From Meta’s massive offers to Anthropic’s massive valuation, does AI have a ceiling?

Equity

TechCrunch

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

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Meta is still going all-in on the AI talent war, with Mark Zuckerberg reportedly reaching out to top recruits himself, throwing around jaw-dropping compensation packages that top $1 billion over multiple years. And Meta’s latest target? Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machines Lab. It's a bold play in an already overheated market. While Zuck eyes new talent, Anthropic is preparing to raise a massive round of its own at a staggering $170 billion valuation, nearly tripling its worth in just months. On paper, it looks like the AI cash floodgates are wide open. But all this endless money raises some serious questions about sustainability. On today's episode of Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Max Zeff unpack the reality behind these eye-popping figures. With compensation packages skyrocketing and funding rounds swelling, how long can this race actually last? Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Figma’s IPO, which is massively oversubscribed ahead of its NYSE debut Ramp’s rapid rise to a $22.5 billion valuation in just 45 days Why the Pentagon’s Golden Dome defense program may not be the big break startups are hoping for The escalating AI chip race, from Groq’s $600 million raise to Tesla’s $16.5 billion deal with Samsung, all while geopolitical tensions flare over chip exports to China Equity will be back for you 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. 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.
0:20.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:26.4	Today is Friday, August 1st. I'm Kirsten Khorasak, transportation editor at TechCrunch, and I'm joined by TechCrunch senior AI reporter Max Zeph and weekend editor Anthony Haugh. And Anthony, when you see the news, I'm sure
0:42.1	you've seen it, of these compensation packages that are being thrown around in the AI space,
0:49.5	specifically by meta, are you regretting your choice to become a journalist?
0:55.4	Always. I'm constantly regretting that choice. I do think that it's worth remembering that
1:01.5	for old folks like you and me, Kirsten, probably if we'd gone into a technical field when we
1:07.8	were first starting out, that would have meant going into computer science
1:11.2	programming. And that actually seems to be an area where there's a lot of layoffs right now.
1:15.3	So like the thing that would have seemed safe at the time is not necessarily what would
1:20.7	have paid off in the long term. And I am curious about whether or not, obviously it does
1:24.6	seem like there's a little bit of a gold rush mentality around spending so much money on this kind of AI talent. And I'm curious whether or not we're still going to be seeing offers like this five or ten years from now. Max, what do you think? Yeah, people used to tell journalists to learn to code. And now I think they need to learn to research LLMs. Is just that's where the money is. That's the safe career. I really am wondering if colleges
1:45.7	are just seeing a crazy influx of people who want to study this kind of stuff. But we are going to
1:51.5	get into a lot with the AI race later. On the show today, we have deals of the week from Figma, Anthropic,
1:58.1	and Ramp. And then we'll get into two big themes, why the Golden Dome may not be the golden ticket Silicon Valley is hoping for
2:03.6	and how the AI chip race is only getting hotter.
2:06.2	Let's get into it with the first deal.
2:08.2	Right. So this is Figma.
2:10.3	We've been talking about Figma quite a bit.
2:12.2	And as we're recording this right now,
	...

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