Equity

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 regardin

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

What is the right way to regulate AI? There appears to be as many different answers to that as there are regulators. On today's episode of Equity, we're bringing you a live interview from TechCrunch's recent Strictly VC event. Equity co-host Becca Szkutak sat down with Helen Toner, the director of strategy and foundational research grants from the Center of Security and Emerging Technology and a former board member of OpenAI. The pair discussed companies' ability to self-regulate, what impact regulation could have on startup innovation and so much more. 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

This week on Equity Kirsten Korosec and Mary Ann Azevedo were joined by one of TechCrunch’s resident AI experts, Devin Coldewey. They broke down their deals of the week: WeRide, a Chinese autonomous vehicle startup, seeking an initial public offering in the United States at a $5 billion valuation, EliseAI, the company offering AI solutions to landlords, raised $75 million and became a unicorn, and Grok-2 is now available on X but it will cost you.Then the team got into a couple recent startup shutdowns: Tally and Score. Tally was a nine-year-old fintech that helped consumers manage and pay off their credit card debt. Score was a dating app for people with good to excellent credit that was only around for a few months before it got sunsetted. And last but not least, we did a deeper dive into a California bill known as SB 1047 that is aimed at stopping real-world disasters caused by AI systems before they happen.Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wedn

Enterprise AI is booming so it’s no wonder that, as companies figure out how to implement it, the industry of AI infrastructure is emerging. This week, Equity is bringing you an episode of our sister show, Found.  Becca and Dom talk to Nick Frosst from Cohere, the AI company building natural language models for enterprise customers. They discuss why Frosst thinks the AI boom isn’t built on a bubble, whether or not AI companies are building toward a “digital god”, and how AI regulation could be a good thing. 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 a

In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo and Becca Szkutak kick off the show dissecting a bill which aims to regulate AI at the model level. Naturally, some VCs and founders as well as students and professors are in an uproar about it. But we have to ask, is regulation in the name of safety such a bad thing? Short answer: It depends.Then the trio got into the deals of the week, including OpenAI’s potential new investment in webcam maker Opal. We also discussed some major changes at the executive level within OpenAI and what that could mean about what’s going on internally. Becca then wanted to talk about a new startup called why?!, which was founded by ex-Clubhouse employees and aims to be a networking, messaging and dating app all in one. And Kirsten wanted to drill down on electric vehicle maker Lucid’s new $1.5 billion capital infusion from the Saudi wealth fund.We then shifted gears to talk about just how many new unicorns were born in the U.S. this year s

In today’s episode of Equity Podcast, Mary Ann Azevedo talked to Flourish Ventures co-founders Tilman Ehrbeck, Emmalyn Shaw and Arjuna Costa about a variety of topics, including how their investment themes have evolved in the past 5 years and what trends they’re most excited about today. We also got their opinion on M&A deals in fintech, AI and founder wellness, among other things.The trio founded Flourish Ventures in 2019 and now the evergreen firm has $850 million under management, last raising a $350 million fund in October of 2023. Flourish invests all over the world, backing fintech startups in the U.S., and across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Notable investments include digital bank Chime, Brazilian neobank Neon, which was last priced at $1.6 billion; embedded finance startup Unit, and African payments infrastructure company Flutterwave.Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify

On today's Friday news roundup, we just had to talk about AI hardware taking on a new shape with Friend’s $99 necklace. The pendant gives you an AI friend to talk to and…that’s about it. Friend’s pitch is that its wearable can help combat loneliness, but other AI hardware products that have come to market lately – like Humane’s Ai Pin and Rabbit’s r1 – have fallen short of expectations. Even OpenAI, the leader in the space, has come out later than expected with its hyper realistic AI assistant, and only today to a small “alpha group” of users, so it’s hard to assess the product’s capabilities. On the other side of the AI coin is, sadly, deepfakes and hallucinations. The team touched on this topic, noting how Meta’s AI assistant hallucinated when it said that there was no assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Rebecca asked Devin Coldewey if he thought AI companies should take greater care to block users from asking questions about sensitive topics until they could solve for hallucinations, an

Global startup funding was up 16% in the second quarter, according to Crunchbase data, led by an uptick in mega-rounds. That increase was led, unsurprisingly, by the AI sector. Funding to companies in AI made up 30% of all dollars invested and actually doubled quarter over quarter to $24 billion.On today's episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Mary Ann was joined by Gené Teare, a Senior Data Editor at Crunchbase and Crunchbase News, to talk through the numbers. Teare is a well-known analyst of the global venture capital market, and was instrumental to Crunchbase’s early life and remains one of its more tenured staffers.“I was actually quite shocked by the doubling in AI because we're six quarters in from the launch of Chat GPT,” Teare said. “I think part of that is that in venture, things take time to sort of filter through.”There were also signs that larger M&A deals increased in the second quarter, providing much needed liquidity in a continued dry IPO market.“We're definitely seeing a stronger M&

Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback.First up, Rebecca took a look at fintech giant Stripe’s acquisition of four-year-old competitor Lemon Squeezy. The buy will allow Stripe to beef up its merchant of record selling “in a big way,” according to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Deal terms weren’t disclosed, but Lemon Squeezy has a reputation for turning down other offers, including a $50 million Series A. The company’s founder said he was holding out for the right partner to take the business to the next level, and apparently Stripe was it.This comment led Rebecca to explore the idea of M&A as an exit strategy. Does this practice create perverse incentives in venture capital, where investors are becoming more risk-averse and looking for a surer path to regaining capital, at the long-term expense of competition? Other startups have turned down such opportunities

This week felt like two weeks rolled into one. To kick things off, Mary Ann Azevedo walked everyone through Clio’s huge fundraise. The Canadian legal tech company raised $900 million at a $3 billion valuation — a very large sum anytime, but especially in this market. Impressively, the company is still growing rapidly, which isn't easy to do when you’re at such a late stage. We talked about the drivers behind that growth and how Clio differs from other legal tech startups raising capital these days.Next up, Mary Ann and Rebecca Szkutak discussed Alphabet’s announcement this week that it would invest another up to $5 billion in Waymo. It’s an obvious vote of confidence on self-driving cars on Alphabet’s part, but both Becca and Mary Ann agreed on one thing: They’d prefer to stick with riding in cars with human drivers.We closed out our deals of the week with a lively discussion on a 17-year-old founder and investor who pitched investors out of the stall of his high school bathroom. He just raised money for his

Maven Ventures General Partner Sara Deshpande has been investing in the consumer tech space for a decade.Over time, the seed-stage venture firm has backed the likes of Zoom, Cruise, Hello Heart, Perplexity and x.AI and has grown to over $200 million in assets under management.Now, with a new $60 million fund — and plans to write six to eight checks of up to $1.5 million each year — Deshpande joined TechCrunch senior reporter Mary Ann Azevedo on Equity to discuss the changes in the consumer landscape, how her firm is doubling down on artificial intelligence and what makes a startup stand out.When it comes to AI, Deshpande thinks that at the seed stage, AI's ability to improve life for consumers “is going to get here much more quickly than people think.” At the same time, she thinks that the peak AI frenzy was about 12 months ago.She also acknowledged that there is naturally going to be some “tumult” around the sector. Perplexity, for example, has been under fire amid plagiarism and web scraping charges.Equity

On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan did a deep dive into the CrowdStrike outage that affected around 8.5 million Windows devices around the world, causing disruptions in air travel, banking, hospitals, media outlets, federal agencies and businesses of all kinds. The outage began when CrowdStrike, a cloud security giant, sent out a defective software update. While CrowdStrike quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, the fallout continued over the weekend and will probably continue into this week, particularly for the travel sector. United, American and Delta airlines all collectively saw thousands of flights canceled and delayed, which will have ripple effects into the week. Rebecca went into how this outage – despite not being a cyberattack – has provided the world with a stark example of just how vulnerable our critical infrastructure systems are, a big problem if our adversaries decide to get any bright ideas. She also discussed the reputational damage CrowdStrike experienced, the startups

To kick off this week's news roundup, Kirsten walked us through Elon Musk’s recent declaration of his intent to move both SpaceX and X’s headquarters out of California to Texas. Whether or not he’ll see those plans through remains to be seen, but of course, the Equity crew had thoughts.We then got into the deals of the week. First up, we talked about Sequoia Capital’s emailing LPs in funds raised between 2009 and 2011 with an offer to buy up to $861 million worth of shares in Stripe. The move is notable for two reasons. For one, it’s evidence that LPs are increasingly antsy for liquidity in this dry IPO market. (2024 thus far has delivered just four venture-backed tech IPOs — Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik — in March and April.) The Equity team also discussed how Sequoia’s gesture reflects that the firm is confident not only of Stripe’s future, but in its ability to eventually exit in a way that will reward investors handsomely.Next up, Rebecca Bellan led a discussion as to how Andrej Karpathy, former

Renegade Partners co-founders Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek have seen it all in their careers — notably over the past four years when they launched their first fund as the COVID pandemic took hold and navigated the economic roller coaster that followed. Now, with a second $128 million fund — and a plan to write checks of up to $10 million into 20 startups — Quintini and Wincek join TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec on Equity to discuss those early days of their first fund, what they look for in a startup and what’s driving the shift away from megafunds.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 Durb

On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan explored Google’s reported talks to acquire Wiz, a cloud security company, for around $23 billion. Wiz provides an “all-in-one approach to cloud security,” pulling data from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and others, then scanning it all for security risk factors – something that Google might see as a good way to fortify its own cloud business, which grew 28% to $9.57 billion in Q1 this year. We also discussed a letter from OpenAI whistleblowers who say the AI company has placed illegal restrictions on how employees can communicate with government regulators. They say OpenAI’s NDAs prohibit and discourage employees and investors from communicating with the SEC over securities violations, and forced employees to waive their rights to whistleblower incentives and compensation, among other things. Bellan also talked about the paradox of how much money is being invested into AI versus how much money it’s making. In the first half of 2024 alone, more

Mary Ann was off this week, and Kirsten took the lead with Becca Szkutak and Rebecca Bellan in the co-host seats. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and more, so let's get into it!For our first deal of the week,  one of the many lawsuits Musk faces after firing 6,000 Twitter employees after his 2022 takeover was dismissed. The result may be good news for Musk, but it doesn’t eliminate Musk’s legal troubles. Musk is facing at least one other lawsuit from CEO Parag Agrawal, who along with three other former Twitter Inc. executives are seeking $128 million in severance payments from X Corp. Next up, Rebecca broke down Microsoft’s decision to leave its observer seat on OpenAI’s board, after which the AI company will no longer host observers. The legacy tech giant said it has seen enough progress being made at OpenAI and is “confident in its direction,” but we’re not exactly buying that Microsoft would give up such a coveted spot so easily. We suspect that the decision was fueled by ongoing a

Mike Maples Jr. is a prolific angel investor and co-founder of early-stage venture firm Floodgate. Over the years, he’s taken a lot of bets. Some have paid off handsomely (Twitter, Twitch, Lyft and Bazaarvoice, for example). Others have not.On today's episode of Equity, Mary Ann sat down with Mike to dig into a number of topics, including some of his most memorable investments, the one that got away, what he looks for when evaluating startups that pitch him - and what Godzilla has to do with it. We also talked a bit about his new book that he co-authored with Peter Ziebelman called “Pattern Breakers. Why some startups change the future.” 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 arc

On today's episode of Equity, we're taking a look at news you might've missed over the holiday weekend here in the U.S., starting with the recent OpenAI security breach. While it doesn't seem that people have to be too worried about what the hackers actually accessed, the fact that it happened is worth paying attention to. TechCrunch's Devin Coldeway argues that AI companies are treasure troves of data and will likely become more of a target for hackers. Companies that work with the large AI companies should pay attention. We also had an update on Fisker’s slide into bankruptcy. The EV startup, that you've already heard about on Equity, had a new update this week. The company asked its bankruptcy judge for permission to sell its remaining inventory for $14,000 a vehicle, a noticeable drop from the $70,000 Fisker was initially asking for. This has some fearing that this chapter 11 bankruptcy could turn into a chapter 7. To close out, we looked at a new trend of venture funds helping seed investors exercise the

What’s the common thread between Tesla, building startups, General Motors, venture capital and Lyft? Jon McNeill, co-founder and partner of DVx Ventures, joins TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec on Equity to discuss how Elon Musk’s pay package has influenced founders, when it makes sense to go light on cash and heavy on equity, and his firm’s unique approach to investing that eschews the traditional management fee structure. McNeill describes DVx as VC 2.0. The firm comes up with business ideas and builds them into a startup within the firm before it goes out to find the leadership team. To date, the firm has started and invested in 14 portfolio companies that span EVs and AI, SaaS, consumer tech and climate tech. McNeill also walks Equity through the startup creation process, managing risk and how to spot opportunities that can disrupt the market. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify a