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PRED 2 D.

How Lucra raised $20M as an eSports play when every VC only wants AI

Slapping "AI" on your startup’s pitch deck is basically table stakes right now. When a founder raised $20 million from Cathie Wood's ARK Invest for an eSports gamification loyalty startup without those two letters in the spotlight, it got us wondering how the conversation even started — especially when ARK had already been burned by a company operating in the same space. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sits down with Dylan Robbins, founder and CEO of Lucra, the white-label platform turning friendly competitions into loyalty programs for brands like golf courses, arcades, and pickleball clubs. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Dylan met his ARK connection over a game of darts at a New York City bar Why pitching a non-AI company in peak AI fundraising season meant addressing it head-on, even when it had nothing to do with his business How being honest with investors about what wasn't working yet actually helped him close the round Why Lucra pivoted from consumer to B2B in 45 days (and why that pivot is what convinced ARK they weren't looking at another Skillz). 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

pred 2 d.

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32 min
6. 5.

Aurora's Chris Urmson on why self-driving trucks are finally ready (Live at HumanX)

Self-driving has been "almost here" for over a decade. But somewhere between DARPA challenges and a handful of driverless trucks hauling freight between Dallas and Houston, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson’s story changed. The self-driving truck company started commercial driverless operations last April and is now scaling from a handful of trucks to hundreds this year. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Urmson at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The pair dug into the long road from lab to highway and how physical AI differs from the LLM boom everyone else is chasing. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why long-haul trucking may crack the autonomy business case before robotaxis ever do What "verifiable AI" means and why Urmson thinks end-to-end systems are a liability when lives are on the line The surprisingly common-sense solution to the driverless truck safety triangle problem What Aurora's roadmap looks like beyond trucking, and which companies in the autonomy space have Urmson genuinely excited 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. 5.

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33 min
1. 5.

Did you know you can't steal a charity? Don't worry. Elon Musk will remind you.

Elon Musk spent the better part of three days on the witness stand this week in his lawsuit against OpenAI, and it's already getting messy. Emails, texts, and his own tweets are surfacing in court, and there are plenty more witnesses to come. Musk's argument against OpenAI? By converting the company to a for-profit model, Sam Altman betrayed the “nonprofit for the benefit of humanity” mission Musk signed up to fund. As Musk keeps reminding the courtroom: “You can't steal a charity.” On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec and Sean O'Kane break down what's actually at stake in the courtroom and what to watch for as Altman and others take the stand, plus deals, defense tech, and what Big Tech's earnings week revealed about the limits of the AI spending era. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why cloud was the winner of earnings week, and what AWS, Google, and Microsoft's numbers say about where enterprise AI spending is actually landing The scholarship app founder taking Sallie Mae to court after they acquired his startup…and began selling its student data to ad networks and universities BMW i Ventures new $300 million fund with its sights set on AI How defense tech startup Scout AI is pitching “military AGI” using vision-language-action (VLA) models 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

1. 5.

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39 min
27. 2.

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

27. 2.

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23 min
3. 4.

Space: the final frontier of AI infrastructure

Tech companies are racing to build data centers in space, pitching orbital compute as the next frontier for AI infrastructure, even as the technical and economic realities remain far from clear. Add in OpenAI’s massive $122 billion round and Bluesky’s latest AI backlash, and the message is clear: The future of AI is being shaped as much by ambition and hype as it is by real-world constraints. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane unpack these massive capital bets, user backlash, and off-world compute plans along with Whoop’s major valuation and the literal downfall of robot Olaf. Listen to the full episode to hear about: OpenAI’s $122 billion fundraise and what its near-trillion-dollar valuation says about expectations for AI. Whoop’s $575 million raise and the shift toward “wearables 2.0” (and what happens to all that data). Bluesky’s AI-powered feed builder and why it triggered a major user backlash. The rise of data centers in space and whether they are financially or physically feasible. 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 00:20 A humanoid Olaf robot collapses at Disneyland Paris 03:30 OpenAI raises $122B at an $852B valuation 11:30 Whoop lands $575M and bets big on wearable data 18:50 The risks (and value) of personal health data 23:00 Bluesky’s AI feed builder sparks backlash 30:00 Can Bluesky keep growing — and compete with X? 36:30 The race to build data centers in space 44:30 SpaceX, Starlink, and the business of orbital compute 49:30 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3. 4.

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34 min
17. 4.

Tokenmaxxing, OpenAI's shopping spree, and the AI Anxiety Gap

The gap between AI insiders and everyone else is widening, and the spending, suspicion, and even new vocabulary are starting to show it. While OpenAI is busy buying up everything from finance apps to talk shows, a certain shoe company just rebranded as an AI infrastructure play, and Anthropic unveiled a model it says is too powerful to release publicly ...but apparently not too powerful to demo to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what's actually being built in AI infrastructure, who's winning the enterprise battle between OpenAI and Anthropic, and more of the week's headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm just piled $60M into UK self-driving startup Wayve, and what Uber's $300M milestone bid says about who's winning the AV race How data center startup Fluidstack is positioning itself for the frontier labs, including a reported $50B agreement with Anthropic What Claude Code's moment at the HumanX conference reveals about where the OpenAI vs. Anthropic rivalry is actually playing out Why tokenmaxxing, and Meta's leaked internal leaderboard, might say more about optics than actual productivity 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 00:25 Allbirds is now an AI company, apparently 04:48 Why chipmakers are betting on Wayve 12:01 Fluidstack wants $1B to build AI data centers 16:24 OpenAI buys a finance app and a talk show 21:27 Anthropic vs. OpenAI in enterprise 24:15 The Anthropic model they won't release to the public 26:47 Why AI feels so distant to everyone else 30:47 What even is tokenmaxxing? 34:49 Parasail's $32M bet on cheaper AI inference 36:39 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

17. 4.

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39 min
10. 4.

Luma AI's Amit Jain on why most world model companies are getting it completely wrong

LLMs may have kicked off this AI boom, but the ceiling is closer than the hype suggests. As models run out of text data to train on, the companies and investors paying attention are already moving on. The next wave isn't better chatbots; it's machines that can understand the physical world. Luma AI, the Bay Area lab that raised over $1.4 billion from a16z, Nvidia, and Amazon, is betting on exactly that. On episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan sat down with Amit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Luma AI, at Web Summit Qatar. Together, the pair dug into where the next trillion-dollar AI opportunity actually gets built, and whether the companies chasing it even know what they're building yet. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why video, audio, and images are the real frontier for AI training data, not text What an "intelligent world model" actually is, and why Jain thinks most companies building them are getting it completely wrong The case for why AI won't kill creative jobs, and why Jain thinks studio heads are the real problem How the path from video generation to robotics to AGI is simpler than anyone's making it sound 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 01:13 Why LLMs are hitting a ceiling 02:43 The data problem & what comes after LLMs 04:30 What actually makes a world model a world model 06:05 Why 3D data is a dead end 07:39 What Luma is building next 09:08 How much humans stay in the loop 10:00 Near-term use cases for agentic video 11:22 Will AI kill jobs in film & production? 13:30 Why the entertainment industry is already dying 15:27 Why we actually need more content, not less 17:46 Luma's roadmap: generation, understanding, and robotics 19:54 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10. 4.

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22 min
18. 3.

The PhD students who became the judges of the AI industry

Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project to being valued at $1.7 billion. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-founders Anastasios Angelopoulos and Wei-Lin Chiang to determine how a team like theirs can build a neutral benchmark when the companies they’re ranking are also their backers. Listen to the full episode to hear: How Arena actually works, and why its founders say you can't game it the way you mighta static benchmark. What "structural neutrality" actually means, and whether taking money from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic is a conflict of interest. How Arena is moving beyond chat to benchmark agents, coding, and real-world tasks with a new enterprise product. Why Claude is currently winning the expert leaderboard for legal and medical use cases. Arena's bet on what comes after LLMs, and why agents are next on the leaderboard. 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 03:00 How Arena's leaderboard works, and why it's different from static benchmarks 07:00 Reproducibility concerns and how to scale 08:45 Can Arena stay independent while taking money from the labs it ranks? 11:15 Diversity, fraud prevention, and abuse mitigation 18:15 Arena's "data moat" 19:20 Agent benchmarking and expert leaderboards 21:40 Open sourcing data 22:45 How do Arena's rankings shape AI development? 24:15 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18. 3.

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26 min
6. 3.

Anthropic vs. the Pentagon, the SaaSpocalypse, and why competition is good, actually

The Pentagon has officially designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the two failed to agree on how much control the military should have over its AI models, including its use in autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. As Anthropic’s $200 million contract fell apart, the DoD turned to OpenAI instead, which accepted and then watched ChatGPT uninstalls surge 295%. As the stakes keep rising, the question remains: how much unrestricted access should the military have to an AI model? On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what startups should think about when chasing federal contracts, especially when nobody seems to know what to do with AI in Washington, and more of the week's headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Paramount’s massive deal with Warner Bros, and the Equity crew’s ideas for what the new HBO Max-Paramount+ hybrid should be called MyFitnessPal's acquisition of Cal AI, the calorie-tracking app built by teenagers Who dropped $1 billion on Pinterest’s AI mission and how the company spent it on share buybacks. (Spoiler: Kirsten has thoughts.) Anduril is raising again at a reported $60 billion valuation Whether companies should brace themselves for the SaaSpocalypse, or if it’s just another chapter of the AI hype cycle 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. 3.

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35 min
20. 3.

Nvidia has an OpenClaw strategy. Do you?

Jensen Huang took the stage at Nvidia's GTC conference this week in his signature leather jacket to deliver a two-and-a-half-hour keynote, projecting $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027, declaring that every company needs an “OpenClaw strategy,” and closing with a rambling Olaf robot that had to get its mic cut. The message was hard to miss: Nvidia wants to be foundational to everything, from AI training to autonomous vehicles to Disney parks. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down what Nvidia's growing web of AI infrastructure partnerships actually means for startups, and more of the week's headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Travis Kalanick’s return building a "wheelbase for robots" with his new startup Atoms, and the crew has questions about Kalanick’s acquisitions along the way Rivian’s partnership with Uber to build robotaxi versions of its R2 in a deal worth up to $1.25 billion, while pushing back its EBITDA target to do it Frore landing a $1.64 billion valuation for its AI chip cooling systems xAI rebooting, again, with only two of its original eleven co-founders still standing Garry Tan's Claude Code setup went viral at SXSW (Spoiler: the crew is not impressed). 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 00:20 Garry Tan's Claude Code setup goes viral at SXSW 03:37 Travis Kalanick is back with a new startup 12:51 Uber and Rivian's $1.25B RoboTaxi deal 20:54 Chip cooling startup Frore becomes a unicorn 22:56 Nvidia GTC recap: $1 trillion in sales projections 31:42 Elon Musk is rebooting xAI...again 36:37 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20. 3.

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38 min

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How Lucra raised $20M as an eSports play when every VC only wants AI

Aurora's Chris Urmson on why self-driving trucks are finally ready (Live at HumanX)

Did you know you can't steal a charity? Don't worry. Elon Musk will remind you.

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

Space: the final frontier of AI infrastructure

Tokenmaxxing, OpenAI's shopping spree, and the AI Anxiety Gap

Luma AI's Amit Jain on why most world model companies are getting it completely wrong

The PhD students who became the judges of the AI industry

Anthropic vs. the Pentagon, the SaaSpocalypse, and why competition is good, actually

Nvidia has an OpenClaw strategy. Do you?

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