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  • Apple's lawsuit couldn't come at a worse time for OpenAI

    Apple's lawsuit couldn't come at a worse time for OpenAI
    2026/07/17
    Apple filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI last Friday, and it's not messing around. The complaint alleges a pattern of misconduct reaching all the way up to OpenAI's chief hardware officer and claims more than 400 former Apple employees now work at the company. OpenAI's response so far has been carefully hedged, and the timing couldn't be worse with the company reportedly eyeing an IPO as early as later this year. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the lawsuit could mean for OpenAI's own hardware ambitions and IPO timeline, plus a bigger theme running through the week's news: how much should anyone trust AI companies with their data? Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is warning enterprises about handing data over to AI labs, and whether open source is really a way out of the “Trojan horse” data-trust problem How forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) are changing the relationship between AI labs and their enterprise customers Why General Catalyst just handed David Beckham's health drink startup a $1 billion customer value fund The scoop on a new $200M drug-discovery startup from an ex-OpenAI researcher 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 00:40 Would you want Sam Altman listening to you? 01:53 Apple sues OpenAI over trade secrets 13:24 Satya Nadella's warning: "you're paying twice" with your data 19:03 Open source vs. going deeper with AI labs 24:52 General Catalyst gives David Beckham's health drink startup $1B 30:05 Ex-OpenAI researcher raises $200M for drug discovery startup 32:58 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    35 分
  • Inside Ode with Anthropic, the private equity-backed startup betting AI services are the future of enterprise

    Inside Ode with Anthropic, the private equity-backed startup betting AI services are the future of enterprise
    2026/07/15
    Can a handful of engineers really do the work of an army of consultants? That’s the bet behind Ode with Anthropic — the joint venture dedicated to embedding forward-deployed engineers in enterprise firms, backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs and others. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Ode’s leaders Chris Taylor and Eddie Siegel, who founded Fractional AI, the applied AI services startup that Ode acquired earlier this year to serve as the new venture’s core. The three discuss why so many enterprise AI pilots never make it to production and why they think AI-native services are about to become one of the biggest categories in tech. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: The case for AI-native services, and why Ode believes small teams of applied AI engineers can unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in business value. Why the company is hiring experienced generalists and former founders instead of AI researchers, and how it's turning them into elite FDEs. Whether an AI services company can scale like software, yet maintain a boutique feel, and why Taylor believes Ode could one day become a trillion-dollar business. 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 00:30 Fractional AI becomes "Ode with Anthropic" 1:13 Why non-AI companies are the real AI winners 2:04 Working with Blackstone, Anthropic, and beyond 3:05 Inside a real project: fixing LogicGate's bottleneck 7:29 How long does it take from hypothesis to production? 9:19 Measuring ROI: revenue, efficiency, and evals 16:37 Model choice vs. workflow redesign, and why it's Claude-first 23:10 Hiring generalists over specialized AI talent 26:39 Can this scale without turning into another consulting firm? 30:49 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    31 分
  • Open source AI matters more than ever, according to Hugging Face's Clem Delangue

    Open source AI matters more than ever, according to Hugging Face's Clem Delangue
    2026/07/10
    Open source AI is booming, according to Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue. The company has grown into something like a GitHub for AI in recent years, where AI builders can share and download open models and datasets, now used by roughly half the Fortune 500. Delangue has seen the same story play out again and again: companies start out on frontier APIs, but as they scale, the costs push them towards open source models. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talked to Delangue about why the open vs closed source fight matters in the wake of Anthropic’s halted Fable release, and why he's worried about the possibility that a handful of big companies could end up controlling everything. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How Chinese labs are producing the majority of open models being downloaded in the U.S., and why Delangue thinks that's a problem worth fixing rather than a reason to distrust open source itself. How Hugging Face is choosing capital efficiency over the usual Silicon Valley fundraising playbook, including why the company turned down a large investment from Nvidia last year. Why he sees robotics as an even more urgent case for open, transparent AI than chatbots or coding tools, given how much of your home and family life a robot ends up seeing. 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 00:33 Breaking down open source growth data 04:34 What's driving the open source resurgence 08:47 Who’s using Hugging Face, and how? 10:28 China overtakes the US in open model downloads 16:34 Safety, access, and the risk of AI power concentration 24:03 Hugging Face's approach to legal risk 28:00 Turning down Nvidia 31:47 Underinvested opportunities: local AI, bio, robotics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    38 分
  • Your gaming data could be the secret to AGI, according to this Bezos-backed startup

    Your gaming data could be the secret to AGI, according to this Bezos-backed startup
    2026/07/08
    When it comes to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), large language models just don’t have what it takes. Models like ChatGPT and Claude are great at text, but they're less skilled at understanding how things actually move through space and time — an essential skill for producing intelligence that generalizes. That gap, it turns out, might be filled by gaming data. That's the bet behind General Intuition, a Bezos-backed, New York-based startup valued at $2.3 billion that just closed a $320 million round with Coatue, Eric Schmidt, and researchers at MIT and Google DeepMind joining its list of investors. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte joins Rebecca Bellan to dig into why world models trained on gaming data might be the next big leap in physical AI, how the company spun out of gaming platform Medal TV, and where the ethical red lines are when your models could end up being used for defense applications. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How eight minutes of real-world data was enough to get a robot navigating an office cold. Why General Intuition turned down an acquisition offer reportedly from OpenAI to stay independent, and why having investors who back your mission is essential to building a generational company. How the company is trying to get ahead of AI job displacement by building Nerve, a marketplace connecting gamers to data labeling and teleoperations work. 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
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    26 分
  • Best of Build Mode: Think like a VC

    Best of Build Mode: Think like a VC
    2026/07/03
    Instead of our usual news rundown, Equity is sending you off into the 4th of July weekend with a special episode of our sister podcast Build Mode. Season 3 launches July 9th, but before it does, Build Mode is revisiting some of the best fundraising and startup advice from the investors featured in last season. From choosing the right investors to building a differentiated go-to-market strategy, these venture capitalists and founder-turned-investors share hard-earned lessons on fundraising, portfolio dynamics, investor-founder relationships, and what separates the companies that successfully raise their next round from those that don't. In this episode, you'll hear from: ⁠⁠Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Ross Fubini, managing partner at XYZ Venture Capital⁠ and Leslie Feinzaig, founder and general partner at Graham & Walker⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Paul Irving, partner at GTMfund⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Leah Solivan, founder of TaskRabbit and founder of Precedent VC⁠⁠ Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:19 Yuri Sagalov (General Catalyst): The three types of investors and who founders should avoid 03:29 Ross Fubini (XYZ VC) & Leslie Feinzaig (Graham & Walker): What great investors actually bring to the table 08:36 Paul Irving (GTMfund): The go-to-market signals investors look for 12:30 Leah Solivan (TaskRabbit / Precedent VC): Understanding the competition inside your investors' portfolios 14:30 Outro Subscribe to Build Mode on⁠⁠ ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠ ⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠, or⁠⁠ ⁠wherever you like to listen⁠⁠⁠. And watch the full videos on⁠⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    16 分
  • Humble Robotics’ CEO says the tech finally caught up to the vision for autonomous vehicles

    Humble Robotics’ CEO says the tech finally caught up to the vision for autonomous vehicles
    2026/07/01
    We've said it before, and we'll say it again: the autonomous vehicle space is starting to feel like a repeat of the 2016 hype cycle. Travis Kalanick is back building a robotics company, and the talent wars and capital are heating up the same way they did the first time around. The money's flowing back, and it's the people who lived through that first wave who are building the next one. Humble Robotics founder and CEO Eyal Cohen is one of them. Cohen was at Otto when Uber came calling, later followed Anthony Levandowski to Pronto, and after two decades bouncing between deep tech bets in the Bay Area, his new company came out of stealth in April with $24 million to build a fully autonomous, cabless electric hauler for freight. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Cohen joins Kirsten Korosec to talk about AV déjà vu and what he's learned from 15 years of building startups across electrification, solar, and robotics. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: The bet behind Humble's cabless design and why "the simplest possible robotics platform" was the starting point How vision models are replacing months of hand-built engineering work that used to go into recognizing things like traffic cones and stop signs Why Cohen thinks culture beats out compensation when it comes to securing talent in robotics these days 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
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    29 分
  • OpenAI's Jalapeño chip is Big Tech's spiciest move away from Nvidia yet

    OpenAI's Jalapeño chip is Big Tech's spiciest move away from Nvidia yet
    2026/06/26
    Nvidia has dominated the AI chip market for years, but the era of total dependence might be ending. OpenAI just shared its plans to spice things up with Jalapeño, its custom inference chip built with Broadcom, joining Google, Apple, and SpaceX in a growing list of companies building their way out of single-supplier risk. The goal isn't a clean break so much as a hedge. Custom silicon means more control, hardware tuned to specific needs, and the kind of performance gains Apple unlocked when it ditched Intel. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the custom chip trend means for the industry and a few deals of the week worth watching. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How Groq’s $650M raise after Nvidia swept away its top talent might be the comeback story of the year AI agents getting loopy and why Claude Code creator Boris Cherny thinks these loops are “just as important and as big a step” as the leap from source code to agents Whether the public markets are warming up to humanoid robots as Agility Robotics plans to go public via SPAC A24 taking investment from Google DeepMind to develop a new AI toolkit for filmmakers 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
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    36 分
  • What if the AI giants are building the roads, not the destinations? Chi-Hua Chien thinks he knows who wins

    What if the AI giants are building the roads, not the destinations? Chi-Hua Chien thinks he knows who wins
    2026/06/24
    In this episode, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos talks 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 suggests the biggest long-term winners of the AI era may be the application companies built on top of them. They talk about why AI startups are reaching unprecedented revenue levels with remarkably small teams, what’s driving today’s soaring valuations, and why he believes many infrastructure businesses will eventually face the same commoditization pressures seen in previous technology cycles. He also shares what he’s seeing inside consumer AI, from hyper-personalized entertainment and women’s health platforms to new products built around voice, agents, and individualized experiences. And they discuss the increasingly public tensions between founders and VCs, why some of the most interesting fintech innovation is happening outside the U.S., and why Chi-Hua believes one of the biggest opportunities in consumer technology may be helping people reconnect in the real world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 分