Equity

Defense tech is red hot right now, with a proposed 40% increase to the federal defense budget, Anduril doubling its valuation to $61 billion, and a wave of startups chasing government contracts. But according to Ross Fubini, the venture investor who wrote Anduril's first check, most of them won't make it. The valley of death between a prototype contract and a real production deal is about to claim a lot of companies.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan asks Fubini — the founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital, built on the Palantir alumni network and now approaching $2B AUM — what separates the survivors from the rest.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Ukraine and Iran have become live testing grounds for US defense startups, and which companies are getting in the field  How other countries are building their own defense tech ecosystems, and what that means for where startups build and sell  The sustainment problem nobody wants to talk about, and why autonomous logistics is the real moat  Where Fubini is writing checks next, from AI-driven US manufacturing to government software for health and human services  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 3 June 2026

The people deciding that AI can replace your job are also the ones least likely to understand what your job truly involves, according to Box founder Aaron Levie, who pointed to this as an example of "AI psychosis.” Indeed, ClickUp recently cut 22% of its workforcefor AI agents, tech layoffs in 2026 are already nearly matching all of 2025, and DuckDuckGo installs are climbing from users who want Google to stop forcing AI into search and just give them links.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what happens when the AI-pilled and the AI-skeptical are both right at the same time, plus three deals worth knowing about and Waymo's new robotaxi hitting the road.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Kirsten's first look at Waymo's new Ojai robotaxi in Phoenix, and the crew's thoughts on the company's path to profitability  Cloud data storage giant Snowflake’s $6 billion five-year agreement with AWS  Why Stord, the "anti-Amazon" fulfillment startup, just raised $250 million at a $3 billion valuation  What OpenRouter's $113 million raise says about the picks-and-shovels layer, and how long that interest lasts  How the AI agent wave is actually reshaping hiring, not just headcount  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:18 Waymo's new Ojai robotaxi  06:41 Stord raises $250M to take on Amazon fulfillment  12:46 Snowflake signs $6B deal with AWS  15:39 OpenRouter raises $113M Series B  20:07 The AI divide & anti-AI backlash  27:31 AI psychosis & how AI is reshaping headcount and hiring  37:04 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 29 May 2026

Google I/O made it official: AI-generated answers are now front and center in search, and most brands have almost no visibility into how AI is describing them to their customers. For anyone who has spent years building a strategy around 10 blue links, the rules just changed in a pretty significant way.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Matt Thompson, VP of partnerships at Scrunch, a startup positioning itself at the center of the AI search shift, to talk about what Google’s changes mean and marketers and founders should actually do about it.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why AI referrals are converting at 400% higher than traditional organic search, and what that means for how to think about traffic.  How ChatGPT still has the lion's share of AI search traffic, and why optimizing only for Google means missing most of the market.  Why Google's own SEO best practices might be leading marketers in the wrong direction.  What it actually means to make your website "agent ready" and why most enterprise sites aren't.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 27 May 2026

The SpaceX S-1 is finally here, and the story it tells goes way further than rockets. The filing runs to 36 pages of risk factors alone, and the numbers inside match the ambition: a $28 trillion total addressable market, a pay package tied to establishing a Mars colony, and a valuation target that would make it the largest IPO in American history.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the filing actually says, what it leaves out, and whether any of this math connects to reality.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why NanoCo turned down a $20 million buyout to raise a $12 million seed instead  Anthropic’s acquisition of SDK startup Stainless, and why taking a tool off the table matters as much as the $300 million price tag  What happened when commencement speakers started talking up AI in front of graduating classes, and why the students weren't having it  Google’s I/O announcements claiming search as you know it is over, and what the AI makeover could mean for the open web   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 22 May 2026

Slapping "AI" on your startup’s pitch deck is basically table stakes right now. When a founder raised $20 million from Cathie Wood's ARK Invest for an eSports gamification loyalty startup without those two letters in the spotlight, it got us wondering how the conversation even started — especially when ARK had already been burned by a company operating in the same space.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sits down with Dylan Robbins, founder and CEO of Lucra, the white-label platform turning friendly competitions into loyalty programs for brands like golf courses, arcades, and pickleball clubs.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Dylan met his ARK connection over a game of darts at a New York City bar  Why pitching a non-AI company in peak AI fundraising season meant addressing it head-on, even when it had nothing to do with his business  How being honest with investors about what wasn't working yet actually helped him close the round  Why Lucra pivoted from consumer to B2B in 45 days (and why that pivot is what convinced ARK they weren't looking at another Skillz).  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 20 May 2026

The Musk v. Altman trial came to a close this week, and the final arguments kept circling back to one question: can we trust the people in charge of AI? All of this is playing out as SpaceX charges toward what could be one of the largest IPOs in American history, with a whole generation of founders already spinning out of the Musk empire. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down the trial's closing stretch and what the growing Elon Musk founder ecosystem actually looks like on the ground, and the other deals that caught our eye this week. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Anduril landed a $5 billion Series H, more than doubling the valuation it landed just under a year ago  Why investors just can’t say no to RJ Scaringe, who’s raked in over $1 billion for Rivian spinout Mind Robotics How voice AI startup Vapi beat out over 40 other companies to secure a contract handling all of Ring's customer support What an Anthropic report about an AI agent blackmailing its own developers says about where the industry actually is Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 15 May 2026

AI may be changing how companies build, but it's also changing how they get attacked, often by their own tools. Amazon Chief Security Officer Steve Schmidt has watched threat actors at every skill level get sharper, faster, and harder to contain. The risk he's most focused on, however, isn't coming from outside the firewall. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Schmidt at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The two dug into what AI is already doing to the threat landscape and how Amazon is rethinking identity, containment, and human oversight to keep agents in check. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why shadow AI inside your own organization may be a bigger liability than the hackers trying to get in What agentic identity means in practice, and how Amazon traces every agent action back to a human How startups with five people (and no CISO) can manage their AI security, and why containment is becoming the defining security challenge of the agentic era Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 13 May 2026

Everyone wants a piece of the enterprise AI pie, and this week, we saw a string of companies making their moves. From Anthropic and OpenAI announcing new joint ventures targeting enterprise AI deployment to SAP dropping $1B on German AI startup Prior Labs, it's becoming clear that if you're a startup building enterprise tools, you're likely an acquisition target.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the week's enterprise AI deals, the xAI-Anthropic compute arrangement, and what it all means ahead of what could be a big IPO season.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why a TikToker is trying to crowdfund the purchase of Spirit Airlines, and whether anyone really loves Spirit enough to make it work  Why Katie Haun's venture fund and Andreessen Horowitz are both raising billions to back a crypto comeback  Aurora Innovation's milestone commercial trucking contract with a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, announced shortly after we caught up with Aurora’s CEO, Chris Urmson, at HumanX  The Pentagon's latest AI spending spree, inking deals with Nvidia, Microsoft, and AWS  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:31 Spirit Airlines & the crowdfunded "people's airline"  03:25 xAI x Anthropic deal: is xAI becoming a NEO cloud?  13:47 Haun Ventures & a16z's crypto comeback  17:48 Aurora Innovation lands a commercial trucking contract  19:27 A big week for enterprise AI: who's actually making money?  26:45 The Pentagon's AI spending spree  31:04 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 8 May 2026

Self-driving has been "almost here" for over a decade. But somewhere between DARPA challenges and a handful of driverless trucks hauling freight between Dallas and Houston, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson’s story changed. The self-driving truck company started commercial driverless operations last April and is now scaling from a handful of trucks to hundreds this year.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Urmson at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The pair dug into the long road from lab to highway and how physical AI differs from the LLM boom everyone else is chasing.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why long-haul trucking may crack the autonomy business case before robotaxis ever do  What "verifiable AI" means and why Urmson thinks end-to-end systems are a liability when lives are on the line  The surprisingly common-sense solution to the driverless truck safety triangle problem  What Aurora's roadmap looks like beyond trucking, and which companies in the autonomy space have Urmson genuinely excited  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 6 May 2026

Elon Musk spent the better part of three days on the witness stand this week in his lawsuit against OpenAI, and it's already getting messy. Emails, texts, and his own tweets are surfacing in court, and there are plenty more witnesses to come. Musk's argument against OpenAI? By converting the company to a for-profit model, Sam Altman betrayed the “nonprofit for the benefit of humanity” mission Musk signed up to fund. As Musk keeps reminding the courtroom: “You can't steal a charity.”  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec and Sean O'Kane break down what's actually at stake in the courtroom and what to watch for as Altman and others take the stand, plus deals, defense tech, and what Big Tech's earnings week revealed about the limits of the AI spending era. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why cloud was the winner of earnings week, and what AWS, Google, and Microsoft's numbers say about where enterprise AI spending is actually landing The scholarship app founder taking Sallie Mae to court after they acquired his startup…and began selling its student data to ad networks and universities BMW i Ventures new $300 million fund with its sights set on AI How defense tech startup Scout AI is pitching “military AGI” using vision-language-action (VLA) models Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 1 May 2026

AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool in AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool almost overnight, and Runway has a front-row seat to the shift. The New York-based company has raised close to $860 million at a $5.3 billion valuation, and its models are going toe-to-toe with the most well-funded labs in the world, including Google and OpenAI.   And the technology goes way beyond making videos: it's now pushing into general world models with applications in gaming, robotics, and maybe something closer to general intelligence.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, host Rebecca Bellan sits down with co-founder and CEO Cristobal Valenzuela to talk about where video generation goes from here, and why Runway's ambitions now reach well beyond Hollywood.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Valenzuela thinks the real constraint on filmmaking has never been technology, and what changes when it is  How Runway thinks about world models differently than Google and other labs building in the space  What "nonlinear media" means, and why real-time video generation opens up use cases way beyond content creation  Why Valenzuela pushes back on the idea that AI companions are “inherently dystopian”  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:56 Can AI really replace Hollywood?  04:18 Why "AI slop" fears miss the point  08:23 Research lab, software company, or creative studio?  13:42 From video generation to world models, explained  17:36 Omni models and multimodal training  17:50 The three pillars: linear media, non-linear media, physical AI  19:31 Real-time video and the "Characters" product  22:33 Are AI companions inherently dystopian?  25:59 Physical AI and robotics  28:35 Where growth is coming from: enterprise and prosumer  29:31 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 29 April 2026

A new era is on the way for Apple as Tim Cook plans to step down from his CEO role in September, handing the reins to hardware chief John Ternus.   Ternus may be inheriting one of the most durable businesses in tech, but he’s also stepping into a very different ecosystem than the one Cook spent decades shaping. The App Store’s 30% cut is under pressure, the behind-the-scenes power Apple once held over developers is being challenged, and AI-native apps are changing what it means to build on Apple’s platform.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what this transition means for startups and a closer look at some of the week’s biggest deals — including SpaceX's $60B option on Cursor.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Anthropic’s Mythos model is raising questions about both safety and marketing  The $5 billion Amazon-Anthropic deal that looks a lot like every other circular AI infrastructure play  What the SpaceX-Cursor agreement (and that $10 billion breakup fee) says about Elon Musk's AI strategy post-xAI merger  Why fintech Revolut and AI chip startup Cerebras' public market plans have us wondering whether this is actually the year the IPO market reopens  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:26 Anthropic's Mythos accessed by “unauthorized groups”  04:28 Is Amazon's $5B Anthropic investment just another circular deal?  09:53 SpaceX and Cursor’s $60B option  18:25 Is this finally the year of the IPO?  21:38 SpaceX, Revolut, and Cerebras: the IPOs to watch  26:41 Tim Cook's retirement plans  29:15 What a new Apple CEO means for startups and the App Store  35:59 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 24 April 2026

Fusion energy has been "20 years away" for decades, but has the science finally caught up? Private investment in fusion companies surged from $10 billion to $15 billion in just months, and the money is coming from places you wouldn't expect.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan and guest host Tim De Chant sit down with Rachel Slaybaugh, general partner at DCVC, to break down why serious investors are finally treating fusion as a real asset class, and what the return thesis actually looks like when no one expects a power plant in their fund lifetime.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why the investment thesis for fusion looks less like traditional VC and more like biotech or SpaceX, and what "fusion euphoria" has to do with it  What the Q value milestone actually means, and how close leading startups are to hitting the number that could trigger a public market opening  How superconducting tape and AI-assisted plasma physics are quietly doing as much work as the big headline science breakthroughs  Why one fusion company merging with Trump Media and Technology Group had Tim doing a double-take at his inbox  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 22 April 2026

The gap between AI insiders and everyone else is widening, and the spending, suspicion, and even new vocabulary are starting to show it. While OpenAI is busy buying up everything from finance apps to talk shows, a certain shoe company just rebranded as an AI infrastructure play, and Anthropic unveiled a model it says is too powerful to release publicly ...but apparently not too powerful to demo to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what's actually being built in AI infrastructure, who's winning the enterprise battle between OpenAI and Anthropic, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm just piled $60M into UK self-driving startup Wayve, and what Uber's $300M milestone bid says about who's winning the AV race  How data center startup Fluidstack is positioning itself for the frontier labs, including a reported $50B agreement with Anthropic  What Claude Code's moment at the HumanX conference reveals about where the OpenAI vs. Anthropic rivalry is actually playing out  Why tokenmaxxing, and Meta's leaked internal leaderboard, might say more about optics than actual productivity  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:25 Allbirds is now an AI company, apparently  04:48 Why chipmakers are betting on Wayve  12:01 Fluidstack wants $1B to build AI data centers  16:24 OpenAI buys a finance app and a talk show  21:27 Anthropic vs. OpenAI in enterprise  24:15 The Anthropic model they won't release to the public  26:47 Why AI feels so distant to everyone else  30:47 What even is tokenmaxxing?  34:49 Parasail's $32M bet on cheaper AI inference  36:39 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 17 April 2026

When Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc got COVID despite being vaccinated and boosted, he tried to fund research for a better solution. What he quickly found out? You can't just write a check in biotech. Regulators require a commercialization plan, and philanthropy doesn't move science through clinical trials or get you a license on university IP. Now, he's bootstrapping a cancer drug platform targeting pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills 90% of its patients, and intentionally waiting to raise from his network until peer-reviewed papers can make his case.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Aloe Blacc to talk about what happens when a creator decides to build instead of just invest, how Aloe is watching AI reshape both the biotech and music industries in real time, and his thoughts on who actually wins.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  How he’s navigating a world where credibility is earned in data, not fame  How a University of Houston molecule discovery platform could cut years off drug development timelines  Why he thinks record labels, not artists or AI companies, will ultimately control the economics of AI-generated music  What Suno taught him about prototyping, and why his next album will still be recorded with live musicians  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 15 April 2026

LLMs may have kicked off this AI boom, but the ceiling is closer than the hype suggests. As models run out of text data to train on, the companies and investors paying attention are already moving on. The next wave isn't better chatbots; it's machines that can understand the physical world. Luma AI, the Bay Area lab that raised over $1.4 billion from a16z, Nvidia, and Amazon, is betting on exactly that.  On episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan sat down with Amit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Luma AI, at Web Summit Qatar. Together, the pair dug into where the next trillion-dollar AI opportunity actually gets built, and whether the companies chasing it even know what they're building yet.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why video, audio, and images are the real frontier for AI training data, not text  What an "intelligent world model" actually is, and why Jain thinks most companies building them are getting it completely wrong  The case for why AI won't kill creative jobs, and why Jain thinks studio heads are the real problem  How the path from video generation to robotics to AGI is simpler than anyone's making it sound  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:13 Why LLMs are hitting a ceiling  02:43 The data problem & what comes after LLMs  04:30 What actually makes a world model a world model  06:05 Why 3D data is a dead end  07:39 What Luma is building next  09:08 How much humans stay in the loop  10:00 Near-term use cases for agentic video  11:22 Will AI kill jobs in film & production?  13:30 Why the entertainment industry is already dying  15:27 Why we actually need more content, not less  17:46 Luma's roadmap: generation, understanding, and robotics  19:54 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2026

Snowflake is betting that the future of AI isn’t just analyzing data, it’s acting on it. That means a shift away from chatbots and toward autonomous agents that can actually get work done. And Snowflake is reorganizing fast to keep up, from shipping hundreds of AI features to restructuring teams along the way.On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to unpack the company’s transformation and what it signals about where AI is headed next. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why Ramaswamy believes the chatbot era is ending and the agentic era is beginning. How Snowflake is evolving from a data warehouse into an AI and applications platform. What “shipping with your data” actually looks like in practice. Why the company is making big internal changes to support its AI push. Subscribe to Equity on ⁠YouTube⁠,⁠ Apple Podcasts⁠,⁠ Overcast⁠,⁠ Spotify⁠ and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on⁠ X⁠ and⁠ Threads⁠, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:17 Snowflake’s AI shift and agentic future 01:45 Why 2026 marks the end of chatbots 04:09 Cortex Code, Snowflake Intelligence, and new products 06:09 Who benefits: non-technical users & enterprises 07:35 Adoption challenges and why AI pilots fail 12:11 How AI is reshaping jobs and skills 14:39 Layoffs, automation, and the future of documentation 18:37 Snowflake’s evolution into an AI platform 21:04 Competition: Databricks, hyperscalers, and AI giants 25:01 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 8 April 2026

Tech companies are racing to build data centers in space, pitching orbital compute as the next frontier for AI infrastructure, even as the technical and economic realities remain far from clear. Add in OpenAI’s massive $122 billion round and Bluesky’s latest AI backlash, and the message is clear: The future of AI is being shaped as much by ambition and hype as it is by real-world constraints.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane unpack these massive capital bets, user backlash, and off-world compute plans along with Whoop’s major valuation and the literal downfall of robot Olaf.   Listen to the full episode to hear about:  OpenAI’s $122 billion fundraise and what its near-trillion-dollar valuation says about expectations for AI.   Whoop’s $575 million raise and the shift toward “wearables 2.0” (and what happens to all that data).   Bluesky’s AI-powered feed builder and why it triggered a major user backlash.   The rise of data centers in space and whether they are financially or physically feasible.   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:20 A humanoid Olaf robot collapses at Disneyland Paris 03:30 OpenAI raises $122B at an $852B valuation 11:30 Whoop lands $575M and bets big on wearable data  18:50 The risks (and value) of personal health data 23:00 Bluesky’s AI feed builder sparks backlash 30:00 Can Bluesky keep growing — and compete with X? 36:30 The race to build data centers in space 44:30 SpaceX, Starlink, and the business of orbital compute 49:30 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 3 April 2026

The VC middleman is getting cut out faster than anyone expected. Family offices and private wealth firms are going direct: writing checks, taking board seats, even incubating companies from scratch. And more founders are starting to notice. In February alone, family offices made 41 direct investments, including one Midwest-based firm that led a $230 million Series B into an AI chip startup.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Mitch Stein and Ari Schottenstein, founder and head of alternatives at ARENA Private Wealth, to find out what this shift means for founders, cap tables, and the future of AI investment.    Listen to the full episode to hear:  How Arena landed the lead on Positron's $230 million Series B, and why the CEO specifically wanted them on his cap table  How Arena does due diligence on technical companies  What "tourist capital" actually looks like, and the red flags founders should watch for as family offices flood into AI deals  Why some VCs are quietly unhappy about this trend (and why Arena thinks that's their problem)  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro   03:13 Why family offices are going direct now  06:03 The gen 2 & gen 3 family office shift  07:22 Is this strategic or just AI FOMO?  10:17 How Arena got into the Positron deal  14:30 Why founders want private wealth on their cap table  18:31 Due diligence on technical companies  21:56 Red flags founders should watch for  25:04 Are VCs threatened by this trend?  27:47 Taking board seats & level of involvement  34:17 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 1 April 2026

When an 82-year-old Kentucky woman was offered $26 million from an AI company that wanted to build a data center on her land, she said no. Sure, that same company can try to rezone 2,000 acres nearby anyway, but as AI infrastructure stretches further into the real world, the real world is starting to push back.  That tension is everywhere this week, from OpenAI shutting down its Sora app to courts finally starting to hold social platforms accountable. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what it looks like when the AI hype cycle meets reality.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why rival prediction market CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket are co-investing in a $35M VC fund  How drone startups like Zipline, Lucid Bots, and Brinc are finding real traction where other robotics plays have stalled  What Kleiner Perkins' $3.5B raise says about where the biggest VC firms think the next AI wave is going  Why two separate court verdicts against Meta in the same week could be the “tobacco moment” for social media  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:30 Would you turn down $26M for your farm?  03:56 Rivals Kalshi & Polymarket CEOs are investing together  10:28 Deals for drones: Zipline, Brinc & Lucid Bots  18:17 Kleiner Perkins goes all-in on AI with $3.5B raise  22:52 OpenAI shuts down Sora  28:04 Meta gets hit with dual verdicts  34:56 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 27 March 2026

Over the past few years, a new category of mobile apps has quietly exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. They're called “micro dramas” — short-form, mobile-first scripted shows designed to be watched vertically on your phone. Think soap opera meets TikTok, complete with secret billionaire romances, disapproving werewolf mothers-in-law, and cliffhangers engineered to keep users tapping. The leading app, ReelShort, made $1.2 billion in consumer spending last year alone.   On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan and TechCrunch senior reporter Amanda Silberling sit down with Henry Soong, founder of Watch Club, who thinks the micro drama industry is still "in its MySpace era." He has a vision for what the Facebook moment could look like.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why micro dramas took off in China while Quibi burned through $2 billion and failed in the U.S., and what that gap reveals about content, product, and business model.  How Watch Club is targeting a completely different audience than ReelShort and Drama Box.  The tension between building an intentional social experience and optimizing for engagement the way TikTok does.  Whether AI is coming for the werewolf billionaire romance script. Amanda has thoughts.   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:11 Why micro dramas, and why now?  04:25 What makes Watch Club different  07:29 The monetization model problem  18:52 Optimizing for intentionality, not engagement  24:23 Why Quibby failed (content, product & business model)  28:22 Defensibility: tech company or studio?  31:36 AI, the WGA, and the future of storytelling  33:44 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 25 March 2026

Jensen Huang took the stage at Nvidia's GTC conference this week in his signature leather jacket to deliver a two-and-a-half-hour keynote, projecting $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027, declaring that every company needs an “OpenClaw strategy,” and closing with a rambling Olaf robot that had to get its mic cut. The message was hard to miss: Nvidia wants to be foundational to everything, from AI training to autonomous vehicles to Disney parks.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down what Nvidia's growing web of AI infrastructure partnerships actually means for startups, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Travis Kalanick’s return building a "wheelbase for robots" with his new startup Atoms, and the crew has questions about Kalanick’s acquisitions along the way  Rivian’s partnership with Uber to build robotaxi versions of its R2 in a deal worth up to $1.25 billion, while pushing back its EBITDA target to do it  Frore landing a $1.64 billion valuation for its AI chip cooling systems  xAI rebooting, again, with only two of its original eleven co-founders still standing  Garry Tan's Claude Code setup went viral at SXSW (Spoiler: the crew is not impressed).  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:20 Garry Tan's Claude Code setup goes viral at SXSW  03:37 Travis Kalanick is back with a new startup  12:51 Uber and Rivian's $1.25B RoboTaxi deal  20:54 Chip cooling startup Frore becomes a unicorn  22:56 Nvidia GTC recap: $1 trillion in sales projections  31:42 Elon Musk is rebooting xAI...again  36:37 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 20 March 2026

Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project to being valued at $1.7 billion.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-founders Anastasios Angelopoulos and Wei-Lin Chiang to determine how a team like theirs can build a neutral benchmark when the companies they’re ranking are also their backers.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  How Arena actually works, and why its founders say you can't game it the way you mighta static benchmark.  What "structural neutrality" actually means, and whether taking money from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic is a conflict of interest.  How Arena is moving beyond chat to benchmark agents, coding, and real-world tasks with a new enterprise product.  Why Claude is currently winning the expert leaderboard for legal and medical use cases.  Arena's bet on what comes after LLMs, and why agents are next on the leaderboard.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  03:00 How Arena's leaderboard works, and why it's different from static benchmarks  07:00 Reproducibility concerns and how to scale  08:45 Can Arena stay independent while taking money from the labs it ranks?  11:15 Diversity, fraud prevention, and abuse mitigation  18:15 Arena's "data moat"  19:20 Agent benchmarking and expert leaderboards  21:40 Open sourcing data  22:45 How do Arena's rankings shape AI development?  24:15 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 18 March 2026

According to Index Ventures Partner Shardul Shah, cybersecurity startup Wiz sits “at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend.” Those tailwinds powered what just became the largest venture-backed acquisition in history — Google's $32 billion deal, finalized after a declined 2024 offer, antitrust review on both sides of the Atlantic, and an extra $9 billion to sweeten the pot.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O'Kane sit down with Shah to dig into what made Wiz worth that price tag, and also cover more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why a DOGE employee allegedly walked out of the Social Security Administration with a thumb drive full of personal data, and the questions it raises about access to sensitive systems  Taya and Sandbar, the latest startups betting voice is the next big AI interface — but do normal consumers agree?  Palmer Luckey raising for a retro gaming startup at a $1 billion valuation  Meta’s acquisition of Moltbook, the viral AI agent social network  The latest in the Anthropic vs. DoD saga, including tech workers at OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft signing their names on a legal brief in support of Anthropic  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  00:16 Did a DOGE employee steal your SSN?  02:53 AI note-taking wearables are back: Taya & Sandbar  09:18 Palmer Lucky's retro gaming startup ModRetro  13:39 Meta acquires AI agent social network Moltbot  18:54 Inside Google's $32B Wiz acquisition with Shardul Shah  28:41 Anthropic's lawsuit against the DoD  38:40 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 March 2026

For years, venture capitalists have been skeptical of beverage startups, citing thin margins and brutal distribution as reasons most brands never break out. But a new wave of “functional soda” companies has been challenging that assumption, including Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand that grew from a kitchen experiment into a $1.95 billion acquisition by PepsiCo.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by Poppi co-founder Allison Ellsworth to talk about building a beverage startup in a venture world dominated by SaaS and AI. From pitching on Shark Tank while nine months pregnant to scaling a digital-first brand during COVID, and now returning as a Shark herself, Ellsworth shares how social media, fast marketing bets, and customer feedback helped turn a niche drink into a category-defining company.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Ellsworth’s Shark Tank return, and how she evaluates founders on the other side of the pitch.  How Ellsworth turned a personal health issue into Poppi and built early traction at farmers' markets.  Why TikTok and community-driven marketing helped the brand rack up billions of views and loyal fans.  The risky decision to buy a last-minute Super Bowl ad, and how the team executed it in days.  What it’s like selling a startup to PepsiCo while trying to preserve the brand’s identity.  Why beverage startups almost inevitably need acquisition-level distribution to scale.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 11 March 2026

The Pentagon has officially designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the two failed to agree on how much control the military should have over its AI models, including its use in autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. As Anthropic’s $200 million contract fell apart, the DoD turned to OpenAI instead, which accepted and then watched ChatGPT uninstalls surge 295%. As the stakes keep rising, the question remains: how much unrestricted access should the military have to an AI model?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what startups should think about when chasing federal contracts, especially when nobody seems to know what to do with AI in Washington, and more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Paramount’s massive deal with Warner Bros, and the Equity crew’s ideas for what the new HBO Max-Paramount+ hybrid should be called  MyFitnessPal's acquisition of Cal AI, the calorie-tracking app built by teenagers  Who dropped $1 billion on Pinterest’s AI mission and how the company spent it on share buybacks. (Spoiler: Kirsten has thoughts.)  Anduril is raising again at a reported $60 billion valuation  Whether companies should brace themselves for the SaaSpocalypse, or if it’s just another chapter of the AI hype cycle   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 6 March 2026

Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the VC treadmill to succeed? Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later, PopSockets has proven that the bootstrapped, low-dilution path more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor's determination.      On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with founder and former CEO of PopSockets David Barnett to talk about how he scaled from a Boulder garage, stood up to Amazon at a $10–20 million cost, and eventually handed off the CEO role to someone who'd grown up inside the company.    Listen to the full episode to hear:  How a house fire and some insurance money became the unlikely seed funding for a global brand  What nearly sinking the company in manufacturing defects actually taught him about building one that lasts  How ignoring his investors' advice turned out to be the right call  What he looked for in a successor CEO (and why culture was non-negotiable)  What he'd do completely differently if he launched PopSockets today  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:15 From philosophy professor to phone grip inventor  05:17 How a house fire funded PopSockets  07:33 Manufacturing nightmares nearly killed the business  10:08 The local toy store that proved it could work  13:14 The $20M Amazon standoff  16:09 Growing too fast?  18:20 Beating counterfeits in China through brand building  19:11 Why David never wanted to be CEO  23:07 The worst advice received, and what to do instead  26:35 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 4 March 2026

The Pentagon is playing chicken with Anthropic over who gets to control how the military uses AI while communities across the country are blocking data center construction. As the AI debate has been flattened to “doomers versus boomers,” one state legislator is attempting to walk a middle road.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Alex Bores, New York Assembly member and congressional candidate. Bores sponsored New York's first-of-its-kind AI safety law the RAISE Act — and quickly became the target of a Silicon Valley super PAC with $125 million to spend on attack ads.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  The dueling super PACs now fighting over AI's future, and why Anthropic's $20 million bet on the pro-regulation side matters.  What the RAISE Act actually requires, why it's being called the blueprint for AI regulation nationwide.  Whether AI regulation ends up looking like finance and biotech or goes the way of social media — largely unregulated until the damage is done.  What's coming next from Bores’ office: bills on training data disclosure, content provenance, and a 43-point national AI framework.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 27 February 2026

Crypto is creeping back into the startup conversation, but at ETH Denver last week, the buzz was as much about Washington as it was about tokens. Policy shifts are rippling through the market as Tether and stablecoins face scrutiny, players like Stripe re-enter the chat, and startups either find traction or flame out. The hype cycle is over, or at least taking a break. So what comes next?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Jacquelyn Melinek, CEO of Token Relations and host of the Talking Tokens and Crypto in America podcasts, to make sense of how the market has changed and what in the world of crypto is built to last.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why ETHDenver fell flat despite a strong speaker lineup, and what it signals about crypto’s shifting hubs.  What White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt and SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce are actually pushing for with The GENIUS Act and Clarity Act.  What Stripe is quietly building with Bridge, Privy, and Tempo, and whether it's becoming the Visa of stablecoin settlement.  Tether's shrinking equity cushion and what a de-pegging event could mean for the broader crypto market.  YC’s surprising move to accept stablecoin investment as Bitcoin prices sit at half their peak.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 25 February 2026

TechCrunch's founder-focused podcast, Build Mode, is back. This season we’re breaking down what it really takes to build a world-class founding team starting with your cap table, equity structures, and startup compensation strategy.  We kick off with Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst and former founder, YC partner, and seed investor at Wayfinder Ventures. Yuri has worked with hundreds of pre-seed and seed-stage startups, and he shares practical advice on how early-stage founders should think about startup equity, cap table design, investor selection, and compensation structures from day one.  He breaks down:  The 3 types of investors (and which one to avoid)  Why your cap table is part of your team  The 20–25% seed dilution rule  How to split equity with a co-founder  How to talk to early employees about risk and compensation  No matter where you are in your startup journey, this episode will help you get the incentive structure right from the beginning.   Chapters:  00:00 - Why your first hires deserve more equity 00:31 - Meet Yuri Sagalov (YC → General Catalyst) 02:12 - Your cap table is part of your team 02:50 - The 3 types of investors (avoid this one) 05:02 - How to split equity with a co-founder 07:55 - How much equity to give early employees 09:37 - How to talk compensation and risk 12:31 - Red flags in formation docs and vesting 18:27 - Advisors for equity? Usually a mistake 20:05 - The 20–25% seed dilution rule 26:03 - The shift to 10-year stock options 34:11 - Don’t scale before product-market fit 39:23 - Final advice: Just start and choose your co-founder carefully  New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 21 February 2026

The creator economy is evolving fast, and ad revenue alone isn't cutting it anymore. YouTubers are launching product lines, acquiring startups, and building actual business empires. Even MrBeast's company bought fintech startup Step, and his chocolate business is outearning his media arm. This isn't just one creator's strategy. It's the new playbook.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan unpack how creators are diversifying beyond ads, what happens when influence becomes infrastructure, and whether this model can scale beyond the top 1%.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Date Drop raised “a few million” on the idea that one curated match per week can fix college dating burnout  Ex-Tesla VP Drew Baglino's $140M raise for solid-state transformers powering AI data centers  The handshake that didn't happen: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei's moment at India's AI summit  India's $200B AI infrastructure push and why its first AI IPO flopped  ByteDance's Seadance 2.0 and whether AI video tools democratize creativity or just create an endless flood of content  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 20 February 2026

Startup founders are being pushed to move faster than ever, using AI while facing tighter funding, rising infrastructure costs, and more pressure to show real traction early. Cloud credits, access to GPUs, and foundation models have made it easier to get started, but those early infrastructure choices can have unforeseen consequences once startups move beyond free credits and into real cloud bills.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Darren Mowry, Google Cloud’s vice president of global startups who is right at the center of those tradeoffs. Together, they discuss what Mowry’s seeing across the startup ecosystem, how Google Cloud is competing for AI startups, and what founders should be thinking about as they scale.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Google positions against AWS and Microsoft in the AI startup race.  TPUs vs GPUs: How much does hardware choice matter for early-stage companies?  Which AI verticals are seeing real growth, and what’s standing out in biotech, climate tech, developer tools, and world models.  What red flags will signal that a startup isn’t going to make it.   Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 18 February 2026

AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the week's biggest deals and departures, from billion-dollar bets on fusion and robotics to the tech exodus reshaping AI companies.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why humanoid robot startups are raising nearly $1 billion and partnering with Google DeepMind  Whether fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises can actually deliver on its 2030 timeline, and why investors keep betting millions  What the Epstein files reveal about Silicon Valley dealmaking, particularly during the EV boom  Why AI Super Bowl ads might not be landing outside Silicon Valley  Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:46 AI Super Bowl ads ⁠aren’t quite landing⁠ outside of Silicon Valley  04:31 Apptronik raises $935M for humanoid robotics 09:05 Will automakers partner with humanoid robotics startups? 13:05 Inertia Enterprises raises $450M for fusion energy 18:44 What the Epstein files reveal about ⁠Silicon Valley dealmaking⁠ 30:56 The exodus at xAI and OpenAI, and what it means for the AI race 37:22 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 13 February 2026

Enterprise AI is shifting fast from chatbots that answer questions to systems that actually do the work across an organization. But who will own the AI layer that powers all of it?   Glean, which started as an enterprise search product, has evolved into what it calls an “AI work assistant,” aiming to sit underneath other AI experiences, connecting to internal systems, managing permissions, and delivering intelligence wherever employees work. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Glean’s CEO and founder Arvind Jain at Web Summit Qatar to break down how enterprises are thinking about AI architecture, what's driving consolidation, and what's real versus hype in the agent space.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  The fight between bundled AI from tech titans like Microsoft, Google and platform layers like Glean and its competitors.  How AI adoption is reshaping leadership and organizational design.  Why permissions and governance are harder problems than most companies realize.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 11 February 2026

AI lab Flapping Airplanes just landed $180 million in seed funding from the likes of Google Ventures, Sequoia, and Index to do something most labs have quietly given up on: making models learn like humans instead of vacuuming up the internet. The founding team, made up of brothers Ben and Asher Spector and co-founder Aidan Smith, is betting that radically more data-efficient training could open the door to entirely new AI capabilities.  Today on Equity, TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandon sits down with all three founders to discuss why investors wrote such a large check for a lab with no product, what becomes possible with more efficient AI, and why they're prioritizing creativity over credentials.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why the Flapping Airplanes team is focused on research first, commercialization later  What the "neolabs" generation means for AI development  How they plan to make AI models 1,000x more data efficient. A hint? The team thinks the brain is "the floor, not the ceiling" for AI capabilities  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 10 February 2026

Elon Musk has merged SpaceX and xAI, creating what might be the blueprint for a new Silicon Valley power structure. With his $800 billion net worth already rivaling historic conglomerate GE's peak market cap, and Musk being vocal about his view that "tech victory is decided by velocity of innovation," the question isn't whether a personal conglomerate can be built, but rather how far Musk himself is going to take it.    Today on Equity, we're unpacking this new era of the "everything" business, whether we'll see others like Sam Altman follow suit, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:   Waymo's new $16B funding and why Alphabet staying as majority owner matters for an eventual IPO  Why everyone from Intel to Tesla is trying to break Nvidia's AI chip dominance  ElevenLabs’ $11B valuation, and why some investors are doubling — and quadrupling — down as it moves beyond voice AI  Positron's $230M bet on power-efficient chips as the next frontier  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 6 February 2026

Andreessen Horowitz just raised a whopping new $15 billion in funding. And a $1.7 billion chunk of that is going to its infrastructure team, the one responsible for some of its biggest, most prominent AI investments including Black Forrest Labs, Cursor, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Ideogram, Fal and dozens of others.   A16z general partner with the infra team Jennifer Li (who oversees such investments as ElevenLabs – just valued at $11 billion); Ideagram and Fal, has a clear thesis on where the team is looking to spend it’s latest chunk of cash.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Venture and Startups editor Julie Bort talked with Li about where a16z sees this AI super cycle going next, including the talent crunch hitting AI-native startups, why search infrastructure matters more than people think, and what kinds of companies are actually getting funded right now.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Where Li thinks the gaps still are when it comes to startups building an AI stack  What makes the most successful AI portfolio companies different  How tools like voice AI are rising in importance (yet still a bit uncomfortable to witness)  The AI startups she's still searching for and is ready to fund  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:01 Andreessen Horowitz's $1.7B infrastructure fund 05:00 Crossing the uncanny valley in AI-generated content 07:14 Agents finally becoming real in 2026 09:30 Building your first productivity agent 11:56 Why email agents aren't quite there yet 15:00 Which jobs will agents replace first? 18:05 The most unhinged opinion: Creativity belongs to humans 20:21 The limits of LLMs and the rise of world models 22:13 AI-designed chips are coming 24:00 The truth behind those viral ARR numbers 26:10 Hiring at AI speed: The talent shortage problem 28:47 The pricing mistake that became a big deal 29:21 The future of search for AI agents 30:45 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 4 February 2026

Self-driving truck startup Waabi's billion-dollar fundraise isn't just about trucks.     The deal, for $750 million up front plus another $250 million from Uber tied to deployment milestones, marks a major expansion into robotaxis for the company founded by former Uber AI chief Raquel Urtasun. It also feels like another chip from Uber on the autonomous vehicle roulette table. With more than 20 AV partners worldwide, the question isn't just whether Waabi can deliver on its plans to deploy over 25,000 robotaxis, but whether Uber's bet-on-everything strategy actually works.    Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Sean O'Kane and Anthony Ha discussed Uber's AV partnership strategy, why Waabi's "simulation-first" approach might be different, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Anduril's drone race recruitment stunt and whether it's the future of hiring or just good PR  Phia’s $35M raise for an AI shopping assistant as brick-and-mortar stores close their doors  Northwood Space's $100M Series B and the booming space infrastructure market  Who’s really winning in TikTok's messy US ownership deal, and the competitors trying to capitalize  The IPO window cracking open, and how SpaceX plans to go through it  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  02:13 Palmer Luckey's bold recruiting strategy  04:04 Phia raises $35M for sustainable shopping  06:27 Browser extensions & the privacy problem  09:59 Northwood Space's $100M Series B & Space Force contract  12:17 The rise of dual-use space companies  14:01 Waabi's $1B valuation & beyond trucking  16:36 Uber's strategy: Betting on every AV partner  19:12 TikTok's US deal & immediate outage  21:46 TikTok competitors gain ground  24:03 IPO window opening: Ethos, Serve, and SpaceX  27:57 Will Elon actually take SpaceX public this time?  29:11 Outro  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 30 January 2026

SpaceX is reportedly lining up four major Wall Street banks for a 2026 IPO that could provide the reset the market needs.  The company just completed a tender offer at an $800 billion valuation, and secondary market demand is through the roof. If SpaceX goes public anywhere near its rumored $1.5 trillion valuation, it could trigger an IPO cascade for other late-stage unicorns like OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks.  Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan spoke with Greg Martin, Managing Director at Rainmaker Securities, to discuss why this IPO feels different, how tech employees are cashing out through secondary markets before companies go public, and what investors are actually looking for in pre-IPO shares.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Which other late-stage unicorns are seeing the most secondary trading action right now.  Why SpaceX is ready to go public, despite previously saying it “wouldn't IPO until rockets were flying to Mars regularly” (and why Martin doesn’t think SpaceX will continue on its debut path if the market tanks)  The "Elon halo effect" and how much of SpaceX's valuation is based on Musk himself  What happens when SpaceX employees want to sell shares before the IPO  Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:39 The Booming Secondary Market for Pre-IPO Shares 04:06 SpaceX as an IPO Bellwether 06:31 Why Elon Musk Changed His Mind on Going Public 10:04 The Race to a Trillion-Dollar Valuation 12:27 The Elon Halo Effect on Valuations 15:17 What Signals an Upcoming IPO? 17:50 How Secondaries Drive Better Price Discovery 20:47 How SpaceX Secondaries Actually Work 24:03 What Investors Want from Pre-IPO Companies 25:11 The Have and Have-Not World of Secondaries 26:42 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 28 January 2026

The World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos felt different this year, and not just because Meta and Salesforce took over storefronts on the main promenade. AI dominated the conversation in a way that overshadowed traditional topics like climate change and global poverty, and the CEOs weren't holding back. There was public criticism of trade policy, warnings about AI bubbles popping, and a lot of talk about what comes next for the industry.    Meanwhile, back in Silicon Valley, AI startup Humans& raised a $480 million seed round with no product on the market, just a vision for "social intelligence" AI and a team of ex-Anthropic, Google, and xAI employees.    Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane discuss why raising hundreds of millions before building a product is apparently the new norm, which conversations took over Davos this week, and more.    Listen to the full episode to hear more from the week, including:  Whether Meta's 10% layoffs at Reality Labs means the end for the metaverse, and who’s defending Meta's VR investments  Serve Robotics' acquisition of Diligent, a startup bringing delivery bots into hospitals  OpenAI’s rumored earbuds and what we expect to see from the AI company’s first hardware product.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 23 January 2026

Today on Equity, we're teaming up with our newest podcast, Build Mode. In this interview, Build Mode host Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Ross Fubini of XYZ Ventures and Leslie Feinzaig of Graham & Walker Ventures to pull back the curtain on how VCs build their own go-to-market strategies. They dig into what it’s really like raising a first fund, why founder-market fit applies to investors too, and how the best investor relationships start years before you ever need the money. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 21 January 2026

AI companies are clustering around healthcare and fast.  In just the past week, OpenAI bought health startup Torch, Anthropic launched Claude for Health, and Sam Altman-backed MergeLabs closed a $250 million seed round at an $850 million valuation. The money and products are pouring into health and voice AI, but so are concerns about hallucination risks, inaccurate medical information, and massive security vulnerabilities in systems handling sensitive patient data.  Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with health care, what other products can expect an AI-makeover, and more.  Listen to the full episode to hear:   How Anthropic's co-work tool could threaten Salesforce and other enterprise software giants  Bandcamp’s move against AI, banning AI-generated music from its platform  Why fusion energy is heating up, with startups like Type One Energy suddenly raising hundreds of millions  The latest on Luminar's bankruptcy and a potential bidding war overits LIDAR assets  Chapters:  00:00 - Introduction   00:29 - Waymo testing in New York City?  02:13 - Bandcamp bans AI-generated music   04:57 - Luminar's bankruptcy and LIDAR fire sale   10:28 - Type One Energy's fusion funding frenzy   16:10 - AI's healthcare land grab   23:28 - Voice AI deals heat up   25:26 - Anthropic's co-work tool threatens enterprise software  Subscribe to Equity on ⁠YouTube⁠,⁠ 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

Transcribed - Published: 16 January 2026

AI agents are supposed to make work easier. Instead, they're creating a whole new category of security nightmares.    As companies deploy AI-powered chatbots, agents, and copilots across their operations, they're facing a new risk: how do you let employees and AI agents use powerful AI tools without accidentally leaking sensitive data, violating compliance rules, or opening the door to prompt-based injections? Witness AI just raised $58 million to find a solution, building what they call "the confidence layer for enterprise AI."    Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan was joined by Barmak Meftah, co-founder and partner at Ballistic Ventures, and Rick Caccia, CEO of Witness AI, to discuss what enterprises are actually worried about, why AI security become an $800 billion to $1.2 trillion market by 2031, and what happens when AI agents start talking to other AI agents without human oversight.    Listen to the full episode to hear:   How enterprises accidentally leak sensitive data through "shadow AI" usage.  What CISOs are actually worried about right now, how the problem has evolved rapidly over 18 months, and what it will look like over the next year.  Why traditional cybersecurity approaches don't work for AI agents.  Real examples of AI agents going rogue, including one that threatened to blackmail an employee.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 14 January 2026

After years of chatbots and image generators, AI is finally leaving the screen. At CES 2026, that shift became impossible to ignore.    The annual tech showcase in Las Vegas was dominated by "physical AI" and robotics, from Boston Dynamic's newly redesigned Atlas humanoid robot to AI-powered ice makers (yes, really). The companies in attendance clearly want consumers to know: AI isn't just capable of answering questions anymore. It's ready to movecar parts in factories, catchcatching drones with net guns, and dance in automaker booths.    Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane break down everything we saw at CES 2026 and more deals from the week that caught our eye.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:   Discord’s rumored IPO, years after shutting down a Microsoft acquisition  xAI's massive $20 billion raise and the dark side of Grok's content moderation failures  How Mobileye is getting into the humanoid robotics game with its acquisition of Mentee Robotics  OpenAI's potential shift toward audio-first, screenless AI experiences  Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:38 - Discord's surprise IPO filing 03:24 - xAI's $20B raise amid CSAM controversy 11:06 - Mobileye's pivot to humanoid robotics 14:41 - Physical AI takes over CES 18:31 - Why humanoid robots still don't make sense 24:26 - OpenAI's war on screens and ambient computing 29:56 - Wrap-up Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 9 January 2026

Vanessa Larco, partner at Premise and former partner at NEA, thinks 2026 will finally be the year of consumer AI.  Larco, who's been investing in consumer and prosumer for years, thinks we're about to see a shift in how consumers spend time online, with AI powering “concierge-like” services. The question is, will legacy consumer products like WebMD and TripAdvisor continue to exist as standalone apps, or will they just get absorbed into ChatGPT or Meta AI? And where can startups carve out an AI-powered niche for themselves?  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Larco to talk about why consumer is back, what OpenAI won't kill, and where the real opportunities are hiding.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Larco thinks OpenAI won't build marketplace businesses that require managing real humans.  Larco’s take on "disposable software" and why AI apps “should be treated like Word docs.”  How Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses turned Larco into a believer in voice interfaces (and why she thinks screens are optional for most tasks).  More predictions for 2026, including another huge year for M&A.  What new business models stablecoins could unlock.   00:00 - Introduction   00:53 - Why founders are excited about consumer again   04:40 - The moat against OpenAI: Managing real humans   09:22 - Apps as disposable as Word docs   12:48 - Social media in the AI era  18:48 - Meta Ray-Bans and why wearables are actually good   23:35 - Stablecoins and consumer fintech opportunities   26:54 - M&A predictions for 2026  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 7 January 2026

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Transcribed - Published: 2 January 2026

Fizz is betting that Gen Z is tired of performing their lives on Instagram and TikTok.   What started as a pandemic-era group chat frustration has turned into the dominant social platform on college campuses across the US, focused on the 99% of life that doesn't make it into a highlight reel. Capturing the attention of a demographic typically glued to Instagram and TikTok, the app's hybrid anonymous model and hyperlocal focus has made it what Solomon calls "the biggest college social app since Facebook.”   Today we're bringing you a conversation that Dominic Madori Davis had with Fizz’s co-founder and CEO Teddy Solomon from this year's Disrupt, digging into why he thinks social media stopped being social.   Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Solomon thinks Instagram and TikTok became pure entertainment platforms, and why that created an opening  How Fizz uses 7,000 volunteer student moderators plus AI to keep the platform safe  The company's expansion strategy beyond college and what "Global Fizz" actually means  Solomon’s case for why New York is a better place to build a consumer company than San Francisco  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.     Chapters:   00:00 - Introduction   01:34 - What broke in social media   04:03 - Building for the 99% of life   07:29 - Content moderation at scale   11:16 - The risks of anonymous social   13:22 - Pandemic origins and IRL community   16:49 - Why the company moved to New York   19:45 - Scaling with "arguably the most retentive social product in history"   21:32 - Almost getting arrested at Pepperdine…for donuts  26:09 - The future of social media  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 31 December 2025

TechCrunch's Equity crew is bringing 2025 to a close and getting ahead on the year to come with our annual predictions episode! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan were joined by Build Mode host Isabelle Johansson to dissect the year's biggest tech developments, from mega AI funding rounds that defied expectations to the rise of "physical AI," and make their calls for 2026.  The group tackles everything from why AI agents didn't live up to the hype in 2025 (but probably will in 2026), to how Hollywood will push back against AI-generated content, to why VCs are facing a serious liquidity crisis.   Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why world models are the next big thing in AI and how they're different from large language models  The death of "stealth mode" for AI startups and the rise of alternative funding sources  Predictions on regulatory chaos around AI policy and what Trump's recent executive order means for startups  Hot takes on IPOs: Will OpenAI and Anthropic actually go public in 2026?  Rapid-fire predictions including Johnny Ive and Sam Altman's inevitable public breakup, the return of dumb phones, and why everyone will be calling themselves "AI native"  What's coming in Build Mode season 2: A deep dive into team building, hiring, and finding co-founders  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:   00:00 - Introduction   01:43 - Rating our 2025 predictions   04:19 - Funding in the bubble era   06:35 - World models and the future of AI   09:05 - The year of AI agents (for real this time)   11:58 - Physical AI everywhere   15:19 - AI meets Hollywood   16:25 - Regulatory chaos and federal preemption   18:34 - The liquidity crisis and LP direct investing   22:19 - IPO predictions for 2026   23:57 - Startup trends for 2026  27:06 - Buzzwords we're sick of hearing   28:15 - Rapid fire predictions   32:50 - What's next for Build Mode  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 26 December 2025

There's plenty of hype around AI and robots in healthcare, but the problem that's actually costing hospitals money right now is operating room coordination. Two to four hours of OR time is lost every single day, not because of the surgeries themselves, but because of everything in between from manual scheduling and coordination chaos to guesswork about room turnover.      Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation that TechCrunch AI Editor Russell Brandom had with Conor McGinn, co-founder and CEO of Akara, the startup that recently landed a spot on Time's Best Inventions of 2025 and is building what’s essentially air traffic control for hospitals using thermal sensors and AI.       Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Akara pivoted from cleaning robots to ambient sensing, and how thermal sensors document surgeries without privacy concerns  How NHS vetting became McGinn's backdoor into US hospitals  The real bottleneck holding back medical robotics. (Spoiler: it's not the robots, it's the infrastructure)  Why 40% of the nursing workforce could leave in the next five years, and what that means for automation  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:    00:00 - Introduction   00:54 - Air traffic control for ORs   02:35 - Where hospitals lose hours daily   03:54 - Selling into risk-averse hospitals   06:21 - Thermal sensors and edge AI  09:11 - NHS as proof of concept   13:16 - The AI under the hood   18:12 - Privacy benefits of thermal   21:22 - Infrastructure before robots  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 24 December 2025

The hardware world had a brutal week, with iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes all filing for bankruptcy.  Each company faces its own mix of tariff pressures, supply chain issues, and shifting markets, but together they tell a larger story about the challenges of building physical products in an era of global trade tensions and cheap overseas competition. From the Roomba maker that almost got acquired by Amazon to the e-bike company that couldn't escape its Chinese supply chain, this week's bankruptcies are a warning sign for hardware startups everywhere.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O'Kane discuss what went wrong for three once-promising hardware companies, plus Amazon's massive OpenAI bet and Trump's new approach to AI regulation.  Listen to the full episode to hear more news from the week, including:  How "slop" became Merriam-Webster's word of the year — and why it's become bigger than just AI-generated content  Why Databricks raised $10 billion at a $134 billion valuation (in a Series L!) instead of just going public already  The Coursera-Udemy merger and whether online course platforms can survive the AI era  Chapters:  00:00 - Introduction  00:24 - AI slop is Merriam-Webster's word of the year  06:07 - Amazon's $10 billion OpenAI investment  10:43 - Databricks raises $10 billion in a Series L  14:14 - Coursera acquires Udemy  19:17 - Hardware bankruptcies: iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes  26:21 - Trump's AI executive order targets state regulation  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, 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

Transcribed - Published: 19 December 2025