Equity

When US District Court Judge Amit Mehta found that Google had acted illegally to maintain its monopoly in online search, it was seen as a major defeat for Google. The decision could alter the way the tech giant does business, shake up opportunities for search startups, and even change the structure of the internet. While Google plans to appeal either way, there's another antitrust case coming up t...

In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast Mary Ann Azevedo, Devin Coldewey, and Equity's newest voice Margaux MacColl are here to discuss three major deals of the week. First up is the $80 million round for Story, which is trying to apply that ol' web3 magic to AI and talent management. Next, Mary Ann attempts to untangle the knotty, weird term sheet for Bolt: $450 million. But is th...

What is the right way to regulate AI? There appears to be as many different answers to that as there are regulators. On today's episode of Equity, we're bringing you a live interview from TechCrunch's recent Strictly VC event. Equity co-host Becca Szkutak sat down with Helen Toner, the director of strategy and foundational research grants from the Center of Security and Emerging Technology and a f...

This week on Equity Kirsten Korosec and Mary Ann Azevedo were joined by one of TechCrunch’s resident AI experts, Devin Coldewey. They broke down their deals of the week: WeRide, a Chinese autonomous vehicle startup, seeking an initial public offering in the United States at a $5 billion valuation, EliseAI, the company offering AI solutions to landlords, raised $75 million and became a unicorn, and...

Enterprise AI is booming so it’s no wonder that, as companies figure out how to implement it, the industry of AI infrastructure is emerging. This week, Equity is bringing you an episode of our sister show, Found.  Becca and Dom talk to Nick Frosst from Cohere, the AI company building natural language models for enterprise customers. They discuss why Frosst thinks the AI boom isn’t built on a bubbl...

In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo and Becca Szkutak kick off the show dissecting a bill which aims to regulate AI at the model level. Naturally, some VCs and founders as well as students and professors are in an uproar about it. But we have to ask, is regulation in the name of safety such a bad thing? Short answer: It depends. Then the trio...

In today’s episode of Equity Podcast, Mary Ann Azevedo talked to Flourish Ventures co-founders Tilman Ehrbeck, Emmalyn Shaw and Arjuna Costa about a variety of topics, including how their investment themes have evolved in the past 5 years and what trends they’re most excited about today. We also got their opinion on M&A deals in fintech, AI and founder wellness, among other things. The trio founde...

On today's Friday news roundup, we just had to talk about AI hardware taking on a new shape with Friend’s $99 necklace. The pendant gives you an AI friend to talk to and…that’s about it. Friend’s pitch is that its wearable can help combat loneliness, but other AI hardware products that have come to market lately – like Humane’s Ai Pin and Rabbit’s r1 – have fallen short of expectations. Even OpenA...

Global startup funding was up 16% in the second quarter, according to Crunchbase data, led by an uptick in mega-rounds. That increase was led, unsurprisingly, by the AI sector. Funding to companies in AI made up 30% of all dollars invested and actually doubled quarter over quarter to $24 billion. On today's episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Mary Ann was joined by Gené Teare, a Senior Data Ed...

Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback. First up, Rebecca took a look at fintech giant Stripe’s acquisition of four-year-old competitor Lemon Squeezy. The buy will allow Stripe to beef up its merchant of record selling “in a big way,” according to Stripe...

This week felt like two weeks rolled into one. To kick things off, Mary Ann Azevedo walked everyone through Clio’s huge fundraise. The Canadian legal tech company raised $900 million at a $3 billion valuation — a very large sum anytime, but especially in this market. Impressively, the company is still growing rapidly, which isn't easy to do when you’re at such a late stage. We talked about the dri...

Maven Ventures General Partner Sara Deshpande has been investing in the consumer tech space for a decade. Over time, the seed-stage venture firm has backed the likes of Zoom, Cruise, Hello Heart, Perplexity and x. AI and has grown to over $200 million in assets under management. Now, with a new $60 million fund — and plans to write six to eight checks of up to $1.5 million each year — Deshpande jo...

On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan did a deep dive into the CrowdStrike outage that affected around 8.5 million Windows devices around the world, causing disruptions in air travel, banking, hospitals, media outlets, federal agencies and businesses of all kinds. The outage began when CrowdStrike, a cloud security giant, sent out a defective software update. While CrowdStrike quickly ident...

To kick off this week's news roundup, Kirsten walked us through Elon Musk’s recent declaration of his intent to move both SpaceX and X’s headquarters out of California to Texas. Whether or not he’ll see those plans through remains to be seen, but of course, the Equity crew had thoughts. We then got into the deals of the week.  First up, we talked about Sequoia Capital’s emailing LPs in funds raise...

Renegade Partners co-founders Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek have seen it all in their careers — notably over the past four years when they launched their first fund as the COVID pandemic took hold and navigated the economic roller coaster that followed.  Now, with a second $128 million fund — and a plan to write checks of up to $10 million into 20 startups — Quintini and Wincek join TechCrun...

On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan explored Google’s reported talks to acquire Wiz, a cloud security company, for around $23 billion. Wiz provides an “all-in-one approach to cloud security,” pulling data from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and others, then scanning it all for security risk factors – something that Google might see as a good way to fortify its own clou...

Mary Ann was off this week, and Kirsten took the lead with Becca Szkutak and Rebecca Bellan in the co-host seats. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and more, so let's get into it! For our first deal of the week,  one of the many lawsuits Musk faces after firing 6,000 Twitter employees after his 2022 takeover was dismissed. The result may be good news for Musk, but it doesn’t...

Mike Maples Jr. is a prolific angel investor and co-founder of early-stage venture firm Floodgate. Over the years, he’s taken a lot of bets. Some have paid off handsomely (Twitter, Twitch, Lyft and Bazaarvoice, for example). Others have not. On today's episode of Equity, Mary Ann sat down with Mike to dig into a number of topics, including some of his most memorable investments, the one that got a...

On today's episode of Equity, we're taking a look at news you might've missed over the holiday weekend here in the U.S., starting with the recent OpenAI security breach. While it doesn't seem that people have to be too worried about what the hackers actually accessed, the fact that it happened is worth paying attention to. TechCrunch's Devin Coldeway argues that AI companies are treasure troves of...

What’s the common thread between Tesla, building startups, General Motors, venture capital and Lyft?  Jon McNeill, co-founder and partner of DVx Ventures, joins TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec on Equity to discuss how Elon Musk’s pay package has influenced founders, when it makes sense to go light on cash and heavy on equity, and his firm’s unique approach to investing that eschews the tradition...

Mary Ann, Haje and Kirsten are back on the mic for this week's episode, which was is jam-packed with deals, hot topics, and the latest dramaaaaaa in the tech world.  For Deals of the Week, Haje wanted to chat about Formation Bio, an AI-focused drug development startup that just raised a whopping $372 million in Series D funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Next, Kirsten broke down the surprising p...

Today, we’re bringing you a conversation from TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event in DC earlier this month, where TechCrunch Editor in Chief & General Manager Connie Loizos sat down with Luther Lowe, who serves as Y Combinator’s Head of Public Policy. Lowe joined the accelerator last fall from Yelp, where he was SVP of Public Policy. Connie and Luther touched on antitrust efforts to reign in big tech, Y...

In a press release this morning, the European Commission named Apple as the first of tech’s so-called “gatekeepers” to be charged for violating the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Apple is one of six tech giants named by the European Commission as “gatekeepers” last year, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft. While we continue to keep our eyes on the EU’s attempts to ensure a compet...

This week, co-hosts Mary-Ann Azavedo and Haje Kamps were joined by the ever-insightful Kirsten Korosec to dive into the latest and greatest happenings in the startup world.  Kicking things off, our trio of hosts break down three major deals of the week. First, there's Waabi, an autonomous trucking startup that just closed a whopping $200 million Series B round. Kirsten Korosec provides an inside l...

Last week, Brex announced that it would be ditching its co-CEO model, and that got Equity hosts Haje Kamps and Mary Ann Azevedo wondering about co-CEO teams and the effectiveness of the structure overall. Brex, founded in 2017 by Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras, initially thrived under the co-CEO structure, with Pedro focusing on internal operations and Enrique handling external relations....