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Equity

Telegram founder's arrest, and who's using acqui-hires to tip-toe around antitrust

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today on  Equity, Devin Coldeway kicked off our Deals of the Week rundown with Piramidal, a startup which offers a foundational model for analyzing brain scan data that just raised $6 million, as his deal of the week. The premise behind the company is a fascinating one in that its technology aims to help complement the work of nurses and doctors in neural ICUs by helping identify signs of things like an epileptic episode, or a stroke. Mary Ann Azevedo wanted to talk about Comun, a neobank serving Latino immigrants in the U.S. with financial services and banking products. The fintech just raised $21.5 million a round led by Redpoint Ventures, not that long after closing its seed round. It’s seeing fast growth — as well as a higher valuation. Rebecca Bellan dug into a scoop she had about Fluid Truck and recent drama there. The startup, which was founded to disrupt the commercial vehicle rental industry, has apparently ousted its sibling co-founders — CEO James Eberhard and chief legal counsel Jenifer Snyder — in what is being described as a hostile takeover. We then moved into the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, and whether or not tech executives can, and should, be held responsible for what happens on their platforms. And lastly, we dug into what’s going at Inflection after Microsoft poached its co-founders. That move has drawn attention from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and U.K., who are now investigating whether Microsoft was anticompetitive. The Equity crew discussed whether or not companies are using acqui-hires to get around antitrust regulation. Honestly, we had so much fun we could’ve gone on for a whole other episode. Give it a listen! 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 over at Simplecast. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech Runches flagship podcast about the business of

0:15.9

startups today is August 30th 2024 I'm Marianne Asavado and joining me a senior

0:21.1

TC reporter on the transportation desk, Rebecca

0:23.8

have you had a good week so far? Yeah I've had a really busy week actually just

0:29.6

got one scoop out the door working on another one so it's been yeah it's been busy.

0:34.0

Nice lots of scoops always always good to hear and very interesting ones as well.

0:40.0

We've also got Devon Koldaway senior editor at Tech Crunch here with us today.

0:44.9

Devon, always lovely to have you.

0:47.0

How are you?

0:48.0

I'm good.

0:49.0

I'm done in San Francisco right now.

0:50.5

It's been really lovely, actually.

0:51.7

Everybody warned me it's going to be all foggy. But then the fog, it turns out just during my stays off in the distance looking picturesque. So it's been very nice.

0:59.3

Oh, how beautiful? Too hot, if anything. Oh, okay. I'm in Texas so your definition of hot is probably very

1:05.8

different from mine what do you mean by too hot like when you like you can you

1:09.6

can not wear a coat you'll be too hot. Okay yeah yeah that's exactly what I

1:16.4

thought very different from 108 we had here recently. Anyway well we've got a

1:21.4

really packed fun episode for everybody.

1:24.1

Today deals of the week include a couple of startup raises including

1:27.9

Perimidol and Comun and what's going on at Fluid Truck.

1:31.9

We're also going to take a look at what went down with telegrams founder this past week and what

1:36.7

that arrest could mean for other tech executives.

...

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