Episoder
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It’s no secret that Stripe has doubled down on its crypto offerings, enabling crypto purchases in the EU back in July and announcing a Pay with Crypto feature earlier this month. This week, the fintech giant made its dedication to crypto even clearer with its largest deal to date: its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for an eye-popping $1.1 billion. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha and Devin Coldewey kicked off the show with their thoughts on the deal – mainly how surprising it is to see anyone spending over $1 billion on crypto in 2024.
But of course, there was so much more startup and venture news for the crew to get into this week. Listen to the full episode for more about:
Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua’s latest startupA 3D metal printing startup’s $14 million round from Boeing’s AE Ventures and NvidiaAndreessen Horowitz’s plans to provide its portfolio companies with Nvidia GPUsAnd who we’re expecting to see at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2024.Equity will be live at Disrupt on Tuesday, so we'll see you there!
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.
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“It's a bit too early to say that the race is over,” said Philippe Botteri when asked about European startups’ AI progress. “I think we're just at the very early innings of this race.”
Botteri is a partner at early-stage investment firm Accel with over 13 years under his belt at the firm, leading investments in DocuSign, UiPath and more recently Snyk and Chainalysis. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, host Rebecca Bellan caught up Botteri to dive deep into Accel’s Euroscape 2024 Report. Tapping into Botteri’s experience in Cloud, SaaS security, and enterprise sectors, the pair discuss AI's rising influence, its impact on software and cloud investments, and how European startups can compete with the US.
Listen to the full episode for more about:
How AI is eating the software market, with AI and cloud funding predicted to hit $79.2 billion by the end of 2024.The challenges faced by traditional software companies as funding growth slows outside of AI.Why Europe’s strong talent pool gives it an edge in the AI race, even as startups on the continent struggle to compete with the ungodly amounts of money U.S. tech giants have.Increased M&A activity globally amid a slow IPO market.Why 2025 will be the year of the “agentic revolution” with AI significantly impacting software development and productivity.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.
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Mangler du episoder?
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Today on Equity, Devin, Margaux and Anthony Ha are rounding up the week's startup and venture news, kicking things off with a look at the $400 million raised by Lightmatter, and the importance of fast networking within the fast growing datacenter industry today — not just in years to come — makes the impressive round a little more understandable.
Our Deals of the Week continue with Paladin's drone play for first responders and police, and Abel aiming to reduce the substantial paperwork backlog that officers accrue in their everyday duties. Abel Founder Daniel Francis brings a chaotic energy (having landed a Twitter job from Musk after pretending to have been laid off) that could shake things up.
Diving deeper, Anthony breaks down the complex back-and-forth that is the WordPress/WP Engine dispute - and we're left wondering why the obligations of and to the "open source community" are not entirely clear. What does it mean for an open source ecosystem when one person (in this case WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg) still seems to exercise tremendous influence? And could we say the same of Meta's Llama or other "open" AI solutions?
Last, the "bummer" results from PitchBook showing that although founders are founding and investors are investing, there isn't a huge amount of money being made. Turns out they weren't just in it to change the world after all. What could this lack of liquidity be attributed to? Is it the macroeconomic climate, the sectors being invested in, the VC's strategies changing... or something else? At least defense and AI are doing OK, and Europe seems to be chugging along, so maybe it's specific to America? Check back in a month.
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.
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At Tesla’s robotaxi reveal event last week, several Optimus humanoid robots mingled with guests, pouring drinks and cracking jokes. Impressive technology, but the vocals and some of the gesticulations appear to have been remotely controlled by humans, something Tesla did not disclose.
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan chatted with TechCrunch’s hardware editor Brian Heater about Tesla’s Optimus bots, the market opportunity for humanoid robots, and other companies that are leading the charge in this industry.
We'll dive into:
A CBInsights report which found that funding in 2024 already reached new highs for humanoid robots and PitchBook data that suggests funding into humanoid robot companies has reached close to $1 billion as of October. Where we're most likely to see humanoid robot applications in the coming years. Automakers like BMW plan to deploy startup Figure’s robots at their plants, and Amazon, which has been a huge proponent of robotics for over a decade now, has tested Agility’s digit robot at its warehouses. When we could see humanoid robots enter homes. Some companies plan to have their robots help older folks with household tasks like Kind Humanoid.Equity will be back on Friday with our weekly news roundup, so we'll talk to you then!
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.
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Did OpenAI really ask its investors to avoid backing rivals like Anthropic and xAI? That’s what hosts Devin Coldewey, Margaux MacColl and special guest Anthony Ha wanted to know on today’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. The team kicked off the show with a look at OpenAI's $6.6 billion round, which is being called the ‘largest VC round of all time’. Devin broke down what the funding could mean for the company’s path to profitability, and debunked some of the rumors floating around post-announcement - especially given how unusual those investor restrictions would be in later-stage funding.
OpenAI is not all that was on the Equity crew’s minds this week. Margaux wanted to discuss Dave Clark's new venture, Auger, which just raised $100 million to make supply chains more efficient with AI. Taking Clark’s Amazon and Flexport history into consideration, Augur could be on the path to success amid current global supply chain issues and the recent longshoreman strikes. To round out our deals of the week, Anthony set his sights on Impulse Space, which recently secured $150 million to develop and launch its orbital transfer vehicles.
What about the AI that people don’t want? Margaux took us deeper into her coverage of Shield AI, AI weapons and ethics. On the subject of tech getting out of hand, Devin and Anthony closed out the show with an update on the ongoing antitrust case against Google, and what a potential breakup could mean for the tech giant and startups looking to disrupt search.
Hit play to join the conversation, and Equity will be back next week!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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.
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Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Zander Brumbaugh, the 22-year-old founder of Gamebeast, a startup that offers Roblox developers tools like A/B testing and LiveOps to modify games without needing to release a new version or interrupt a user’s ongoing game.
Gamebeast recently raised a $3.7 million pre-seed round, led by J2 Ventures with participation from a16z’s Speedrun accelerator, which Brumbaugh graduated from in March. Brumbaugh said everything from his experience consulting for entertainment studios like Netflix, and writing a best-selling book on Roblox development, to chats with investors tell him that the future of video gaming is in user-generated content, or UGC.
The two discussed the rise in popularity of UGC games, a sector that investors are increasingly looking towards as drivers of growth in the video game industry. Brumbaugh didn’t only get investment for his startup because investors see the value in enabling UGC game development. J2 Ventures’ thesis focuses on dual-use technology, and Gamebeast was able to demonstrate how its tech has applications both in commercial and defense. And indeed, we’re seeing a trend of companies going for that sweet military money to stay afloat.
There are more insights about the future of the video game market and investor insights aplenty, so have a listen, and enjoy!
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.
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Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, and Margaux MacColl are unpacking another busy week in the tech world, kicking things off with Governor Newsom’s veto of SB 1047, the controversial AI bill aimed at stopping real-world disasters caused by AI systems before they happen. This may not be the last we'll see of the bill, however, as its author has plans to return with a revamped SB 1047 next year.
What else went down this week, you ask? Kirsten had us looking to the skies with Joby Aviation’s $500 million investment from Toyota. While Toyota seems to believe that the electric air taxi dream is finally taking off, the Equity crew is skeptical. Margaux argued that aeronautics startup Salient Motion is taking off, despite attempts from Palmer Luckey to shut it down.
On the AI front, Devin wanted to discuss Poolside's massive round, the latest drama surrounding Y Combinator-backed PearAI and why it's making waves in the open source community. Speaking of community, Paris-based Motier Ventures . had the team feeling optimistic about the French tech scene with its announcement of its new startup hub, La Maison.
Hit play to join the conversation, and Equity will be back next week!
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.
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HR software is big, big business. And no one understands that better than Parker Conrad the CEO and co-founder of Rippling, a global HR company that offers global payroll, onboarding, time tracking, benefits management and more. This week, Equity is bringing you an episode of our sister show, Found. The Found crew talk with Conrad about what goes into building a leading HR tech company—from what it’s like building out features companies love, to dealing with fierce competition in this ever growing landscape. Conrad also gets into the power imbalance that can arise between VCs and founders and the drama at his previous company that inspired him to build Rippling.
Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcast: Equity . Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.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.
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Equity is closing out the week as always with a round up of the week's top startup and venture news. Kirsten, Devin and return guest host Margaux McColl had no shortage of themes to cover: VC karaoke, the SpaceX economy, no moats for AI, OpenAI versus open source.
To kick things off, we weighed in on Caroline Ellison's sentencing and deals of the week from Reflect Orbital and Pyka. Of course, we had to dive deep into Y Combinator's Summer 2024 Demo Day cohort from there - including a highlight of a few non-AI and AI startups that got our attention. And on the non-AI point, we noticed another startup getting VC attention: Synex and its portable MRIs to test glucose.
Clearly, we had much to discuss on today's episode, so press play and join the conversation!
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.
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Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Lisa Coca from Toyota Ventures during Climate Week NYC to discuss a key part of Toyota Ventures' $800 million portfolio - their Climate Fund.
The fund's $300 million is laser-focused on climate innovation, but Coca says it casts a wide net beyond just mobility, backing startups from seed to Series A. So far, they’ve invested in companies like AM Batteries, which is cutting battery manufacturing costs by 40%, and Ecoletro, pioneers in green hydrogen production using hydropower.
Together, Bellan and Coca are shedding light on the significant challenges in hydrogen, direct air capture, and methane reduction, and emphasizing that startups need to achieve cost parity with fossil fuels to drive real change.
As always, Equity will be back with a news roundup on Friday. If you like what you hear, don't forget to leave us a review!
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.
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This week on Equity, the podcast crew discusses several weird things and at least one cool thing.
Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, and Rebecca Bellan first talked about the least weird thing of the week, how nice it is that Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst has a band that people really like.
Then we get weird. First the good weird: a helmet that squeezes your head, but for a really good reason. It prevents hair loss from chemotherapy. Devin covered Luminate’s latest fundraise and news, and everyone was pleased that money was going to a startup that may really be helping people feel better about themselves during a difficult time. The company is hoping to improve at-home care as well.
Next, Kirsten explained the weird phenomenon of Flink, the “quick commerce” startup that just recently was rumored to be on the block for about $106 million, instead raising $115 million. Quite a turnaround! But as the team discusses, it may be that investors see the possibility that the “tumultuous time” for this sector is ending and Flink may have a good grip on the German market. Still…
Then the weirdness begins in earnest. Rebecca is at the “Principled Business Summit,” aimed at “reclaiming capitalism” from, apparently, itself. She is getting mixed messages from the crowd and the content, which seems to combine enthusiasm for doing the right thing with some fringe tendencies to do… other things.
And weirdest of all, autonomous trucking startup TuSimple’s pivot to… AI-generated animation and video games. What?! Though there is some overlap between simulation and animation/gaming, it’s a wild and unexpected change for the company, and a lot of shareholders are not going for it. Apparently the new division is working on another adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem,” so that’s good… but what about the $450 million they were going to spend on trucks? That conflict is playing out before our eyes.
Press play, and catch up!
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.
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Today on Equity, Kirsten Korosec is joined by J.P. Morgan’s Head of Startup Banking, Ashraf Hebela. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Hebela spent 13 years at Silicon Valley Bank, a bulk of those years dedicated to serving as SVB's head of banking. With over a decade in the startup world, he’s got some serious insights to share.
Following the recent release of J.P. Morgan’s Startup Insights report, Kirsten wanted to dive into what it really takes to build a unicorn in 2024, and what parts of the startup ecosystem are seeing success beyond AI and Silicon Valley.
The pair discussed the changing landscape, from new startup hubs popping up in Seattle, Austin, and Miami to the resilience and passion required to thrive. Hebela also talked about the decreasing rate of unicorn creation since 2021 and what founders need to keep in mind today - including how ‘Founder Mode’ may do more harm than good. Hit play and join the conversation!
Equity will be back with our weekly news roundup on Friday, 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. 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.
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What could be more frightening than Friday the 13th? How about a realization that AI is in its awkward tween stage? At least, it was for the TC Equity pod crew, which this week included hosts Devin Coldewey and Kirsten Korosec along with TC reporters Tim de Chant and Dominic Madori Davis.
AI is often a topic over here at Equity Pod; and this week was no different. It seems to be everywhere — and nowhere — all at once. Take Apple, for instance. As Coldewey noted on the show Apple has punted on AI. The tech giant is touting its AI capabilities, but for now, it’s all promise for the future and not quite a fully mature product. (get the tween reference yet?)
As Kirsten and Devin discussed, it’s not all bad in AI land. Take the startup Someone Somewhere, a Mexico City-based startup that applies handcrafts on clothing and accessories and works with rural artisans in seven of Mexico’s poorest states to create “quality, on-trend products.” The startup used AI — specifically, Stable Diffusion’s text to images model — to show companies how some of their most iconic items might look if they were made with artisans from different regions. Let’s just say, the company got a lot of attention for the effort.
See AI can be used for good?
There were plenty of other non-AI deals and discussions to be had on Equity, including an eye-popping pivot from the venture-based autonomous vehicle delivery startup Nuro as well as Oura’s recent acquisition of metabolic health startup Veri.
For the second half of the show, De Chant joined to provide his insight and expertise on an interesting trend around climate tech startups — hint it’s about hardware. Davis helped close out Equity with an important update on Fearless Fund and discussion of what the trickle down effect might be following a legal settlement and the shutdown of its contested Strivers Grant Program.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, 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.
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Today on Equity, Former SoftBank Group International President Alok Sama joins Rebecca Bellan ahead of the launch of his new book THE MONEY TRAP: Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble. Here's what the pair got into:
What Apple's AI announcements could mean for startup innovation and companies like ARM and NvidiaConcerns about the circularity of investments and unusual follow-on rounds led by VCs.IPO alternatives in a slow public marketHigh valuations, the risk of over-investment and how to know when a bubble is going to pop.Equity will be back on Friday, so stay tuned!
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.
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Don’t have an hour and forty minutes to devote to watching the replay of Apple’s 'Glowtime' event? As expected, the show was packed with AI announcements, from new chips to creative features. TechCrunch Minute's Amanda Silberling is taking over to catch you up in just a few minutes. Equity will be back with a deeper dive on how startups can compete with Apple's latest move, so stay tuned!
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.
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The Equity podcast crew is wrapping up another eventful week, with real estate, AI agents, gambling, and secondary markets — which are, of course, a form of legalized gambling.
Mary Ann Azevedo, Becca Szkutak, and Devin Coldewey started off this Friday's episode with the acknowledgment that the X/Twitter ban situation in Brazil is possibly too complicated an issue to even have an opinion on. Let us cook on that for a bit.
In the deals of the week, Devin first talked about You.com's $50 million play to take on more difficult AI tasks, things that can't be solved with a quick Google search. The company is hoping to be the go-to for complex stuff that mixes live search, coding, and natural language understanding — and unlike a lot of its competition, some of its customers actually pay for themselves!
Becca, as someone who hazards a buck on a game now and then, is intrigued by DubClub, a startup that claims to systematize and legitimize professional betting handicappers. These are folks who claim to be able to beat the odds, but tend to offer their services by more informal methods. Can DubClub make a clean business out of this popular, but legally fraught, line of work?
A 9-figure deal is always worth chatting about, and Mary Ann brings up Paylocity's acquisition of Airbase for $325 million — though, as she points out, the real value of the deal is probably considerably higher. It's a lot of money, yes, but compared with earlier valuations... no? Somehow we don't think founder Thejo Kote is shedding too many tears over it.
Anyone who's bought a house or tried knows the sting of the realtor's fee. How many percent? Well, due to a recent court ruling overturning an established business practice in real estate, percentage fees may be on their way out — if startup Landian has its way. They want to make flat fees and pay-on-close the standard. Redfin is not amused! But they aren't mad either, or so they'd like us to think.
Investing in AI is so popular people are investing in the investors investing in AI — on the secondary market, where positions on Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI are now commanding a staggering 30% premium. That gives the actual equity holders a lot of leeway, and potentially gives smaller investors a chance to ride the hype train, but it also gives the whole thing the feel of, as Devin put it, "a beanie baby economy." That reference is just for the millennials as a "thank you" for listening.
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.
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Today on Equity, we're throwing it back to when Mary Ann interviewed Roger Lee, an entrepreneur who’s spent the better part of a decade building tools for employees and employers alike. Lee is an angel investor as well the creator of Layoffs.FYI and co-founder of Comprehensive and Human Interest.
Roger joined us on the show last year in the wake of 2022’s tech layoffs, but this week we’re focusing on the business of shutting down and why investors are lining up to back startups in the space, including Roger.
We also talked about:
Just how many more companies shut down in 2023 compared to 2022 (spoiler alert, it was a lot!)How many more layoffs we saw last year compared to years priorThe types of companies winding down and laying offHow his work is tied to all of it and the role of AIPress play and join the conversation! Equity will be back on Friday, but don't forget to keep up with us in the meantime on X and Threads @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
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.
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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.
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When US District Court Judge Amit Mehta found that Google had acted illegally to maintain its monopoly in online search, it was seen as a major defeat for Google. The decision could alter the way the tech giant does business, shake up opportunities for search startups, and even change the structure of the internet. While Google plans to appeal either way, there's another antitrust case coming up the pipeline: the DOJ and eight states are accusing Google of creating an advertising technology monopoly that squashes competition, forces publishers and advertisers to use Google's ad tech products.
On today's episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan is sitting down with lawyer, computer scientist, and head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute, Neil Chilson. Join the conversation as we take a closer look at competition, a potential Google breakup, how to unwind a 16-year-old merger, and why these cases may actually be too early in the age of AI.
If you want to dive deeper into the early wave of major legal cases regarding tech giants, their in-market heft and behavior, Rebecca Bellan joined Alex Wilhelm back in November to talk through it all. You can catch that episode here.
Equity will be back on Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned!
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.
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In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast Mary Ann Azevedo, Devin Coldewey, and Equity's newest voice Margaux MacColl are here to discuss three major deals of the week. First up is the $80 million round for Story, which is trying to apply that ol' web3 magic to AI and talent management. Next, Mary Ann attempts to untangle the knotty, weird term sheet for Bolt: $450 million. But is that real money or "marketing credits"? And the Margaux explained Balaji Srinivasan's private island "technocapitalist college town" where "those with a fondness for the current world order need not apply."
Then the crew got into our two main themes. Devin talked about two AI companies that aren't just doing enterprise AI. Reliant AI is focused on researchers (especially in pharma) who need to analyze thousands of papers at once. And BeyondMath is working with Formula 1 companies to create a "digital wind tunnel" that does high-accuracy physics-based computational fluid dynamics simulations in near real time. When was the last time ChatGPT made a race car faster? Then Margaux wrapped us up with the increasing activity level in defense tech acquisitions.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, 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.
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