Mercor has its moment in the AI data race

Equity

TechCrunch

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

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Leading AI labs like OpenAI and Google DeepMind cut ties with Scale AI after Meta invested $14 billion in the data vendor and hired its CEO. But AI labs still need data — leaving an opening for other startups that can supply it. The key players and factors in the AI data market are changing. Lately, it seems like Mercor — an AI hiring platform that sells data services to AI labs — may be one of the biggest benefactors of this shift. Today on Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Max Zeff dive deeper into how the AI data market is changing, check in on startups that recently went public and share their takes on the divisive orange iPhone. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Bending Spoons’ ⁠acquisition of Vimeo for $1.38 billion⁠, and what it means for the video industry. Why SpaceX is making a $17 billion bet on the direct-to-cell market, and what it all has to do with Apple. The long awaited IPO of Klarna, why it popped, and how other newly public companies like Figma and Coreweave are doing. Mercor’s new fundraising talks, and what’s going on the AI data space more broadly. Equity will be back next week. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! 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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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.
0:10.2	Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:16.4	Today is Friday, September 12th.
0:18.6	I'm Kirsten Koresak, Transportation editor at TechCrunch, and I'm joined,
0:22.6	as always, with senior AI reporter Max Seff and weekend editor Anthony Haugh. Welcome you to.
0:30.3	And I have an important question for you. Is Orange the new black in the world of iPhones?
0:35.7	I saw some squeamishness. Okay, by the way, for everyone.
0:39.0	It's, you're forgiven, Kirsten, because this week, Orange was everything. Apple unveiled all
0:45.1	its new hardware, but it's a big iPhone event of the year. And the biggest takeaway everyone had was
0:50.0	that there is an orange phone and it looks pretty sick. But there's also some really cool
0:55.4	stuff around their headphones, which, Anthony, I feel like that caught your eye a little bit.
0:59.8	Yeah. So there's this idea of essentially real-time translation in some of the AirPods. And
1:05.3	like that just seems like such a science fictional, like, wow. Like there's not a lot of things that can maybe like, wow, at least jaded tech
1:13.7	journalists like us nowadays, but that is like, just in general, that sort of translation
1:17.6	stuff that we're starting to see with AI is very impressive.
1:20.8	I mean, it's also where the demo on the stage versus what it will actually be like
1:25.2	when you try it on the street is probably going to be very different. So it feels like a very cool idea. We'll see how well executed it actually
1:33.2	is. Especially with AI Apple recently has had a lot of announcements that sounded cool and then they
1:37.6	haven't necessarily panned out. Yeah, true. Max, you brought up the orange phone, which got a lot
1:43.7	of play. And then the translation piece,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TechCrunch, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TechCrunch and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.