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18 JAM LALU

Who's really running AI? Inside the billion-dollar battle over regulation, with Alex Bores

The Pentagon is playing chicken with Anthropic over who gets to control how the military uses AI while communities across the country are blocking data center construction. As the AI debate has been flattened to “doomers versus boomers,” one state legislator is attempting to walk a middle road. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Alex Bores, New York Assembly member and congressional candidate. Bores sponsored New York's first-of-its-kind AI safety law the RAISE Act — and quickly became the target of a Silicon Valley super PAC with $125 million to spend on attack ads. Listen to the full episode to hear about: The dueling super PACs now fighting over AI's future, and why Anthropic's $20 million bet on the pro-regulation side matters. What the RAISE Act actually requires, why it's being called the blueprint for AI regulation nationwide. Whether AI regulation ends up looking like finance and biotech or goes the way of social media — largely unregulated until the damage is done. What's coming next from Bores’ office: bills on training data disclosure, content provenance, and a 43-point national AI framework. 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

18 jam lalu

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23 min
2 HARI LALU

Is crypto growing up? Tether risk, Stripe’s stablecoin play, and the GENIUS Act explained

Crypto is creeping back into the startup conversation, but at ETH Denver last week, the buzz was as much about Washington as it was about tokens. Policy shifts are rippling through the market as Tether and stablecoins face scrutiny, players like Stripe re-enter the chat, and startups either find traction or flame out. The hype cycle is over, or at least taking a break. So what comes next? On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Jacquelyn Melinek, CEO of Token Relations and host of the Talking Tokens and Crypto in America podcasts, to make sense of how the market has changed and what in the world of crypto is built to last. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why ETHDenver fell flat despite a strong speaker lineup, and what it signals about crypto’s shifting hubs. What White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt and SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce are actually pushing for with The GENIUS Act and Clarity Act. What Stripe is quietly building with Bridge, Privy, and Tempo, and whether it's becoming the Visa of stablecoin settlement. Tether's shrinking equity cushion and what a de-pegging event could mean for the broader crypto market. YC’s surprising move to accept stablecoin investment as Bitcoin prices sit at half their peak. 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 hari lalu

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33 min
18 FEB

Google Cloud's VP for startups on reading your "check engine light" before it's too late

Startup founders are being pushed to move faster than ever, using AI while facing tighter funding, rising infrastructure costs, and more pressure to show real traction early. Cloud credits, access to GPUs, and foundation models have made it easier to get started, but those early infrastructure choices can have unforeseen consequences once startups move beyond free credits and into real cloud bills. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Darren Mowry, Google Cloud’s vice president of global startups who is right at the center of those tradeoffs. Together, they discuss what Mowry’s seeing across the startup ecosystem, how Google Cloud is competing for AI startups, and what founders should be thinking about as they scale. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Google positions against AWS and Microsoft in the AI startup race. TPUs vs GPUs: How much does hardware choice matter for early-stage companies? Which AI verticals are seeing real growth, and what’s standing out in biotech, climate tech, developer tools, and world models. What red flags will signal that a startup isn’t going to make it. 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

18 Feb

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32 min
13 FEB

AI burnout, billion-dollar bets, and Silicon Valley's Epstein problem

AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the week's biggest deals and departures, from billion-dollar bets on fusion and robotics to the tech exodus reshaping AI companies. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why humanoid robot startups are raising nearly $1 billion and partnering with Google DeepMind Whether fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises can actually deliver on its 2030 timeline, and why investors keep betting millions What the Epstein files reveal about Silicon Valley dealmaking, particularly during the EV boom Why AI Super Bowl ads might not be landing outside Silicon Valley Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:46 AI Super Bowl ads ⁠aren’t quite landing⁠ outside of Silicon Valley 04:31 Apptronik raises $935M for humanoid robotics 09:05 Will automakers partner with humanoid robotics startups? 13:05 Inertia Enterprises raises $450M for fusion energy 18:44 What the Epstein files reveal about ⁠Silicon Valley dealmaking⁠ 30:56 The exodus at xAI and OpenAI, and what it means for the AI race 37:22 Outro 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

13 Feb

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39 min
10 FEB

This Sequoia-backed lab thinks the brain is 'the floor, not the ceiling' for AI

AI lab Flapping Airplanes just landed $180 million in seed funding from the likes of Google Ventures, Sequoia, and Index to do something most labs have quietly given up on: making models learn like humans instead of vacuuming up the internet. The founding team, made up of brothers Ben and Asher Spector and co-founder Aidan Smith, is betting that radically more data-efficient training could open the door to entirely new AI capabilities. Today on Equity, TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandon sits down with all three founders to discuss why investors wrote such a large check for a lab with no product, what becomes possible with more efficient AI, and why they're prioritizing creativity over credentials. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why the Flapping Airplanes team is focused on research first, commercialization later What the "neolabs" generation means for AI development How they plan to make AI models 1,000x more data efficient. A hint? The team thinks the brain is "the floor, not the ceiling" for AI capabilities 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

10 Feb

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30 min
11 FEB

Glean’s fight to own the AI layer inside every company

Enterprise AI is shifting fast from chatbots that answer questions to systems that actually do the work across an organization. But who will own the AI layer that powers all of it? Glean, which started as an enterprise search product, has evolved into what it calls an “AI work assistant,” aiming to sit underneath other AI experiences, connecting to internal systems, managing permissions, and delivering intelligence wherever employees work. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Glean’s CEO and founder Arvind Jain at Web Summit Qatar to break down how enterprises are thinking about AI architecture, what's driving consolidation, and what's real versus hype in the agent space. Listen to the full episode to hear about: The fight between bundled AI from tech titans like Microsoft, Google and platform layers like Glean and its competitors. How AI adoption is reshaping leadership and organizational design. Why permissions and governance are harder problems than most companies realize. 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

11 Feb

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30 min
6 FEB

How far will Elon Musk take the ‘everything’ business as SpaceX and xAI merge?

Elon Musk has merged SpaceX and xAI, creating what might be the blueprint for a new Silicon Valley power structure. With his $800 billion net worth already rivaling historic conglomerate GE's peak market cap, and Musk being vocal about his view that "tech victory is decided by velocity of innovation," the question isn't whether a personal conglomerate can be built, but rather how far Musk himself is going to take it. Today on Equity, we're unpacking this new era of the "everything" business, whether we'll see others like Sam Altman follow suit, and more of the week's headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Waymo's new $16B funding and why Alphabet staying as majority owner matters for an eventual IPO Why everyone from Intel to Tesla is trying to break Nvidia's AI chip dominance ElevenLabs’ $11B valuation, and why some investors are doubling — and quadrupling — down as it moves beyond voice AI Positron's $230M bet on power-efficient chips as the next frontier 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 Feb

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39 min
10/12/2025

ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore

ElevenLabs has made a name for itself building realistic AI voices. What started as two Polish engineers annoyed by terrible movie dubbing has grown into a profitable company now valued at $6.6 billion, doubling its valuation from just nine months ago. The company recently announced a $100 million tender offer led by Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from a16z and others, as its tech powers everything from Fortnite characters to customer service bots and goes toe-to-toe with OpenAI to become the default voice of AI. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation with CEO Mati Staniszewski from this year's Disrupt, where he made a surprising admission: he thinks voice models will be commoditized in just a couple of years. So what's ElevenLabs' plan when everyone else catches up? Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why ElevenLabs is pivoting from just voice models to building a conversational AI agent platform How the company is tackling deepfakes with watermarking, AI detection, and device authentication Why Staniszewski believes there will soon be more AI-generated content than human content ElevenLabs' push into music generation and partnerships to fuse audio with video models Subscribe to Equity on 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

10/12/2025

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24 min
03/12/2025

This VC charges $0 for PR, and has 12 unicorns to show for it

Tech is racing ahead while society struggles to keep up. Masha Bucher, founder and GP of Day One Ventures, built her firm around closing that gap by combining venture capital with hands-on PR to help portfolio companies not just raise money, but actually break through the noise. Day One's been an early backer of companies like World, Superhuman, and Remote.com, with 12 of its portfolio companies hitting multibillion-dollar valuations. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Bucher to talk about why traditional PR is broken, how she picks founders, and why every startup founder now needs to be chronically online. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why Bucher thinks being a VC first makes her better at PR, and why the traditional PR model is "misaligned" for startups. How she vets building teams and finds the “most exceptional founders.” Why founders can't just pick one platform anymore, along with Bucher’s simple – and potentially contentious -- advice for getting started on social media. Subscribe to Equity on 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

03/12/2025

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32 min
21 JAN

Build Mode: Capital is a commodity (but your investor relationships aren’t)

Today on Equity, we're teaming up with our newest podcast, Build Mode. In this interview, Build Mode host Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Ross Fubini of XYZ Ventures and Leslie Feinzaig of Graham & Walker Ventures to pull back the curtain on how VCs build their own go-to-market strategies. They dig into what it’s really like raising a first fund, why founder-market fit applies to investors too, and how the best investor relationships start years before you ever need the money. 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

21 Jan

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45 min

TechCrunch podcasts cover the business of technology, startups, venture capital funding, crypto, and the humans behind it all.

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Who's really running AI? Inside the billion-dollar battle over regulation, with Alex Bores

Is crypto growing up? Tether risk, Stripe’s stablecoin play, and the GENIUS Act explained

Google Cloud's VP for startups on reading your "check engine light" before it's too late

AI burnout, billion-dollar bets, and Silicon Valley's Epstein problem

This Sequoia-backed lab thinks the brain is 'the floor, not the ceiling' for AI

Glean’s fight to own the AI layer inside every company

How far will Elon Musk take the ‘everything’ business as SpaceX and xAI merge?

ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore

This VC charges $0 for PR, and has 12 unicorns to show for it

Build Mode: Capital is a commodity (but your investor relationships aren’t)

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