Is the SPAC back?

Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff and Anthony Ha are unpacking the week’s news, including the possible return of the SPAC in an uncertain IPO market. It’s a curious moment for a public debut, as Kirsten points out, especially after so much chatter that 2025 would be the big comeback year for blockbuster IPOs, but some major players like Klarna and StubHub have already hit pause. And as investor Mark Goldberg put it on this week’s show, folks holding their breath for a fintech IPO wave this year “are going to be blue in the face.” Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s AI voices could be taking over a crosswalk near you Figma’s IPO plans, and questions on the Equity crew’s mind ahead of the S-1. How Hugging Face’s latest acquisition confirms its push into humanoid robotics The latest wave of OpenAI models, updates to its o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, and why all eyes are on the bigger launch still to come: GPT-5. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices