Equity Live: From $300M seed rounds to data center builds, AI is feeling bubbly

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha took over the Builders Stage on Monday morning to kick off the event with the question everyone's asking: are we in an AI bubble? Between valuations that have tripled in months, $300M seed rounds, and $100B commitments flying around, the money is moving fast — maybe too fast. The Equity team breaks down what peak bubble looks like, where the actual business models are (spoiler: a lot of companies are betting on AI datacenters), and why some founders are betting against the scaling race entirely. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why this feels like peak bubble territory, and what the wildest funding rounds of the past month tell us about where AI is headed How the AI data center boom is reshaping infrastructure investing, and which unexpected players are getting in on the action Why Cohere's former AI research lead is going against the grain and betting against the scaling race What happens when a startup's viral demo becomes its entire business model (and whether that's sustainable) Subscribe to Equity on 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

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a paid ad by Fidelity Private Shares.
0:03.2	A messy or missing cap table might not just slow you down.
0:05.8	It could cost you your next fundraising round.
0:08.1	Welcome to Equity TechCrunch and's podcast about the business of startups.
0:12.5	I'm Kirsten Koresk, Transportation Editor here at TechCrunch.
0:16.7	Anthony Ha Weekend Editor and Maxwell Zep, our AI editor, or AI reporter.
0:22.0	I just promoted you on stage.
0:23.2	Wow, thank you.
0:24.1	That's great.
0:25.7	Well, it's great to be here, and I'm very excited at first day.
0:30.2	Anthony, how are you feeling?
0:31.9	I feel great.
0:32.8	Thank you, everyone, for coming.
0:34.4	This is the first time we're recording this and not staring at each other through
0:38.2	Zoom screens or Riverside now. Not to give a gratuitous plug, but this feels good. It feels a little
0:45.6	weird, but it feels good. This is also exciting because I rode my first Waymo last night,
0:51.2	which feels very timely because you're going to be talking to the co-CEO
0:55.2	of Waymo in a few hours, right? Yeah, just a few hours. Max, you're a regular Waymo writer, right?
1:02.1	I am. Yeah, it's really just, once you get used to it, it is just a completely different
1:09.0	experience where you're like, okay, I don't have to talk to someone right now. I can just hop in the way, Mo. But what did you feel? It felt surprisingly normal. It was, you know, like at first, you know, there's the like getting into the car and then like I couldn't figure, like, because we had a larger group, it was can we get into the driver's seat no we can't and
1:28.2	so there's like just like small things but once you're in the car within a minute or two um
1:32.4	it felt completely normal in fact um our our friend gregg who was i think very pro waymo it's
	...

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