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Equity: Daily Summaries Delivered
by TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane, Theresa Loconsolo
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.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 3 days ago31 min
‘If this isn't addiction, I don't know what is’: Light Phone's founders get real about screen time and building for the anti-smartphone generation
With the Light Phone, Kaiwei Tang and Joe Hollier have spent over a decade exploring the value of simplicity in our relationship to technology, partnering along the way with players like Andrew Yang, Kendrick Lamar, and Pete Davidson. Now, with a new flip phone and a growing wave of “attention activists” pushing back on big tech, they think the rest of the world is finally catching up to them. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Amanda Silberling talks with Tang and Hollier about the company's newly announced flip phone, why they think the anti-smartphone backlash is only just getting started, and what it takes to break an addiction that fits in your pocket. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How the design lessons from the original Motorola Razr shaped the new Light Flip What the "Summer of Ludd" attention activist movement says about Gen Z's relationship with big tech Why Light Phone is opening up an SDK so users can build their own tools instead of opting for an app store 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 0:51 Building Light Phone 3:10 The user shift: why people are finally ready to unplug 7:54 Designing outside the Silicon Valley bubble 9:54 Why simple tech is making a comeback (CDs, iPods, flip phones) 13:50 From the Motorola Razr to the Light Flip 17:54 Pricing and the Noble Mobile phone plan 19:44 What actually happens when you switch (and the Flip Your Life program) 23:13 Building an open-source app library for Light Phone 26:38 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago38 min
‘AI communism’, rogue models, and the why Kimi K3 spooked Wall Street
Chinese AI lab Moonshot's open model Kimi went viral this week for reasons that had less to do with the model itself and more to do with how the U.S. AI industry reacted to it. Meanwhile, an unreleased OpenAI model wandered outside its test environment and ended up connected to a real security breach at Hugging Face — a reminder that “China risk” isn't the only kind of AI risk worth worrying about. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into why Kimi K3 set off a fresh round of AI panic, the industry’s response to an OpenAI staffer's “regulatory FUD” post, and what that OpenAI breach means for AI security more broadly. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why EVs are getting killed off across the U.S. even as automakers roll out new models, and how Rivian and Ford, and a wave of new startups are betting on different EV strategies to survive What Sila's $300 million raise says about where battery investment is headed even as EV demand cools Travis Kalanick's comeback with a $1.7 billion raise for his robotics startup, Atoms, and why we’re surprised to see Uber among its investors 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 1:39 Chinese AI model Kimi sparks a Wall Street freakout 10:45 OpenAI model breaks out of a test, Hugging Face breach 15:53 Why EVs are getting killed off in the U.S. 20:35 Tax credits, free markets, and the road ahead for EVs 28:56 Sila raises $300M for battery materials 32:20 Travis Kalanick's Atoms raises $1.7B, with Uber as an investor 36:39 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago33 min
Menlo Ventures’ Matt Murphy says the lesson for founders now is that a great model isn't enough
Anthropic leaped to a $47 billion revenue run rate by May, compared to $9 billion in 2025. It’s the kind of growth that Menlo Ventures' Matt Murphy says he's never seen in 25 years of investing, not in the internet wave, not in mobile, not in the first cloud boom. Menlo led Anthropic's $500M Series D, and Murphy has had a front-row seat as the company went from a pre-revenue, pre-launch bet to one of the most valuable startups out there. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort talks with Murphy about backing Anthropic before anyone else would, why a great model was never the point, and what's driving the fastest-growing startups he's ever seen. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Menlo bet on Anthropic at a $4 billion pre-revenue valuation when the deal didn't fit cleanly into any of the firm's funds, and why Google and Amazon signing on as investors was an early “green shoot.” Why Murphy says the model was never the real moat, and how Claude Code, MCP, and Claude Skills turned Anthropic from a strong model into a full platform. Murphy's take on the backlash to Anthropic's Mythos rollout, and why he pushes back on the idea that it was more marketing than safety. Why companies like Lovable and Legora are growing faster than any startups Murphy has seen in 25 years, and what that speed means for founders trying to compete. 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
- 2 weeks ago34 min
Apple's lawsuit couldn't come at a worse time for OpenAI
Apple filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI last Friday, and it's not messing around. The complaint alleges a pattern of misconduct reaching all the way up to OpenAI's chief hardware officer and claims more than 400 former Apple employees now work at the company. OpenAI's response so far has been carefully hedged, and the timing couldn't be worse with the company reportedly eyeing an IPO as early as later this year. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the lawsuit could mean for OpenAI's own hardware ambitions and IPO timeline, plus a bigger theme running through the week's news: how much should anyone trust AI companies with their data? Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is warning enterprises about handing data over to AI labs, and whether open source is really a way out of the “Trojan horse” data-trust problem How forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) are changing the relationship between AI labs and their enterprise customers Why General Catalyst just handed David Beckham's health drink startup a $1 billion customer value fund The scoop on a new $200M drug-discovery startup from an ex-OpenAI researcher 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 00:40 Would you want Sam Altman listening to you? 01:53 Apple sues OpenAI over trade secrets 13:24 Satya Nadella's warning: "you're paying twice" with your data 19:03 Open source vs. going deeper with AI labs 24:52 General Catalyst gives David Beckham's health drink startup $1B 30:05 Ex-OpenAI researcher raises $200M for drug discovery startup 32:58 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 weeks ago31 min
Inside Ode with Anthropic, the private equity-backed startup betting AI services are the future of enterprise
Can a handful of engineers really do the work of an army of consultants? That’s the bet behind Ode with Anthropic — the joint venture dedicated to embedding forward-deployed engineers in enterprise firms, backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs and others. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Ode’s leaders Chris Taylor and Eddie Siegel, who founded Fractional AI, the applied AI services startup that Ode acquired earlier this year to serve as the new venture’s core. The three discuss why so many enterprise AI pilots never make it to production and why they think AI-native services are about to become one of the biggest categories in tech. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: The case for AI-native services, and why Ode believes small teams of applied AI engineers can unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in business value. Why the company is hiring experienced generalists and former founders instead of AI researchers, and how it's turning them into elite FDEs. Whether an AI services company can scale like software, yet maintain a boutique feel, and why Taylor believes Ode could one day become a trillion-dollar business. 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 00:30 Fractional AI becomes "Ode with Anthropic" 1:13 Why non-AI companies are the real AI winners 2:04 Working with Blackstone, Anthropic, and beyond 3:05 Inside a real project: fixing LogicGate's bottleneck 7:29 How long does it take from hypothesis to production? 9:19 Measuring ROI: revenue, efficiency, and evals 16:37 Model choice vs. workflow redesign, and why it's Claude-first 23:10 Hiring generalists over specialized AI talent 26:39 Can this scale without turning into another consulting firm? 30:49 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 3 weeks ago38 min
Open source AI matters more than ever, according to Hugging Face's Clem Delangue
Open source AI is booming, according to Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again and again: companies start out on frontier APIs, but as they scale, the costs push them towards open source models. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talked to Delangue about why the open vs closed source fight matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he's worried about the possibility that a handful of big companies could end up controlling everything. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How Chinese labs are producing the majority of open models being downloaded in the U.S., and why Delangue thinks that's a problem worth fixing rather than a reason to distrust open source itself. How Hugging Face is choosing capital efficiency over the usual Silicon Valley fundraising playbook, including why the company turned down a large investment from Nvidia last year. Why he sees robotics as an even more urgent case for open, transparent AI than chatbots or coding tools, given how much of your home and family life a robot ends up seeing. 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 00:33 Breaking down open source growth data 04:34 What's driving the open source resurgence 08:47 Who’s using Hugging Face, and how? 10:28 China overtakes the US in open model downloads 16:34 Safety, access, and the risk of AI power concentration 24:03 Hugging Face's approach to legal risk 28:00 Turning down Nvidia 31:47 Underinvested opportunities: local AI, bio, robotics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 3 weeks ago26 min
Your gaming data could be the secret to AGI, according to this Bezos-backed startup
When it comes to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), large language models just don’t have what it takes. Models like ChatGPT and Claude are great at text, but they're less skilled at understanding how things actually move through space and time — an essential skill for producing intelligence that generalizes. That gap, it turns out, might be filled by gaming data. That's the bet behind General Intuition, a Bezos-backed, New York-based startup valued at $2.3 billion that just closed a $320 million round with Coatue, Eric Schmidt, and researchers at MIT and Google DeepMind joining its list of investors. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte joins Rebecca Bellan to dig into why world models trained on gaming data might be the next big leap in physical AI, how the company spun out of gaming platform Medal TV, and where the ethical red lines are when your models could end up being used for defense applications. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How eight minutes of real-world data was enough to get a robot navigating an office cold. Why General Intuition turned down an acquisition offer reportedly from OpenAI to stay independent, and why having investors who back your mission is essential to building a generational company. How the company is trying to get ahead of AI job displacement by building Nerve, a marketplace connecting gamers to data labeling and teleoperations work. 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
- 4 weeks ago15 min
Best of Build Mode: Think like a VC
Instead of our usual news rundown, Equity is sending you off into the 4th of July weekend with a special episode of our sister podcast Build Mode. Season 3 launches July 9th, but before it does, Build Mode is revisiting some of the best fundraising and startup advice from the investors featured in last season. From choosing the right investors to building a differentiated go-to-market strategy, these venture capitalists and founder-turned-investors share hard-earned lessons on fundraising, portfolio dynamics, investor-founder relationships, and what separates the companies that successfully raise their next round from those that don't. In this episode, you'll hear from: Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst Ross Fubini, managing partner at XYZ Venture Capital and Leslie Feinzaig, founder and general partner at Graham & Walker Paul Irving, partner at GTMfund Leah Solivan, founder of TaskRabbit and founder of Precedent VC Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:19 Yuri Sagalov (General Catalyst): The three types of investors and who founders should avoid 03:29 Ross Fubini (XYZ VC) & Leslie Feinzaig (Graham & Walker): What great investors actually bring to the table 08:36 Paul Irving (GTMfund): The go-to-market signals investors look for 12:30 Leah Solivan (TaskRabbit / Precedent VC): Understanding the competition inside your investors' portfolios 14:30 Outro Subscribe to Build Mode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. And watch the full videos on YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About 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.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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