Equity
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.
Episodes
August 8, 2025 • 32 mins
OpenAI is making a serious play for the federal government. The company just announced a deal that gives U.S. agencies access to ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per year. Yes, really. It’s part of a new “blanket purchase agreement” aimed at getting OpenAI’s tools into federal departments fast and a clear sign the company wants to lock down the public sector before anyone else can.
The move is aggressive, strategic, and could shape ...
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August 6, 2025 • 25 mins
Figma managed something rare in today's market: it stayed independent, survived a failed Adobe acquisition, and went public on its own terms. But its post-IPO performance tells a more complex story about startup exits in 2025.
Jai Das, President and Partner at Sapphire Ventures, joined Rebecca Bellan on Equity to discuss what Figma's IPO really signals about the current climate for startup exits. With more than a dozen IPOs under...
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August 1, 2025 • 32 mins
Meta is still going all-in on the AI talent war, with Mark Zuckerberg reportedly reaching out to top recruits himself, throwing around jaw-dropping compensation packages that top $1 billion over multiple years. And Meta’s latest target? Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machines Lab. It's a bold play in an already overheated market.
While Zuck eyes new talent, Anthropic is preparing to raise a massive round of its own at a stagg...
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July 30, 2025 • 30 mins
If you've been hearing about Trump's AI Action Plan and wondering who it actually benefits, you're not alone.
On today's episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Amba Kak and Dr. Sarah Myers West from the AI Now Institute, a think tank focused on the social implications of AI and the consolidation of power in tech industry. Their recent report, dubbed Artificial Power, lays out the political economy driving today's AI fren...
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July 25, 2025 • 37 mins
The big AI companies seem to be in a celebratory mood after President Donald Trump unveiled his AI Action Plan — not surprising, perhaps, since the plan was shaped by Trump's Silicon Valley allies.
Today, on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha look at how the Trump administration plans to reshape the AI landscape, making it harder for environmental regulators to block data center constructi...
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July 23, 2025 • 27 mins
AI is entering a new phase where access to top talent is becoming as important as, if not more important than, compute or data. The market for AI researchers is so overheated, it’s starting to look a lot like pro sports — complete with outsized contracts and unprecedented infrastructure needs.
On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan chatted with Deedy Das, principal at Menlo Ventures. Das has seen this shift from multiple ang...
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July 19, 2025 • 30 mins
OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, Mira Murati, just raised one of the largest seed rounds in history. Murati secured $2 billion in that seed round for Thinking Machines Lab — a startup so early, it hasn’t even revealed what it’s working on yet. The move is raising eyebrows across Silicon Valley, and it’s only the latest in a wave of top researchers splintering off from OpenAI to chase their own AI moonshots.
Today, on Tech...
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July 16, 2025 • 27 mins
Hugging Face’s new AI robot, the Reachy Mini, has already racked up $1 million in sales just five days after launch. But the company isn’t trying to build a chore-doing humanoid just yet. Instead, Hugging Face sees the Reachy Mini as a hackable, desk-friendly device that's part entertainment, part entry point for developers and consumers to experiment with AI in physical form.
On this episode of Equity, co-founder Thomas Wolf joi...
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July 11, 2025 • 30 mins
Hugging Face just launched Reachy Mini, an open source AI robot with big googly eyes and not much utility, and that’s kind of the charm. On this episode of Equity Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha break down the bot's debut, why it’s giving Seinfeld energy, and what it says about the future of open source hardware.
Listen to the full episode to hear more news from the week, including:
Grok’s wild week and Linda Yaccar...
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July 9, 2025 • 25 mins
“SaaS is going away,” says Dave Park, co-founder and CEO of Narada AI. The company is betting on a future where AI agents, not humans, navigate enterprise software on our behalf.
Today on Equity, Park joins Rebecca Bellan on Equity to talk about the rise of agentic AI, what it actually is, how it differs from traditional automation, and what real-world changes enterprises need to make to deploy it at scale. The timing for the conv...
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July 3, 2025 • 29 mins
Cloudflare wants AI companies to pay up. The cloud infrastructure provider is launching a new experiment called Pay per Crawl that would let publishers charge AI firms every time their bots scrape a site, and it could reshape how content is accessed and monetized online.
Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec and Max Zeff dig into Cloudflare’s big swing, why it’s a natural next step after a year of laying grou...
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July 2, 2025 • 25 mins
As the interest in both space and solar grows, one startup aims to merge the two industries. By tapping into the momentum of the commercial space industry and the increasing demand for renewable energy, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt is on a mission to make space-based solar power a reality with his latest startup: Aetherflux.
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Bhatt to talk about his transition from fintech to deep t...
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June 27, 2025 • 35 mins
This week, two major AI companies scored early wins in court, with federal judges siding with Meta and Anthropic in separate lawsuits over how their models were trained on copyrighted material.
The decisions represent the first real legal validation of AI companies’ argument that training models on books, images, and other creative works can be considered “fair use” — even if those materials weren’t obtained with permission. It’s ...
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June 25, 2025 • 22 mins
Cow burps are a climate problem, and one startup wants to reprogram them.
Hoofprint Biome is using enzymes to rewire the cow’s microbiome from the inside out, cutting methane production and improving feed efficiency along the way. The company just raised a $15 million Series A round from investors including Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, and they’re just getting started.
Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Tim De Chant sat down ...
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June 20, 2025 • 42 mins
OpenAI recently announced a $200 million deal with the U.S. Department of Defense, which has us wondering: Could this further strain the company’s relationship with its biggest backer, Microsoft?
After all, there have been numerous reports about growing tensions between the two companies, particularly as they become more competitive over enterprise deals.
Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha and Max Zeff discus...
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June 19, 2025 • 26 mins
AI investments hit $110 billion in 2024, and the funding landscape in 2025 is more competitive than ever. For early-stage startups, that means more money in the market but also more pressure to stand out.
At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, Rebecca Bellan sat down with three experienced investors: Jill Chase, Partner at CapitalG; Kanu Gulati, Partner at Khosla Ventures; and Sara Ittelson, Partner at Accel. They broke down what they are re...
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June 13, 2025 • 31 mins
Meta just made a $14.3 billion bet on data-labeling company Scale AI, but it’s not a traditional takeover: Meta’s taking a 49% stake in the company and adding Scale’s co-founder Alexandr Wang to its team.
Today on Equity, we break down what this means for Meta’s AI ambitions and revisit Wang’s early AI predictions.
Listen to the full episode to hear more highlights from the week, including:
How Chime’s IPO priced above expec...
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June 11, 2025 • 26 mins
Generative AI is reshaping the way people work, from full-time employees to freelancers. As coding copilots, design assistants, and AI-powered writing tools become more capable and accessible, creative and technical roles are starting to shift – if not become eliminated entirely. The pressure to adapt is growing across the board.
Micha Kaufman, CEO of Fiverr, isn’t sugarcoating it. In a recent open letter to staff, he warned that...
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June 6, 2025 • 30 mins
Instead of our usual Friday news rundown, we’re bringing you a conversation from this week’s TC Sessions: AI event out in San Francisco. Our friend and co-host Max Zeff sat down with Jared Kaplan, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Anthropic.
If you’ve been following Anthropic, you’ll know it’s been a busy year for the AI startup. Back in March, the company announced it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation in a ro...
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Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Crowdstrike co-founder and former CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, to talk about the evolving cybersecurity landscape, the role of startups, and why he says we’re living in a World on the Brink.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
What early-stage secure-by-design startup founders are missing when it comes to maintaining security while building quickly and crisis management.
...
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