Podcast
Equity
Hosted by TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane, Theresa Loconsolo · EN
The intersection of technology, startups, and venture capital touches everything now. That’s why Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast, digs into the business of startups for entrepreneurs and enthusiasts alike. Every Wednesday and Friday, TechCrunch reporters keep you up-to-date on the world of business, technology, and venture capital. Equity is ranked the No.2 podcast in the Top 100 Venture Capital All time leaderboard on Goodpods—As well as No.17 for the Top 100 Finance All time chart and No.32 for the Top 100 Business News All time chart.
47episodes
Episodes
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Does your CEO have AI psychosis? Aaron Levie thinks most of them do.
1w ago00:38:02Tap to summarizeThe 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
Transcribe →Your SEO strategy is optimized for a search engine that no longer exists.
2w ago00:30:53Tap to summarizeGoogle 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
Transcribe →Elon Musk can't hear you over the sound of his $1.75 trillion IPO
2w ago00:34:56Tap to summarizeThe 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
Transcribe →How Lucra raised $20M as an eSports play when every VC only wants AI
3w ago00:32:10Tap to summarizeSlapping "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
Transcribe →Well, do you trust Sam Altman?
3w ago00:40:15Summary readyThe 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
SummaryAmazon's Steve Schmidt on why your AI agents are your biggest security risk (Live at HumanX)
4w ago00:21:11Summary readyAI 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
SummaryThe 'people’s airline,' SpaceXAI, and the Enterprise AI Race
May 800:32:53Tap to summarizeEveryone 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
Transcribe →Aurora's Chris Urmson on why self-driving trucks are finally ready (Live at HumanX)
May 600:32:46Tap to summarizeSelf-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
Transcribe →Did you know you can't steal a charity? Don't worry. Elon Musk will remind you.
May 100:39:15Tap to summarizeElon 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
Transcribe →Is AI video just a prequel? Runway's CEO thinks world models are next
Apr 2900:31:46Summary readyAI-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
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