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10月16日

Physical AI is more than robots, says the Nvidia veteran now investing in it

Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt. This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have its “ChatGPT moment” — that day when the shockingly capable chatbot was launched in late 2022. (General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte told Equity earlier this year that a single general foundation model would make much of today’s specialized robotics work redundant, and be that moment.) On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with Vishwanath to discuss where she’s writing first checks as the founder and managing partner of Techable VC. They also talked about what she’s learned as one of the first women executives to spin out of Nvidia and launch her own early-stage firm investing in physical AI across robotics, materials science, and life sciences. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Vishwanath defines physical AI as more than robots: “a molecule, a material, a medicine,” or a machine on a factory line. What she means by “conscious automation.” Why the best opportunities solve big problems like family-run factories that can't find workers to surgeons facing burnout. Why she wants founders to see their VC as their moat, and how years at NVIDIA built the network she now uses for due diligence and customer introductions. Where she thinks the U.S. and China each have the edge, and why humanoids should be good for more than dancing. 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 01:03 Amulya’s path from Intel to Nvidia, and why she left 04:39 What physical AI meant in 2018 vs. now 06:12 Beyond dancing robots: industrial and surgical use cases 09:31 What “conscious automation” means 12:12 Cutting through the hype: the “Lego era” of robotics 16:43 Why your VC should be your moat 20:30 Biggest bottlenecks for physical AI founders 22:30 U.S. vs. China in physical AI 25:43 Are humanoids just for entertainment? 28:10 The most promising near-term areas 29:22 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 天前

Meta and Instinct are racing to build your AI assistant. Wabi has a different idea.

It seems like every big AI player is building a personal agent. Meta has Muse, OpenAI launched Dots, and a startup called Instinct recently raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. But Eugenia Kuyda thinks the next generation of AI assistants needs to do more than book your restaurant reservations and find you hidden money in your Gmail. Kuyda, who founded AI companion app Replika, has just launched Wabi, a personal AI agent that organizes your life into separate conversations, brings other people into the mix, and builds custom apps around what you're trying to do. The idea is to make AI less of a solo productivity tool and more of a way to spend time with the people who matter to you. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks with Kuyda about why she thinks AI agents should bring people together instead of keeping them glued to a single chatbot, how Wabi plans to compete in a crowded and expensive market, and what it takes to get people comfortable giving an AI access to their email. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Kuyda thinks single-threaded AI chats get worse as you use them, and how separate threads improve the user experience. How Wabi is approaching compute costs and monetization while its app is free. Whether phones will remain the primary way people access AI, even as operating systems become more AI-first. What Kuyda looks for when deciding whether an AI startup deserves users' trust. 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
10月9日

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
10月14日

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
10月2日

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
9月25日

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
10月7日

After selling to P&G and Lululemon, these founders are building for life beyond the screen

Tristan Walker and Brynn Putnam both built and sold major consumer companies. Now, they’re building products designed to bring people together. Today on Equity, we’re bringing you a conversation TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandom had on stage at the latest StrictlyVC event in New York. Russell sat down with Walker, who sold Bevel maker Walker & Company to Procter & Gamble and is now building leathercraft trade school Heirloom, and Putnam, who sold fitness startup Mirror to Lululemon and is now CEO of Board, a touchscreen console that combines board games and video games. The two repeat founders talk about what they learned from their first companies, why they’re focused on physical skills and shared experiences now, and how AI could make hands-on, human connection more valuable rather than less. Walker explains why he sees growing demand for mastery and trade skills, while Putnam talks about using technology to bring people together instead of pulling them into individual screens. 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
8月26日

From the Spotify Mafia to the Lovable Mafia: inside Stockholm's founder network

Vibe-coding darling Lovable just raised $400 million at a $13.3 billion valuation, roughly doubling its worth in eight months. But Lovable isn’t the only Stockholm startup putting up huge numbers lately — legal AI company Legora and health tech startup Neko Health are right there with it. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis is joined by Sophia Bendz, a partner at Cherry Ventures and longtime fixture of Europe’s startup scene, to unpack what’s driving startup growth in the Nordic ecosystem, from Sweden’s social safety net to the wave of U.S. capital flowing in. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How the “Spotify Mafia” set the template for founders funneling their time, capital, and hard-won lessons back into Stockholm ecosystem, and how the same cycle may be starting again with the “Lovable Mafia” Why Sweden’s social safety net might be fueling founders’ willingness to take bigger swings Why Bendz is seeing American investors flying into Stockholm and handing out term sheets with little to no diligence, and the culture clash that’s creating with local funds How Europe’s sovereignty conversation is shaping how founders and investors think about building, even as most of them still plan to IPO in New York 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 0:50 Why Stockholm’s startup ecosystem is accelerating 2:34 How Stockholm’s “Spotify mafia” passes knowledge down 4:10 Founders House and building a culture of mentorship 5:50 Does Sweden’s social safety net make founders more ambitious? 10:00 Is there a “Lovable mafia” now? 10:00 Europe’s push for tech sovereignty 14:00 The U.S. venture capital flooding Stockholm 18:08 How Europe can build more growth-stage funds 19:45 Founders are asking VCs, “How can you help me?” 21:05 Stockholm’s tech conferences 25:51 Could robotics become Stockholm’s next big thing? 29:45 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9月30日

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
9月11日

An ex-Anthropic researcher’s doomsday warning comes at a very interesting time

An Anthropic researcher resigned this week, warning in a post on X that the company is “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. The company's own alignment lead even co-signed the message rather than walking it back. It's the kind of doomer warning the AI industry has flirted with before, but the timing, with Anthropic reportedly preparing for an IPO, makes it land differently. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the latest AI safety warning and what it says about the industry's race toward increasingly capable models. Plus, Apple's first big event under new CEO John Ternus and more of the week's headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Apple leaned hard into AI at its hardware event, and how always-on features baked into the Watch and AirPods may matter more than the splashy new foldable iPhone How Stokes Space's $1 billion raise reflects a launch market that's suddenly wide open now that SpaceX is winding down its Falcon rockets Why investors poured $2 billion into coding startup Cognition at a $48 billion valuation, and what it says about how much room VCs think is left in AI coding What a $50 million seed round for floating nuclear reactors says about the scramble to power AI data centers 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 3:28 Anthropic researcher's resignation warning 9:33 What's actually being done about AI risk? 15:56 Apple's AI-first hardware event 19:56 The case against a standalone AI wearable 21:53 Always-on listening: watch, AirPods, and privacy tradeoffs 26:43 The foldable iPhone's odds 27:16 Stoke Space raises $1B for a reusable rocket 31:17 Cognition raises $2B, betting on room for more AI coding players 34:13 BlueCore Energy's floating nuclear reactors 37:38 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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Physical AI is more than robots, says the Nvidia veteran now investing in it

Meta and Instinct are racing to build your AI assistant. Wabi has a different idea.

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

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

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

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

After selling to P&G and Lululemon, these founders are building for life beyond the screen

From the Spotify Mafia to the Lovable Mafia: inside Stockholm's founder network

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

An ex-Anthropic researcher’s doomsday warning comes at a very interesting time

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