Apple's new CEO, and why Elon Musk wants to buy Cursor for $60B

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2026

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 option 18:25 Is this finally the year of the IPO? 21:38 SpaceX, Revolut, and Cerebras: the IPOs to watch 26:41 Tim Cook's retirement plans 29:15 What a new Apple CEO means for startups and the App Store 35:59 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Presented by Dot Tech Domains, where tech founders find sharp, memorable names for their tech startups.
0:05.7	Hello and welcome back to Equity TechRunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:11.5	Today is Friday, April 24th, and I'm joined, as always, by our weekend editor Anthony Haugh and senior reporter Sean O'Kane.
0:19.1	And last week, we ended the show talking about
0:22.8	Anthropics Mythos. And here it is bubbling up to the surface again. Lots to talk about
0:29.0	on the Mythos front. Anthony, catch us up. Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of things. One is that
0:36.4	there's essentially a hacker group that says they were able to get access to Mythos. I mean, there's a bunch of things. One is that there's essentially a hacker group that says they were able to get access to Mythos.
0:40.8	I mean, they're not claiming to do anything malicious with it,
0:43.9	but it sort of suggests that this thing that was supposedly fairly contained
0:48.3	is maybe not so contained,
0:50.3	which is also you're getting sense of that anyway,
0:51.9	because it sounds like more and more groups from the government are using it or getting encouraged to use it and then like all these
0:57.7	different banks. And so it's like this model that is supposedly like very like wrapped up but actually
1:04.1	seems to be used by many different groups. Yeah. And also Sam Alman has quite a few opinions about Anthropics. We should say for those who aren't
1:14.7	following it, this is coming from Anthropic and one of its top competitors, Open AI, Sam Alman
1:19.9	runs Open AI, was throwing a bit of shade at what do you call fear-based, I should put quotes,
1:26.8	fear-based marketing around mythos. Sean, do you call fear-based, I should put quotes, fear-based marketing around me.
1:30.1	Those, Sean, do you buy that?
1:32.1	Is it fear-based?
1:33.6	I mean, listen, I think there is an element of truth to that,
1:37.4	but that doesn't change the fact that OpenAI does very similar things.
1:41.9	This is very like pot calling the kettle black,
	...

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