$1 Billion a lot of money these days?

Equity

TechCrunch

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4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Databricks just snatched up another AI company. This week, data analytics giant announced a $1 billion acquisition of Neon, a startup building an open-source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres. It’s the latest in a spree of high-profile buys, joining MosaicML and Tabular, as Databricks positions itself as the place to build, deploy, and scale AI-native applications. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha unpack the Databricks–Neon deal, where Neon’s serverless Postgres tech fits into the larger vision, and whether $1 billion still counts as “a lot of money” these days (spoiler: Kirsten and Anthony are on the fence). Listen to the full episode to hear about: Chime’s long-awaited IPO plans and what the neobank’s S-1 did (and didn’t) reveal. AWS entering a ‘strategic partnership’ that could shake up cloud infrastructure, especially as the Middle East ramps up its AI ambitions The return of the web series. Yes, really. Short-form scripted content is back, and investors are placing big bets on nostalgic trend Equity will be back next week, so don’t miss it! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Affinity, the most trusted CRM for private capital.
0:17.2	Okay, Anthony, I have some amazing news for you.
0:21.0	It's buses 2.0 because I think an episode Okay, Anthony, I have some amazing news for you. Okay.
0:28.8	It's buses 2.0 because I think an episode or two ago you were talking about like your love of mass transit.
0:32.8	And there's this company you may or may not have heard of called Uber.
0:35.0	Yes, I hear about them once in a while.
0:35.5	It's true.
0:39.5	And they have this whole new thing that is modern and innovative. And quite honestly, like, I don't even know why no one has thought of this
0:45.1	before. They're doing fixed route rides along busy corridors during weekday commute hours
0:52.0	in major cities like New York. I saw this and I guess I can imagine that there are cities where this makes sense
1:00.3	that are sort of like transit deserts.
1:01.6	Obviously the United States in general has terrible mass transit.
1:04.7	Potentially there's an opportunity for this.
1:07.7	I am utterly baffled that they launched in New York City, where we have, you know, not a perfect
1:12.7	subway system, but a pretty good subway system. So it's like, do you want to take this up,
1:16.7	take a bus, but it costs way more? No, no, I don't. So, and I should say also like, you know,
1:23.4	there have been a number of startups in the past that have also tried to do, like, this isn't even buses 2.0. This is like buses like 4.0 because there's been many
1:31.1	startups. They're like, we invented buses except this has to be profitable, which of course,
1:34.9	most public transportation systems are not profitable and that's kind of why they can be as
1:38.4	affordable as they are. Yeah, I don't know. I find this whole thing very confusing. I'm personally very excited about this because whenever I'm in an Uber, I always am like,
1:46.9	I wish there were like 50 other people in here with me right now. And I think that's really what
1:51.6	was missing from the platform. So good on them. Well, now that I know that both of you hate innovation.
	...

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