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Equity

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. 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.

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  • 40 episodes
  • a few times a week
  • Avg 33 min
  • English

Episodes 40

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  • September 30 · 32 min

    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 Health 06:22 — Why Healthcare Is So Hard to Fix 08:23 — Inside a $500 Neko Health Scan 12:35 — Can Preventative Healthcare Scale? 14:20 — The Risks of VC-Backed Healthcare 17:28 — How AI Is Changing Medicine 22:55 — Is AI in Healthcare Worth the Risk? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • September 18 · 35 min

    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. 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.

  • September 11 · 39 min

    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

  • September 2 · 25 min

    We're ‘dangerously close’ to dead internet theory according to Pangram's CEO

    The internet has a trust problem, and it’s not just because social media feeds are filling up with AI slop. AI-generated text and images are now making their way into job applications, product reviews, and even insurance claims, leaving platforms and users alike scrambling to figure out what’s real. A handful of startups have cropped up in the past couple of years to become the “trust layer” the internet needs — including Pangram. The startup recently snapped up $9 million for its AI detection system and landed a partnership with Substack, which is now using Pangram’s tech to show readers which of their favorite authors use AI to write their newsletters. Pangram also recently dropped a new AI image detection tool. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Pangram co-founder and CEO Max Spero joins Rebecca Bellan to dig into the promise of AI detection tools and where to draw the line between AI assisted and AI generated. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Spero thinks the internet could be “dangerously close” to the dead internet theory becoming reality within a few years. Why figuring out how much AI went into something is harder — and potentially more useful — than simply labeling it AI or human. The stakes of getting AI detection wrong, especially when false positives involve sensitive images. Why Spero thinks the “bottom tier” of writing jobs may be gone for good, while genuinely good human writing could become more valuable. 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 1:15 Building Pangram: from binary detector to gauging AI assistance 2:06 Why job applications, reviews, and Amazon are drowning in slop 5:39 How Pangram actually spots AI writing 9:26 Where people draw the line on AI-assisted vs. AI-generated 12:50 The false positive problem, and "America has a Pangram problem" 14:30 Detecting fake images, now that AI photos are scarily good 19:13 Competing with GPTZero, Winston, and building "core infrastructure" 21:43 Will good writing jobs actually come back? 23:36 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 28 · 33 min

    Will TikTok and YouTube follow Meta’s new rules for teens?

    Earlier this week, Meta agreed to pay $18 billion and make sweeping changes to how minors access its social networks to settle a lawsuit brought by 29 states. But the eye-popping settlement figure wasn't what caught the attention of the Equity podcast team. Instead, it was what Meta did next. The social media giant sent an open letter to TikTok and YouTube asking the companies to join it in setting industry-wide standards for teens, including daily time limits, blocking access to apps at night, and restricting notifications during school hours. But will these other companies follow? The Equity team doesn't think they will. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, and Sean O'Kane dig into the Meta settlement, what it could mean for other social media companies, and more of the week’s headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How investors are pouring money into robotics startups and driving up valuations. For instance, Generalist reached a $3 billion valuation, while General Intuition hit the $6 billion mark. Even though robotics is a hot sector, there is pain point: robots still lack the know-how to do value-creating work. What senior reporter Sean O'Kane discovered when he dug into OSHA data connected to robotaxi companies like Waymo and Zoox. What self-driving truck startup Gatik's $200 million raise means for the sector. Hugging Face is reportedly being acquired by Nvidia. The team weighs in what this means for the industry. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 19 · 32 min

    AI has a GPU pricing problem. Silicon Data wants to fix it.

    Rebecca Bellan is joined by ⁠Steve Hou⁠, head of research at Silicon Data, to discuss the health of the AI buildout, and why the data is telling a different story than the doom and gloom headlines about depreciating chips and ⁠stalled⁠ ⁠data centers⁠. 

  • August 7 · 28 min

    Jill Lepore on the ‘Artificial State’ and why Silicon Valley's leaders are bad sci-fi readers

    On this episode of TechCrunch's⁠ Equity⁠ podcast, Anthony Ha talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore about her upcoming book and why she thinks today's AI leaders — who promise a future where AI makes government more efficient, more responsive, and maybe even unnecessary — are selling an old fantasy in new packaging. 

  • August 5 · 31 min

    Why Lightspeed is going all-in on creator-led venture capital

    On this episode of Equity, Lightspeed Venture Partners' Claire Zau and Josh Machiz join Dominic-Madori Davis to unpack whether the "creator-investor" is becoming a real function in venture capital or just a trend firms are still figuring out.

Showing 1–20 of 40 episodes