California’s most controversial AI safety bill of 2024 might be dead, but its author isn't backing down. State Senator Scott Weiner is back with SB 53, a new AI bill that strips away the most debated parts of last year’s failed legislation while keeping key whistleblower protections and a public cloud computing initiative called CalCompute.

With the AI industry and even the federal government shifting away from AI safety regulation in favor of innovation, will the bill gain any traction? Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff and Anthony Ha are unpacking the latest moves in AI regulation along with the week’s top stories in tech and startups.

Listen to the full episode to hear about:

What Kirsten is hoping to see on the ground at SXSW this year
CoreWeave’s IPO, and why the founders’ latest moves are raising eyebrows. As Kirsten put it: there's nothing more fun than diving into an S-1
Ramp’s impressive growth, and how the fintech more than doubled its annualized revenue to $700M
Alexis Ohanian and Kevin Rose’s team-up, and if the pair can really bring back Digg
Which founders are raising in 2025, and why deep tech has some investors feeling optimistic

Equity will be back next week, 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 here.

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.

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