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.

  1. vor 5 Std.

    Who’s the sheriff in AI’s wild west? (Equity Live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026)

    The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane took over the Builders Stage Tuesday morning to tackle a growing challenge for the AI industry: what happens when AI agents go off-script, and who’s responsible for keeping them in check?  Recent incidents, from Anthropic pulling internal evaluations off the live internet after agents misbehaved to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calling for an “emergency brake” on AI models, have brought agent security into focus. The Equity team unpacked whether the problem calls for better engineering, new regulation, or both, and why startups are raising millions to secure AI agents.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The Anthropic agent mishaps, including a false police report that went nowhere after landing in a spam folder  Nadella’s call for an AI emergency brake, and why the hosts wonder what took so long  The funding race to secure AI agents, from AIR’s $50 million raise to Reco’s $55 million and Oak’s $60 million for agent identity, plus Sequoia-backed Cymphony  Why independent verification and certification could be key to building trust, and whether Big Tech will buy its way out of the problem  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads.  Chapters:    00:00 Intro and what we’re excited for at Disrupt  01:34 Durability, security, and Anthropic’s rogue agents  04:41 Nadella’s “emergency brake” post  06:33 NVIDIA’s OpenShell and the engineering-vs-regulation debate  10:04 The agent security startup boom: AIR, Reco, Cymphony  13:38 When agents go rogue in real life  15:55 Certifications and standards  19:33 HiddenLayer and the jump to production  20:40 Will Big Tech just acquire these startups?  22:52 Consumer trust and agent adoption  25:05 Predictions: acquisitions vs. independent verifiers  27:26 What’s coming up at Disrupt  29:02 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. vor 5 Tagen

    Amazon drops data center NDAs, and AI agents want your credit card

    Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access to their inboxes, files, and credit cards — if they can get websites to let them in.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Sean O’Kane, and Rebecca Bellan dig into whether ditching NDAs will change how data center deals get done, why trust may be the real product for personal AI startups, plus a couple of deals of the week.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The White House’s plans to make plans with its new Super Intelligence Force  Ghost’s $3,499 computer built to run AI agents around the clock, and why the Equity crew doesn’t see it going mass market  Tab, Underdog, and Hark pitching privacy as their product, plus the business model that could turn your agent into a salesperson  United, Apple, and Amazon putting up walls against outside agents  Lambda’s reported $4 billion raise, and the single customer behind $35 billion of its backlog  Uber’s $2.3 billion all-cash deal to get into the office catering space with ezCater  We’ll see you next week at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Get 25% off your tickets with code Equity25, and we’ll see you on the Builders Stage Tuesday at 9 am.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  0:55 Trump’s “superintelligence force” and the great AI rebranding  3:19 Amazon drops NDAs on data center deals  9:17 Why the AI industry has a communication problem  12:51 Personal AI agents: finding money in your inbox  15:27 Ghost’s $3,500 computer built for personal AI  19:16 Trust is the product: privacy-first agent startups  27:36 Lambda’s $4B raise and the neo cloud backlog problem  31:22 Uber’s $2.3B move into catering  35:10 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. 2. Okt.

    Call it AI, call it Super Intelligence, only 2% of consumers are buying it

    This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.” Trump also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as “super intelligence,” and meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products, even as the biggest money in AI still appears to be coming from the enterprise.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into this week’s AI moves, the ugly economics of consumer AI, plus the shifting IPO market and a handful of startup deals.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  What Oura pulling its IPO, plus Anthropic’s leaked S-1 and OpenAI going back to private funding, says about how picky public markets have gotten  Quartermaster’s $140M raise to bring real-time sensors to an industry that AI basically hasn’t touched yet: maritime shipping  Why Atomic, a supply-chain startup from ex-Tesla vets, is already running 90% of DoorDash’s purchasing  How Startup Battlefield finalist Charter Space raised $5M to bring insurance to satellites  Speaking of Startup Battlefield, join us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where Equity will kick things off with a live show on the Builders Stage at 9 a.m. Get 25% off your tickets with code Equity25.    Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. 30. Sept.

    A Neko Health investor on the $700M bet to scan your whole body

    Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s Neko Health raised $700 million to build a business around scanning your body, but it’s not the only company centering its roadmap around a new kind of preventative healthcare. Midjourney is building its own body scanner, while Function Health has also raised significant capital to build out its preventative-health platform. Why are investors betting so big on this category?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis talks with Farooq Abbasi, founder and general partner of Preface Ventures and an investor in Neko Health, about how Neko compares with other consumer-health startups. They discuss what has to happen for body scanning to become part of the broader healthcare system.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Farooq invested in Neko after trying the company's scan himself  What Neko's $500 scan actually includes, and how the company keeps the price down  Why Farooq thinks low primary-care utilization is one of the biggest problems in U.S. healthcare  Why some consumer-health startups may be overfunded, in Farooq's view  How better health data could open the door to a new generation of AI-powered healthcare  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 00:00 — Can Tech Reinvent Preventative Healthcare?01:44 — Why Spotify’s Founder Built Neko Health06:22 — Why Healthcare Is So Hard to Fix08:23 — Inside a $500 Neko Health Scan12:35 — Can Preventative Healthcare Scale?14:20 — The Risks of VC-Backed Healthcare17:28 — How AI Is Changing Medicine22:55 — Is AI in Healthcare Worth the Risk? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. 25. Sept.

    Meta’s Muse just stole the spotlight from OpenAI and Anthropic

    When AI leaders at OpenAI and Anthropic started talking about “pacing the frontier,” maybe someone should have asked: what pace? It’s turned into model drop week for both companies as Anthropic rolled out Opus 5.5, followed by OpenAI’s GPT-6 model updates just 90 minutes later. But the company that stole the spotlight this week was Meta, whose personal AI agent Muse is reportedly outpacing ChatGPT’s early numbers and is headed for smart glasses and a tiny Tamagotchi-style device next.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into Meta’s consumer AI strategy and what it means for the startups trying to build on top of this technology, from where the money is flowing to which AI products might actually become part of people's daily lives. They also get into a16z's new school for aspiring founders and two very different AI and hardware deals.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  How a16z's Horowitz Andreessen Academy plans to pave a new path for aspiring founders, and why the Equity crew sees echoes of the Thiel Fellowship and Silicon Valley's long-running anti-college streak  Why Oura's $2.2 billion IPO looks more like a payday for existing shareholders than a major fundraising event for the company  Ema’s $77 million raise to sell teams of AI agents that automate HR, IT, and finance workflows, with Google and Microsoft among its early enterprise customers  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

  6. 23. Sept.

    What’s next for cybersecurity, according to Index Ventures’ Shardul Shah

    As concern over AI safety and rogue agents continue to make headlines, it’s no surprise that cybersecurity stocks are rising, or that investors are pouring massive amounts of capital into startups trying to build the next generation of security for an AI-native world. We’re even seeing companies like Instinct and Simile bring in nine-figure checks and valuations that wouldn't have made sense a few years ago.    With a front row seat to it all is Shardul Shah, a partner at Index Ventures who’s spent nearly two decades investing in cybersecurity and enterprise software — including six consecutive rounds in cloud security startup Wiz, which Google acquired for $32 billion earlier this year in one of its largest acquisitions ever.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Shah joins Rebecca Bellan to break down why he thinks periodic, human-in-the-loop security can’t keep up anymore, and why Index continues investing in AI-native security companies at stages that once required much more proof.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Shah thinks cyber insurance should be most companies’ first move in managing AI-era risk  What happens when a single attacker can deploy a 10,000-agent ransomware swarm, and why that could force cybersecurity to become more machine-to-machine  How Wiz’s founders paved the way for a new generation of startups, including Frame and Enigma  Shah’s take on “pacing the frontier,” and why he thinks even a slowdown in model capability wouldn’t cool off cybersecurity investment  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  02:02 Why AI is creating a new cybersecurity category  05:16 The cyber insurance layer most companies overlook  09:15 Why Index is betting on AI-native security platforms  12:40 Will Wiz become a talent factory for new startups?  14:46 What actually makes a founder worth betting on  16:11 The hard part of knowing when to double down  18:53 Why Shardul says he’s not a visionary investor  21:16 How AI could reshape the entire security stack  24:18 What makes an AI security startup defensible  25:14 Why he doesn’t want to find “the next Wiz”  26:48 Why investors are writing huge checks so early  29:39 What happens to AI valuations if the frontier gets paced  31:01 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. 18. Sept.

    Automattic's 33-Hour coup, and can AI labs police themselves?

    A week after an Anthropic researcher's doomsday warning rattled the AI world, the company's CEO Dario Amodei has outlined his plan to “pace the frontier” of AI development. The proposal leans on independent safety evaluators and coordination between AI labs in democratic countries, and it's already picked up some industry support, along with some pointed pushback from Nvidia's Jensen Huang.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into whether companies can agree on what slowing down means and who gets to police it. Plus, WordPress parent Automattic's boardroom coup, and a couple of the week's biggest deals.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The golden parachute deals struck during Matt Mullenweg's 33-hour ouster from Automattic, and why the drama could give him even more control over technology that powers much of the web  Whether May Mobility's SPAC can deliver more than $300 million in potential funding, and why becoming a “public robotaxi company” comes with some big caveats  DoorDash's $425 million investment in Wonder and the race to automate food from order to delivery  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  00:00 Intro 1:00 Dario Amodei's plan to "pace the frontier" 5:03 Jensen Huang pushes back 9:08 Can market forces alone keep AI safe? 12:30 Third-party evaluators: how would they actually work? 15:27 Automattic's board tries to oust Matt Mullenweg 19:31 Comparing it to OpenAI's "the blip" 22:54 What's at stake in who controls WordPress 24:04 May Mobility's SPAC deal 28:42 Are SPACs back? 29:34 DoorDash invests $425M in Wonder 33:45 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bewertungen und Rezensionen

3,5
von 5
2 Bewertungen

Info

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.

Mehr von TechCrunch

Das gefällt dir vielleicht auch