Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines. Today is March 1st. My name is Alex and I'm joined today by Senior Tech One reporter on the FinTech

beat. It's Mary Ann as a Veto. Hey Mary Ann, how are you?

Alex, I'm good, but I think I need another one of those Nespresos that we were talking about

before the show.

Mary Ann and I, if you didn't know, walk around toting behind us a intravenous drip of coffee

just to keep our blood coffee levels where they need to be.

Illegal in several states, but very good for podcasting.

Jokes aside the Mary end today is something of a special or important day

for my history of Tech Runch, which is that I think the paywall came off of all Tech Runch plus stuff at midnight last night.

So if all goes well, according to plan, and you know, technical issues aside,

we're recording this Thursday afternoon so you know it hasn't

happened yet when I'm recording this but should be by the time you hear it all of Tucker Plus stuff

should be freely readable by everybody so end of an era but also an open door I suppose.

What a huge gift to our readers. Please read them make me feel good.

Anyways on the show today deals of the week we have Stripe and Fervo Energy, one from the world of FinTech, one from the world of ripping heat out of the earth,

so a little bit of diversity on our deals.

Then we are going to dive into Mary Ann's recent investigation into startups that have been

built to shut down other startups.

I have many questions about this.

That's going to be a fun one.

And then we're going to wrap up with an update on AI ownership

and legality within a special note on Microsoft's recent investment into the French

...