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.
782episodes
Episodes
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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
SummaryApple's new CEO, and why Elon Musk wants to buy Cursor for $60B
Apr 2400:37:48Tap to summarizeA 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
Transcribe →Fusion doesn't have a normal startup timeline, and investors are fine with that
Apr 2200:34:09Tap to summarizeFusion 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
Transcribe →Tokenmaxxing, OpenAI's shopping spree, and the AI Anxiety Gap
Apr 1700:38:45Summary readyThe 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
SummaryThe musician-turned-biotech-founder waiting to fundraise
Apr 1500:29:16Tap to summarizeWhen 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
Transcribe →Luma AI's Amit Jain on why most world model companies are getting it completely wrong
Apr 1000:21:43Tap to summarizeLLMs 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
Transcribe →Snowflake’s transition from storing data to shipping with it
Apr 800:27:05Tap to summarizeSnowflake 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
Transcribe →Space: the final frontier of AI infrastructure
Apr 300:34:00Tap to summarizeTech 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
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