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This week we're sharing a conversation from TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where host Connie Loizos sits down with Flock Safety founder and CEO Garrett Langley to discuss the growing backlash against his company's surveillance technology and the debate over privacy, policing, and public safety. Langley explains why cities across the country are adopting Flock's license plate readers even as others cance...

This week we're sharing a conversation from TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, host Connie Loizos sits down with all five partners at Benchmark—Peter Fenton, Erik Vishria, Chetan Puttagunta, Everett Randle, and Jack Altman—for a rare look inside one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms. The partners discuss why Benchmark raised $2 billion across two new funds, how its unconventional eq...

In this episode, Connie and Alex are joined by former Vice President Al Gore and Lila Preston, head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management, to discuss how the AI boom is reshaping the global energy transition. Gore explains why the rapid buildout of AI data centers is a cause for concern but not panic, why renewable energy and battery storage are becoming increasingly competitive, an...

Is the AI boom a bubble, or just the biggest productivity unlock in a generation? For this episode, we're sharing a conversation from StrictlyVC New York 2026. TechCrunch's Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos sat down with Keith Rabois, Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, to talk tech optimism, AI panic, and where the smart money goes next. They discussed: - Why he dismisses an Anthropic researcher's...

In this episode of StrictlyVc Download, Connie and Alex sit down with Grindr CEO George Arison to talk about how he’s transformed the company since taking over in 2022 and where he wants to take it next. Arison discusses Grindr’s rapid growth, why roughly 80% of its code is now written by AI, and how the company is using AI to rethink matchmaking and build new premium products. He also opens up ab...

In this episode, Connie is joined by Vijay Pande, co-founder of VZ and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, to discuss why he believes AI is poised to transform healthcare and create a new generation of trillion-dollar companies. Pande explains how AI could improve drug discovery and clinical trials, why better data could move medicine beyond unreliable animal models, and how technology...

This week we'r sharing a conversation from our colleagues at TechCrunch's Equity. Anthropic leaped to ⁠a $47 billion revenue run rate by May,⁠ compared to $9 billion in 2025. It’s the kind of growth that Menlo Ventures' ⁠Matt Murphy⁠ says he's never seen in 25 years of investing, not in the internet wave, not in mobile, not...

Much of American-caught fish is processed overseas, and often in China, before it comes back to the U.S. Shinkei wants to change that with robotics, computer vision, and a vertically integrated supply chain built from scratch. This episode of StrictlyVC Download was recorded at StrictlyVC Los Angeles 2026. TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos sat down with Saif Khawaja, founder and CEO of Shin...

In this episode, Connie and Alex are joined by Reed Jobs, founder and managing partner of Yosemite, to discuss the firm’s ambitious mission to make cancer nonlethal by building biotech companies from the ground up. Jobs explains why Yosemite pairs venture capital with no-strings-attached research grants, how AI is accelerating drug discovery and clinical trials, and why he believes we’re entering...

In this episode, Connie Loizos sits down with Uber Chief Product Officer Sachin Kansal to discuss the company's expanding vision beyond ride-hailing, from hotels and travel planning to AI-powered shopping and autonomous vehicles. Sachin explains how Uber decides which new products to build, why the company believes a hybrid network of human drivers and robotaxis is the future, and how AI is reshap...

In this episode, Connie Loizos and Alex Gove sit down with Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson following the company's announcement that it will go public, making it one of the first pure-play humanoid robotics companies to reach the public markets. Peggy explains why she believes the industry is moving beyond flashy demos and into real commercial deployment and how Agility built a $300 million pip...

In this episode, Connie Loizos sits down with Rippling founder and CEO Parker Conrad to discuss the company's biggest product launch in years: Rippling Data Cloud. Parker explains why he believes the future of enterprise AI depends on giving AI access to an organization's people data and business systems, not just more powerful models. He also shares how Rippling is using AI internally, what the c...

This episode features a conversation recorded live at StrictlyVC LA in El Segundo between Connie Loizos, Cheng Xu, partner at Basis Set Ventures, and Carter Reum, founder of M13. Together, they discuss whether today's AI boom represents a bubble, how investors are thinking about soaring startup valuations and ARR growth, and what it takes to build a lasting company in an increasingly competitive A...

In this episode, Connie and Alex talk with Goodwater Capital co-founder Chi-Hua Chien, whose career spans some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology shifts, from helping source Accel’s investment in Facebook as a young associate to backing a new generation of consumer and AI startups. While much of the venture world is focused on models, chips, and infrastructure, Chi-Hua argues that history sugg...

This week on StrictlyVC Download, we're bringing you a conversation from our recent event in Athens. Connie Loizos spoke with Anastasis Germanidis: Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Runway and Anatolii Kasianov: Co-Founder & Co-CEO, HOLYWATER TECH. Runway began within art school, with a sparse network and little investor insight into AI video. HOLYWATER TECH started in Kyiv with no venture capital, and a manda...

For this episode of StrictlyVC Download, we're bringing you a conversation from the StrictlyVC Athens event. Connie Loizos sat down with three seasoned investors to break down the state of venture capital, the hunt for white space, and what it actually takes to back a breakout company in 2026. Featuring: Ben Blume: Partner, Atomico Andreas Stavropoulos: Partner, Threshold Ventures Niko Bonatsos: F...

This week on StrictlyVC Download, we're sharing and interview from our 2026 event in San Francisco with TechCrunch reporter Marina Temkin and Lior Susan who is dresh off raising a $1.3 billion fund. Eclipse Ventures is doubling down on what it calls physical AI. Temkin and Susan discuss robotics, manufacturing, autonomous systems, and what it takes to build enduring companies where AI meets the ph...

In this episode, we talk with Theo Baker, a soon-to-be Stanford graduate and author of How to Rule the World, about what he found when he traded his coding ambitions for student journalism. Within his first semester, Theo broke the story that led to Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation, a months-long investigation into manipulated research images that put him in the crosshairs of...

This week, we're sharing a conversaiton from Strictly VC's recent event in San Francisco. Replit co-founder and CEO Amjad Masad joined Connie Loizos to talk about AI-driven software development, competing with major AI players, and how coding is changing as software creation becomes more accessible. Plus, he gives some insight into their back-and-forth with Apple over app store policies. Learn mor...

In this episode, we talk with Airwallex cofounder and CEO Jack Zhang about building a global financial infrastructure company by taking the long, unglamorous path. Rather than layering on top of existing banking systems, Airwallex spent a decade acquiring licenses, integrating with local payment rails, and constructing its own end-to-end network for moving money across borders. Jack shares why he...

In this episode, Connie Loizos talks with Rainmaker Securities managing director Glen Anderson about the surge in the secondary market as investors race to buy shares in some of tech’s most sought-after private companies. From SpaceX to OpenAI to Anthropic, demand is intensifying ahead of a potentially reopening IPO window. Glen explains how the secondary market really works, why some companies ha...

In this episode, we talk with Halter founder and CEO Craig Pigott about building a $2 billion agtech company that’s transforming how farmers manage livestock. Using solar-powered collars and virtual fencing, Halter helps ranchers increase productivity, monitor animal health, and rethink how land is used. Craig shares his journey from Rocket Lab to agriculture, why farming is still underserved by t...

WHOOP founder and CEO Will Ahmed joins Connie Loizos and Alex Gove on StrictlyVC Download to discuss the company’s evolution from a niche wearable for elite athletes into a fast-growing health platform. The three talk about WHOOP’s unconventional decision to skip a screen, its subscription-driven business model, and how it won over top athletes early on. They also dig into the company’s push into...

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff joins Connie Loizos and Alex Gove on StrictlyVC Download to discuss the company’s new AI-powered Search Party feature, which aims to help neighbors find lost dogs but has sparked debate about surveillance and privacy. The three discuss how the feature actually works, the company’s decision to abandon a partnership with Flock Safety, what Ring ultimately hopes to build i...

In this episode of StrictlyVC Download, Connie Loizos and Alex Gove sit down with MIT AI researcher Max Tegmark to discuss the growing clash between AI companies and the U.S. government and the bigger question of who should control increasingly powerful AI systems. From the Trump administration’s move to phase out Anthropic’s technology to the broader race toward superintelligence, Tegmark argues...