anthropic and OpenAI still waiting in the wings.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The IPO market is back, and it's not the same companies leading the charge. FAANG had a good run, but a new acronym is taking over: MANGOS — Meta (or Microsoft, depending on who you ask), Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX. Half of that bunch is heading to public markets in the same window, and it's a stress test for investors, for valuations, and for what we can even expect from a public tech company in 2026.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down what this IPO moment actually means beyond the headline numbers, and who stands to benefit.    Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Apple's biggest WWDC announcement might matter less than how they showed it, and what a $250M settlement had to do with the change  How Waymo just turned Apple's abandoned self-driving dream into its next big proving ground  What a $920 million-per-month compute deal between Google and SpaceX says about who's leading the AI infrastructure race  How Sam Bankman-Fried's pardon request and a new Zuckerberg biopic somehow ended with the Equity team getting cast by ChatGPT  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign was based on a warning that automation and AI would hollow out the labor market and concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. At the time, ideas like Universal Basic Income felt fringe. Now Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Bernie Sanders are all saying versions of the same thing.  An entrepreneur at heart, Yang has found a new way to put money back into the hands of the people — one phone bill at a time. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks to Yang about his startup Noble Mobile, which pays you to use your phone less, ways to combat the “attention economy,” and what startups can do when the government won't move.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Yang thinks the $100 billion gap between what Americans and Europeans pay for wireless is a startup opportunity.  How a partnership with the Light Phone fits into the growing "together tech" movement, and why Yang has been throwing no-phone parties in LA and NYC.  What he actually thinks of Bernie Sanders' proposed AI sovereign wealth fund, and why he's skeptical the money should flow through government at all.  Why UBI isn't a salary replacement but a "landing pad,” and what Noble Mobile's $600-a-year savings has to do with it.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While the AI fundraising machine keeps breaking its own records, some founders are building in the other direction.  Mirror founder Brynn Putnam just raised money for Board, a startup focused on bringing people together through in-person games and social experiences. Cyberdeck creators are going viral crafting whimsical DIY computers that literally encourage users to touch grass. Unlike the AI-free browser crowd, this doesn't just feel like backlash, but also people genuinely gravitating toward things that feel a little more human.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the week's headlines, from the "together tech" wave to what Anthropic's confidential IPO filing means against the backdrop of Alphabet's $80 billion AI raise, and whether the money is all flowing back to the big guys anyway.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why ex-Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer raised $250 million for climate tech specifically, at a moment when almost nobody else is  How rocket engine startup Impulse raised $500 million — and is loudly emphasizing that those funds will be spent on people, not AI  A look inside Anthropic's S-1, and what the team is looking forward to once we can finally compare the AI labs' financials  What two YouTube directors cracking the box office tells us about creator economy power   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and<a href="

Defense tech is red hot right now, with a proposed 40% increase to the federal defense budget, Anduril doubling its valuation to $61 billion, and a wave of startups chasing government contracts. But according to Ross Fubini, the venture investor who wrote Anduril's first check, most of them won't make it. The valley of death between a prototype contract and a real production deal is about to claim a lot of companies.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan asks Fubini — the founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital, built on the Palantir alumni network and now approaching $2B AUM — what separates the survivors from the rest.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Ukraine and Iran have become live testing grounds for US defense startups, and which companies are getting in the field  How other countries are building their own defense tech ecosystems, and what that means for where startups build and sell  The sustainment problem nobody wants to talk about, and why autonomous logistics is the real moat  Where Fubini is writing checks next, from AI-driven US manufacturing to government software for health and human services  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The people deciding that AI can replace your job are also the ones least likely to understand what your job truly involves, according to Box founder Aaron Levie, who pointed to this as an example of "AI psychosis.” Indeed, ClickUp recently cut 22% of its workforcefor AI agents, tech layoffs in 2026 are already nearly matching all of 2025, and DuckDuckGo installs are climbing from users who want Google to stop forcing AI into search and just give them links.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what happens when the AI-pilled and the AI-skeptical are both right at the same time, plus three deals worth knowing about and Waymo's new robotaxi hitting the road.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Kirsten's first look at Waymo's new Ojai robotaxi in Phoenix, and the crew's thoughts on the company's path to profitability  Cloud data storage giant Snowflake’s $6 billion five-year agreement with AWS  Why Stord, the "anti-Amazon" fulfillment startup, just raised $250 million at a $3 billion valuation  What OpenRouter's $113 million raise says about the picks-and-shovels layer, and how long that interest lasts  How the AI agent wave is actually reshaping hiring, not just headcount  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:18 Waymo's new Ojai robotaxi  06:41 Stord raises $250M to take on Amazon fulfillment  12:46 Snowflake signs $6B deal with AW

Google I/O made it official: AI-generated answers are now front and center in search, and most brands have almost no visibility into how AI is describing them to their customers. For anyone who has spent years building a strategy around 10 blue links, the rules just changed in a pretty significant way.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Matt Thompson, VP of partnerships at Scrunch, a startup positioning itself at the center of the AI search shift, to talk about what Google’s changes mean and marketers and founders should actually do about it.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why AI referrals are converting at 400% higher than traditional organic search, and what that means for how to think about traffic.  How ChatGPT still has the lion's share of AI search traffic, and why optimizing only for Google means missing most of the market.  Why Google's own SEO best practices might be leading marketers in the wrong direction.  What it actually means to make your website "agent ready" and why most enterprise sites aren't.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The SpaceX S-1 is finally here, and the story it tells goes way further than rockets. The filing runs to 36 pages of risk factors alone, and the numbers inside match the ambition: a $28 trillion total addressable market, a pay package tied to establishing a Mars colony, and a valuation target that would make it the largest IPO in American history.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the filing actually says, what it leaves out, and whether any of this math connects to reality.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why NanoCo turned down a $20 million buyout to raise a $12 million seed instead  Anthropic’s acquisition of SDK startup Stainless, and why taking a tool off the table matters as much as the $300 million price tag  What happened when commencement speakers started talking up AI in front of graduating classes, and why the students weren't having it  Google’s I/O announcements claiming search as you know it is over, and what the AI makeover could mean for the open web   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slapping "AI" on your startup’s pitch deck is basically table stakes right now. When a founder raised $20 million from Cathie Wood's ARK Invest for an eSports gamification loyalty startup without those two letters in the spotlight, it got us wondering how the conversation even started — especially when ARK had already been burned by a company operating in the same space.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sits down with Dylan Robbins, founder and CEO of Lucra, the white-label platform turning friendly competitions into loyalty programs for brands like golf courses, arcades, and pickleball clubs.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Dylan met his ARK connection over a game of darts at a New York City bar  Why pitching a non-AI company in peak AI fundraising season meant addressing it head-on, even when it had nothing to do with his business  How being honest with investors about what wasn't working yet actually helped him close the round  Why Lucra pivoted from consumer to B2B in 45 days (and why that pivot is what convinced ARK they weren't looking at another Skillz).  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Musk v. Altman trial came to a close this week, and the final arguments kept circling back to one question: can we trust the people in charge of AI? All of this is playing out as SpaceX charges toward what could be one of the largest IPOs in American history, with a whole generation of founders already spinning out of the Musk empire. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down the trial's closing stretch and what the growing Elon Musk founder ecosystem actually looks like on the ground, and the other deals that caught our eye this week. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Anduril landed a $5 billion Series H, more than doubling the valuation it landed just under a year ago  Why investors just can’t say no to RJ Scaringe, who’s raked in over $1 billion for Rivian spinout Mind Robotics How voice AI startup Vapi beat out over 40 other companies to secure a contract handling all of Ring's customer support What an Anthropic report about an AI agent blackmailing its own developers says about where the industry actually is Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI may be changing how companies build, but it's also changing how they get attacked, often by their own tools. Amazon Chief Security Officer Steve Schmidt has watched threat actors at every skill level get sharper, faster, and harder to contain. The risk he's most focused on, however, isn't coming from outside the firewall. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Schmidt at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The two dug into what AI is already doing to the threat landscape and how Amazon is rethinking identity, containment, and human oversight to keep agents in check. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why shadow AI inside your own organization may be a bigger liability than the hackers trying to get in What agentic identity means in practice, and how Amazon traces every agent action back to a human How startups with five people (and no CISO) can manage their AI security, and why containment is becoming the defining security challenge of the agentic era Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone wants a piece of the enterprise AI pie, and this week, we saw a string of companies making their moves. From Anthropic and OpenAI announcing new joint ventures targeting enterprise AI deployment to SAP dropping $1B on German AI startup Prior Labs, it's becoming clear that if you're a startup building enterprise tools, you're likely an acquisition target.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the week's enterprise AI deals, the xAI-Anthropic compute arrangement, and what it all means ahead of what could be a big IPO season.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why a TikToker is trying to crowdfund the purchase of Spirit Airlines, and whether anyone really loves Spirit enough to make it work  Why Katie Haun's venture fund and Andreessen Horowitz are both raising billions to back a crypto comeback  Aurora Innovation's milestone commercial trucking contract with a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, announced shortly after we caught up with Aurora’s CEO, Chris Urmson, at HumanX  The Pentagon's latest AI spending spree, inking deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, and AWS  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:31 Spirit Airlines & the crowdfunded "people's a

Self-driving has been "almost here" for over a decade. But somewhere between DARPA challenges and a handful of driverless trucks hauling freight between Dallas and Houston, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson’s story changed. The self-driving truck company started commercial driverless operations last April and is now scaling from a handful of trucks to hundreds this year.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Urmson at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The pair dug into the long road from lab to highway and how physical AI differs from the LLM boom everyone else is chasing.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why long-haul trucking may crack the autonomy business case before robotaxis ever do  What "verifiable AI" means and why Urmson thinks end-to-end systems are a liability when lives are on the line  The surprisingly common-sense solution to the driverless truck safety triangle problem  What Aurora's roadmap looks like beyond trucking, and which companies in the autonomy space have Urmson genuinely excited  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon Musk spent the better part of three days on the witness stand this week in his lawsuit against OpenAI, and it's already getting messy. Emails, texts, and his own tweets are surfacing in court, and there are plenty more witnesses to come. Musk's argument against OpenAI? By converting the company to a for-profit model, Sam Altman betrayed the “nonprofit for the benefit of humanity” mission Musk signed up to fund. As Musk keeps reminding the courtroom: “You can't steal a charity.”  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec and Sean O'Kane break down what's actually at stake in the courtroom and what to watch for as Altman and others take the stand, plus deals, defense tech, and what Big Tech's earnings week revealed about the limits of the AI spending era. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why cloud was the winner of earnings week, and what AWS, Google, and Microsoft's numbers say about where enterprise AI spending is actually landing The scholarship app founder taking Sallie Mae to court after they acquired his startup…and began selling its student data to ad networks and universities BMW i Ventures new $300 million fund with its sights set on AI How defense tech startup Scout AI is pitching “military AGI” using vision-language-action (VLA) models Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad ch

AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool in AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool almost overnight, and Runway has a front-row seat to the shift. The New York-based company has raised close to $860 million at a $5.3 billion valuation, and its models are going toe-to-toe with the most well-funded labs in the world, including Google and OpenAI.   And the technology goes way beyond making videos: it's now pushing into general world models with applications in gaming, robotics, and maybe something closer to general intelligence.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, host Rebecca Bellan sits down with co-founder and CEO Cristobal Valenzuela to talk about where video generation goes from here, and why Runway's ambitions now reach well beyond Hollywood.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Valenzuela thinks the real constraint on filmmaking has never been technology, and what changes when it is  How Runway thinks about world models differently than Google and other labs building in the space  What "nonlinear media" means, and why real-time video generation opens up use cases way beyond content creation  Why Valenzuela pushes back on the idea that AI companions are “inherently dystopian”  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:56 Can AI really replace Hollywood?  04:18 Why "AI slop" fears miss the point  08:23 Research lab, software company, or creative studio?  13:42 From video generation to world models, explained  17:36 Omni models and multimodal training  17:50 The three pillars: linear media, non-linear media, physical AI  19:31 Real-time video and the "Characters" product  22:33 Are AI companions inherently dystopian?  25:59 Physical AI and robotics  28:35 Where growth is coming from: enterprise and prosumer  29:31 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new era is on the way for Apple as Tim Cook plans to step down from his CEO role in September, handing the reins to hardware chief John Ternus.   Ternus may be inheriting one of the most durable businesses in tech, but he’s also stepping into a very different ecosystem than the one Cook spent decades shaping. The App Store’s 30% cut is under pressure, the behind-the-scenes power Apple once held over developers is being challenged, and AI-native apps are changing what it means to build on Apple’s platform.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what this transition means for startups and a closer look at some of the week’s biggest deals — including SpaceX's $60B option on Cursor.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Anthropic’s Mythos model is raising questions about both safety and marketing  The $5 billion Amazon-Anthropic deal that looks a lot like every other circular AI infrastructure play  What the SpaceX-Cursor agreement (and that $10 billion breakup fee) says about Elon Musk's AI strategy post-xAI merger  Why fintech Revolut and AI chip startup Cerebras' public market plans have us wondering whether this is actually the year the IPO market reopens  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:26 Anthropic's Mythos accessed by “unauthorized groups”  04:28 Is Amazon's $5B Anthropic investment just another circular deal?  09:53 SpaceX and Cursor’s $60B opti

Fusion energy has been "20 years away" for decades, but has the science finally caught up? Private investment in fusion companies surged from $10 billion to $15 billion in just months, and the money is coming from places you wouldn't expect.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan and guest host Tim De Chant sit down with Rachel Slaybaugh, general partner at DCVC, to break down why serious investors are finally treating fusion as a real asset class, and what the return thesis actually looks like when no one expects a power plant in their fund lifetime.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why the investment thesis for fusion looks less like traditional VC and more like biotech or SpaceX, and what "fusion euphoria" has to do with it  What the Q value milestone actually means, and how close leading startups are to hitting the number that could trigger a public market opening  How superconducting tape and AI-assisted plasma physics are quietly doing as much work as the big headline science breakthroughs  Why one fusion company merging with Trump Media and Technology Group had Tim doing a double-take at his inbox  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The gap between AI insiders and everyone else is widening, and the spending, suspicion, and even new vocabulary are starting to show it. While OpenAI is busy buying up everything from finance apps to talk shows, a certain shoe company just rebranded as an AI infrastructure play, and Anthropic unveiled a model it says is too powerful to release publicly ...but apparently not too powerful to demo to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what's actually being built in AI infrastructure, who's winning the enterprise battle between OpenAI and Anthropic, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm just piled $60M into UK self-driving startup Wayve, and what Uber's $300M milestone bid says about who's winning the AV race  How data center startup Fluidstack is positioning itself for the frontier labs, including a reported $50B agreement with Anthropic  What Claude Code's moment at the HumanX conference reveals about where the OpenAI vs. Anthropic rivalry is actually playing out  Why tokenmaxxing, and Meta's leaked internal leaderboard, might say more about optics than actual productivity  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and<a href="htt

When Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc got COVID despite being vaccinated and boosted, he tried to fund research for a better solution. What he quickly found out? You can't just write a check in biotech. Regulators require a commercialization plan, and philanthropy doesn't move science through clinical trials or get you a license on university IP. Now, he's bootstrapping a cancer drug platform targeting pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills 90% of its patients, and intentionally waiting to raise from his network until peer-reviewed papers can make his case.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Aloe Blacc to talk about what happens when a creator decides to build instead of just invest, how Aloe is watching AI reshape both the biotech and music industries in real time, and his thoughts on who actually wins.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  How he’s navigating a world where credibility is earned in data, not fame  How a University of Houston molecule discovery platform could cut years off drug development timelines  Why he thinks record labels, not artists or AI companies, will ultimately control the economics of AI-generated music  What Suno taught him about prototyping, and why his next album will still be recorded with live musicians  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

LLMs may have kicked off this AI boom, but the ceiling is closer than the hype suggests. As models run out of text data to train on, the companies and investors paying attention are already moving on. The next wave isn't better chatbots; it's machines that can understand the physical world. Luma AI, the Bay Area lab that raised over $1.4 billion from a16z, Nvidia, and Amazon, is betting on exactly that.  On episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan sat down with Amit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Luma AI, at Web Summit Qatar. Together, the pair dug into where the next trillion-dollar AI opportunity actually gets built, and whether the companies chasing it even know what they're building yet.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why video, audio, and images are the real frontier for AI training data, not text  What an "intelligent world model" actually is, and why Jain thinks most companies building them are getting it completely wrong  The case for why AI won't kill creative jobs, and why Jain thinks studio heads are the real problem  How the path from video generation to robotics to AGI is simpler than anyone's making it sound  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:13 Why LLMs are hitting a ceiling  02:43 The data problem & what comes after LLMs  04:30 What actually makes a world model a world model  06:05 Why 3D data is a dead end  07:39 What Luma is building next  09:08 How much humans stay in the loop  10:00 Near-term use cases for agentic video  11:22 Will AI kill jobs in film & production?  13:30 Why the entertainment industry is already dying  15:27 Why we actually need more content, not less  17:46 Luma's roadmap: generation, understanding, and robotics  19:54 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snowflake is betting that the future of AI isn’t just analyzing data, it’s acting on it. That means a shift away from chatbots and toward autonomous agents that can actually get work done. And Snowflake is reorganizing fast to keep up, from shipping hundreds of AI features to restructuring teams along the way.On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to unpack the company’s transformation and what it signals about where AI is headed next. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why Ramaswamy believes the chatbot era is ending and the agentic era is beginning. How Snowflake is evolving from a data warehouse into an AI and applications platform. What “shipping with your data” actually looks like in practice. Why the company is making big internal changes to support its AI push. Subscribe to Equity on ⁠YouTube⁠,⁠ Apple Podcasts⁠,⁠ Overcast⁠,⁠ Spotify⁠ and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on⁠ X⁠ and⁠ Threads⁠, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:17 Snowflake’s AI shift and agentic future 01:45 Why 2026 marks the end of chatbots 04:09 Cortex Code, Snowflake Intelligence, and new products 06:09 Who benefits: non-technical users & enterprises 07:35 Adoption challenges and why AI pilots fail 12:11 How AI is reshaping jobs and skills 14:39 Layoffs, automation, and the future of documentation 18:37 Snowflake’s evolution into an AI platform 21:04 Competition: Databricks, hyperscalers, and AI giants 25:01 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech companies are racing to build data centers in space, pitching orbital compute as the next frontier for AI infrastructure, even as the technical and economic realities remain far from clear. Add in OpenAI’s massive $122 billion round and Bluesky’s latest AI backlash, and the message is clear: The future of AI is being shaped as much by ambition and hype as it is by real-world constraints.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane unpack these massive capital bets, user backlash, and off-world compute plans along with Whoop’s major valuation and the literal downfall of robot Olaf.   Listen to the full episode to hear about:  OpenAI’s $122 billion fundraise and what its near-trillion-dollar valuation says about expectations for AI.   Whoop’s $575 million raise and the shift toward “wearables 2.0” (and what happens to all that data).   Bluesky’s AI-powered feed builder and why it triggered a major user backlash.   The rise of data centers in space and whether they are financially or physically feasible.   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:20 A humanoid Olaf robot collapses at Disneyland Paris 03:30 OpenAI raises $122B at an $852B valuation 11:30 Whoop lands $575M and bets big on wearable data  18:50 The risks (and value) of personal health data 23:00 Bluesky’s AI feed builder sparks backlash 30:00 Can Bluesk

The VC middleman is getting cut out faster than anyone expected. Family offices and private wealth firms are going direct: writing checks, taking board seats, even incubating companies from scratch. And more founders are starting to notice. In February alone, family offices made 41 direct investments, including one Midwest-based firm that led a $230 million Series B into an AI chip startup.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Mitch Stein and Ari Schottenstein, founder and head of alternatives at ARENA Private Wealth, to find out what this shift means for founders, cap tables, and the future of AI investment.    Listen to the full episode to hear:  How Arena landed the lead on Positron's $230 million Series B, and why the CEO specifically wanted them on his cap table  How Arena does due diligence on technical companies  What "tourist capital" actually looks like, and the red flags founders should watch for as family offices flood into AI deals  Why some VCs are quietly unhappy about this trend (and why Arena thinks that's their problem)  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro   03:13 Why family offices are going direct now  06:03 The gen 2 & gen 3 family office shift  07:22 Is this strategic or just AI FOMO?  10:17 How Arena got into the Positron deal  14:30 Why founders want private wealth on their cap table  18:31 Due diligence on technical companies  21:56 Red flags founders should watch for  25:04 Are VCs threatened by this trend?  27:47 Taking board seats & level of involvement  34:17 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When an 82-year-old Kentucky woman was offered $26 million from an AI company that wanted to build a data center on her land, she said no. Sure, that same company can try to rezone 2,000 acres nearby anyway, but as AI infrastructure stretches further into the real world, the real world is starting to push back.  That tension is everywhere this week, from OpenAI shutting down its Sora app to courts finally starting to hold social platforms accountable. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what it looks like when the AI hype cycle meets reality.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why rival prediction market CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket are co-investing in a $35M VC fund  How drone startups like Zipline, Lucid Bots, and Brinc are finding real traction where other robotics plays have stalled  What Kleiner Perkins' $3.5B raise says about where the biggest VC firms think the next AI wave is going  Why two separate court verdicts against Meta in the same week could be the “tobacco moment” for social media  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:30 Would you turn down $26M for your farm?  03:56 Rivals Kalshi & Polymarket CEOs are investing together  10:28 Deals for drones: Z

Over the past few years, a new category of mobile apps has quietly exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. They're called “micro dramas” — short-form, mobile-first scripted shows designed to be watched vertically on your phone. Think soap opera meets TikTok, complete with secret billionaire romances, disapproving werewolf mothers-in-law, and cliffhangers engineered to keep users tapping. The leading app, ReelShort, made $1.2 billion in consumer spending last year alone.   On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan and TechCrunch senior reporter Amanda Silberling sit down with Henry Soong, founder of Watch Club, who thinks the micro drama industry is still "in its MySpace era." He has a vision for what the Facebook moment could look like.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why micro dramas took off in China while Quibi burned through $2 billion and failed in the U.S., and what that gap reveals about content, product, and business model.  How Watch Club is targeting a completely different audience than ReelShort and Drama Box.  The tension between building an intentional social experience and optimizing for engagement the way TikTok does.  Whether AI is coming for the werewolf billionaire romance script. Amanda has thoughts.   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:11 Why micro dramas, and why now?  04:25 What makes Watch Club different  07:29 The monetization model problem  18:52 Optimizing for intentionality, not engagement  24:23 Why Quibby failed (content, product & business model)  28:22 Defensibility: tech company or studio?  31:36 AI, the WGA, and the future of storytelling  33:44 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jensen Huang took the stage at Nvidia's GTC conference this week in his signature leather jacket to deliver a two-and-a-half-hour keynote, projecting $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027, declaring that every company needs an “OpenClaw strategy,” and closing with a rambling Olaf robot that had to get its mic cut. The message was hard to miss: Nvidia wants to be foundational to everything, from AI training to autonomous vehicles to Disney parks.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down what Nvidia's growing web of AI infrastructure partnerships actually means for startups, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Travis Kalanick’s return building a "wheelbase for robots" with his new startup Atoms, and the crew has questions about Kalanick’s acquisitions along the way  Rivian’s partnership with Uber to build robotaxi versions of its R2 in a deal worth up to $1.25 billion, while pushing back its EBITDA target to do it  Frore landing a $1.64 billion valuation for its AI chip cooling systems  xAI rebooting, again, with only two of its original eleven co-founders still standing  Garry Tan's Claude Code setup went viral at SXSW (Spoiler: the crew is not impressed).  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:20 Garry Tan's Claude Code setup goes viral at SXSW  03:37 Travis K

Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project to being valued at $1.7 billion.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-founders Anastasios Angelopoulos and Wei-Lin Chiang to determine how a team like theirs can build a neutral benchmark when the companies they’re ranking are also their backers.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  How Arena actually works, and why its founders say you can't game it the way you mighta static benchmark.  What "structural neutrality" actually means, and whether taking money from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic is a conflict of interest.  How Arena is moving beyond chat to benchmark agents, coding, and real-world tasks with a new enterprise product.  Why Claude is currently winning the expert leaderboard for legal and medical use cases.  Arena's bet on what comes after LLMs, and why agents are next on the leaderboard.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  03:00 How Arena's leaderboard works, and why it's different from static benchmarks  07:00 Reproducibility concerns and how to scale  08:45 Can Arena stay independent while taking money from the labs it ranks?  11:15 Diversity, fraud prevention, and abuse mitigation  18:15 Arena's "data moat"  19:20 Agent benchmarking and expert leaderboards  21:40 Open sourcing data  22:45 How do Arena's rankings shape AI development?  24:15 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to Index Ventures Partner Shardul Shah, cybersecurity startup Wiz sits “at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend.” Those tailwinds powered what just became the largest venture-backed acquisition in history — Google's $32 billion deal, finalized after a declined 2024 offer, antitrust review on both sides of the Atlantic, and an extra $9 billion to sweeten the pot.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O'Kane sit down with Shah to dig into what made Wiz worth that price tag, and also cover more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why a DOGE employee allegedly walked out of the Social Security Administration with a thumb drive full of personal data, and the questions it raises about access to sensitive systems  Taya and Sandbar, the latest startups betting voice is the next big AI interface — but do normal consumers agree?  Palmer Luckey raising for a retro gaming startup at a $1 billion valuation  Meta’s acquisition of Moltbook, the viral AI agent social network  The latest in the Anthropic vs. DoD saga, including tech workers at OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft signing their names on a legal brief in support of Anthropic  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can

For years, venture capitalists have been skeptical of beverage startups, citing thin margins and brutal distribution as reasons most brands never break out. But a new wave of “functional soda” companies has been challenging that assumption, including Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand that grew from a kitchen experiment into a $1.95 billion acquisition by PepsiCo.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by Poppi co-founder Allison Ellsworth to talk about building a beverage startup in a venture world dominated by SaaS and AI. From pitching on Shark Tank while nine months pregnant to scaling a digital-first brand during COVID, and now returning as a Shark herself, Ellsworth shares how social media, fast marketing bets, and customer feedback helped turn a niche drink into a category-defining company.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Ellsworth’s Shark Tank return, and how she evaluates founders on the other side of the pitch.  How Ellsworth turned a personal health issue into Poppi and built early traction at farmers' markets.  Why TikTok and community-driven marketing helped the brand rack up billions of views and loyal fans.  The risky decision to buy a last-minute Super Bowl ad, and how the team executed it in days.  What it’s like selling a startup to PepsiCo while trying to preserve the brand’s identity.  Why beverage startups almost inevitably need acquisition-level distribution to scale.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Pentagon has officially designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the two failed to agree on how much control the military should have over its AI models, including its use in autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. As Anthropic’s $200 million contract fell apart, the DoD turned to OpenAI instead, which accepted and then watched ChatGPT uninstalls surge 295%. As the stakes keep rising, the question remains: how much unrestricted access should the military have to an AI model?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what startups should think about when chasing federal contracts, especially when nobody seems to know what to do with AI in Washington, and more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Paramount’s massive deal with Warner Bros, and the Equity crew’s ideas for what the new HBO Max-Paramount+ hybrid should be called  MyFitnessPal's acquisition of Cal AI, the calorie-tracking app built by teenagers  Who dropped $1 billion on Pinterest’s AI mission and how the company spent it on share buybacks. (Spoiler: Kirsten has thoughts.)  Anduril is raising again at a reported $60 billion valuation  Whether companies should brace themselves for the SaaSpocalypse, or if it’s just another chapter of the AI hype cycle   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and<a href="https://www

Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the VC treadmill to succeed? Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later, PopSockets has proven that the bootstrapped, low-dilution path more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor's determination.      On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with founder and former CEO of PopSockets David Barnett to talk about how he scaled from a Boulder garage, stood up to Amazon at a $10–20 million cost, and eventually handed off the CEO role to someone who'd grown up inside the company.    Listen to the full episode to hear:  How a house fire and some insurance money became the unlikely seed funding for a global brand  What nearly sinking the company in manufacturing defects actually taught him about building one that lasts  How ignoring his investors' advice turned out to be the right call  What he looked for in a successor CEO (and why culture was non-negotiable)  What he'd do completely differently if he launched PopSockets today  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:15 From philosophy professor to phone grip inventor  05:17 How a house fire funded PopSockets  07:33 Manufacturing nightmares nearly killed the business  10:08 The local toy store that proved it could work  13:14 The $20M Amazon standoff  16:09 Growing too fast?  18:20 Beating counterfeits in China through brand building  19:11 Why David never wanted to be CEO  23:07 The worst advice received, and what to do instead  26:35 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Pentagon is playing chicken with Anthropic over who gets to control how the military uses AI while communities across the country are blocking data center construction. As the AI debate has been flattened to “doomers versus boomers,” one state legislator is attempting to walk a middle road.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Alex Bores, New York Assembly member and congressional candidate. Bores sponsored New York's first-of-its-kind AI safety law the RAISE Act — and quickly became the target of a Silicon Valley super PAC with $125 million to spend on attack ads.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  The dueling super PACs now fighting over AI's future, and why Anthropic's $20 million bet on the pro-regulation side matters.  What the RAISE Act actually requires, why it's being called the blueprint for AI regulation nationwide.  Whether AI regulation ends up looking like finance and biotech or goes the way of social media — largely unregulated until the damage is done.  What's coming next from Bores’ office: bills on training data disclosure, content provenance, and a 43-point national AI framework.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crypto is creeping back into the startup conversation, but at ETH Denver last week, the buzz was as much about Washington as it was about tokens. Policy shifts are rippling through the market as Tether and stablecoins face scrutiny, players like Stripe re-enter the chat, and startups either find traction or flame out. The hype cycle is over, or at least taking a break. So what comes next?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Jacquelyn Melinek, CEO of Token Relations and host of the Talking Tokens and Crypto in America podcasts, to make sense of how the market has changed and what in the world of crypto is built to last.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why ETHDenver fell flat despite a strong speaker lineup, and what it signals about crypto’s shifting hubs.  What White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt and SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce are actually pushing for with The GENIUS Act and Clarity Act.  What Stripe is quietly building with Bridge, Privy, and Tempo, and whether it's becoming the Visa of stablecoin settlement.  Tether's shrinking equity cushion and what a de-pegging event could mean for the broader crypto market.  YC’s surprising move to accept stablecoin investment as Bitcoin prices sit at half their peak.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TechCrunch's founder-focused podcast, Build Mode, is back. This season we’re breaking down what it really takes to build a world-class founding team starting with your cap table, equity structures, and startup compensation strategy.  We kick off with Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst and former founder, YC partner, and seed investor at Wayfinder Ventures. Yuri has worked with hundreds of pre-seed and seed-stage startups, and he shares practical advice on how early-stage founders should think about startup equity, cap table design, investor selection, and compensation structures from day one.  He breaks down:  The 3 types of investors (and which one to avoid)  Why your cap table is part of your team  The 20–25% seed dilution rule  How to split equity with a co-founder  How to talk to early employees about risk and compensation  No matter where you are in your startup journey, this episode will help you get the incentive structure right from the beginning.   Chapters:  00:00 - Why your first hires deserve more equity 00:31 - Meet Yuri Sagalov (YC → General Catalyst) 02:12 - Your cap table is part of your team 02:50 - The 3 types of investors (avoid this one) 05:02 - How to split equity with a co-founder 07:55 - How much equity to give early employees 09:37 - How to talk compensation and risk 12:31 - Red flags in formation docs and vesting 18:27 - Advisors for equity? Usually a mistake 20:05 - The 20–25% seed dilution rule 26:03 - The shift to 10-year stock options 34:11 - Don’t scale before product-market fit 39:23 - Final advice: Just start and choose your co-founder carefully  New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The creator economy is evolving fast, and ad revenue alone isn't cutting it anymore. YouTubers are launching product lines, acquiring startups, and building actual business empires. Even MrBeast's company bought fintech startup Step, and his chocolate business is outearning his media arm. This isn't just one creator's strategy. It's the new playbook.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan unpack how creators are diversifying beyond ads, what happens when influence becomes infrastructure, and whether this model can scale beyond the top 1%.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Date Drop raised “a few million” on the idea that one curated match per week can fix college dating burnout  Ex-Tesla VP Drew Baglino's $140M raise for solid-state transformers powering AI data centers  The handshake that didn't happen: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei's moment at India's AI summit  India's $200B AI infrastructure push and why its first AI IPO flopped  ByteDance's Seadance 2.0 and whether AI video tools democratize creativity or just create an endless flood of content  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Startup founders are being pushed to move faster than ever, using AI while facing tighter funding, rising infrastructure costs, and more pressure to show real traction early. Cloud credits, access to GPUs, and foundation models have made it easier to get started, but those early infrastructure choices can have unforeseen consequences once startups move beyond free credits and into real cloud bills.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Darren Mowry, Google Cloud’s vice president of global startups who is right at the center of those tradeoffs. Together, they discuss what Mowry’s seeing across the startup ecosystem, how Google Cloud is competing for AI startups, and what founders should be thinking about as they scale.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Google positions against AWS and Microsoft in the AI startup race.  TPUs vs GPUs: How much does hardware choice matter for early-stage companies?  Which AI verticals are seeing real growth, and what’s standing out in biotech, climate tech, developer tools, and world models.  What red flags will signal that a startup isn’t going to make it.   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the week's biggest deals and departures, from billion-dollar bets on fusion and robotics to the tech exodus reshaping AI companies.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why humanoid robot startups are raising nearly $1 billion and partnering with Google DeepMind  Whether fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises can actually deliver on its 2030 timeline, and why investors keep betting millions  What the Epstein files reveal about Silicon Valley dealmaking, particularly during the EV boom  Why AI Super Bowl ads might not be landing outside Silicon Valley  Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:46 AI Super Bowl ads ⁠aren’t quite landing⁠ outside of Silicon Valley  04:31 Apptronik raises $935M for humanoid robotics 09:05 Will automakers partner with humanoid robotics startups? 13:05 Inertia Enterprises raises $450M for fusion energy 18:44 What the Epstein files reveal about ⁠Silicon Valley dealmaking⁠ 30:56 The exodus at xAI and OpenAI, and what it means for the AI race 37:22 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and<a href="https://www.threads.net/@equitypod

Enterprise AI is shifting fast from chatbots that answer questions to systems that actually do the work across an organization. But who will own the AI layer that powers all of it?   Glean, which started as an enterprise search product, has evolved into what it calls an “AI work assistant,” aiming to sit underneath other AI experiences, connecting to internal systems, managing permissions, and delivering intelligence wherever employees work. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Glean’s CEO and founder Arvind Jain at Web Summit Qatar to break down how enterprises are thinking about AI architecture, what's driving consolidation, and what's real versus hype in the agent space.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  The fight between bundled AI from tech titans like Microsoft, Google and platform layers like Glean and its competitors.  How AI adoption is reshaping leadership and organizational design.  Why permissions and governance are harder problems than most companies realize.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI lab Flapping Airplanes just landed $180 million in seed funding from the likes of Google Ventures, Sequoia, and Index to do something most labs have quietly given up on: making models learn like humans instead of vacuuming up the internet. The founding team, made up of brothers Ben and Asher Spector and co-founder Aidan Smith, is betting that radically more data-efficient training could open the door to entirely new AI capabilities.  Today on Equity, TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandon sits down with all three founders to discuss why investors wrote such a large check for a lab with no product, what becomes possible with more efficient AI, and why they're prioritizing creativity over credentials.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why the Flapping Airplanes team is focused on research first, commercialization later  What the "neolabs" generation means for AI development  How they plan to make AI models 1,000x more data efficient. A hint? The team thinks the brain is "the floor, not the ceiling" for AI capabilities  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon Musk has merged SpaceX and xAI, creating what might be the blueprint for a new Silicon Valley power structure. With his $800 billion net worth already rivaling historic conglomerate GE's peak market cap, and Musk being vocal about his view that "tech victory is decided by velocity of innovation," the question isn't whether a personal conglomerate can be built, but rather how far Musk himself is going to take it.    Today on Equity, we're unpacking this new era of the "everything" business, whether we'll see others like Sam Altman follow suit, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:   Waymo's new $16B funding and why Alphabet staying as majority owner matters for an eventual IPO  Why everyone from Intel to Tesla is trying to break Nvidia's AI chip dominance  ElevenLabs’ $11B valuation, and why some investors are doubling — and quadrupling — down as it moves beyond voice AI  Positron's $230M bet on power-efficient chips as the next frontier  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices