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  • Hardware's brutal week: iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power go bankrupt

    Hardware's brutal week: iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power go bankrupt
    2025/12/19
    The hardware world had a brutal week, with iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes all filing for bankruptcy. Each company faces its own mix of tariff pressures, supply chain issues, and shifting markets, but together they tell a larger story about the challenges of building physical products in an era of global trade tensions and cheap overseas competition. From the Roomba maker that almost got acquired by Amazon to the e-bike company that couldn't escape its Chinese supply chain, this week's bankruptcies are a warning sign for hardware startups everywhere. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O'Kane discuss what went wrong for three once-promising hardware companies, plus Amazon's massive OpenAI bet and Trump's new approach to AI regulation. Listen to the full episode to hear more news from the week, including: How "slop" became Merriam-Webster's word of the year — and why it's become bigger than just AI-generated content Why Databricks raised $10 billion at a $134 billion valuation (in a Series L!) instead of just going public already The Coursera-Udemy merger and whether online course platforms can survive the AI era Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction 00:24 - AI slop is Merriam-Webster's word of the year 06:07 - Amazon's $10 billion OpenAI investment 10:43 - Databricks raises $10 billion in a Series L 14:14 - Coursera acquires Udemy 19:17 - Hardware bankruptcies: iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes 26:21 - Trump's AI executive order targets state regulation 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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    33 分
  • Eclipse's Jiten Behl thinks the next unicorns won't be built in software

    Eclipse's Jiten Behl thinks the next unicorns won't be built in software
    2025/12/17
    Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse Ventures and former chief growth officer at Rivian, thinks we're entering an era of major re-industrialization in the US — one where factories run on AI-powered robots, not cheap overseas labor. Behl, who helped scale Rivian from a conference room idea in 2015 to a publicly traded EV maker, is now investing in the next wave of industrial and mobility startups, including two Rivian spinouts: Also and Mind Robotics. It's part of Eclipse's larger bet that the physical world is finally ready for the kind of disruption software saw a decade ago. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec sat down with Behl to talk about why Rivian keeps spinning out companies, what founders in the "physical world" need that software founders don't, and why automation is becoming necessary if the US wants to compete without Chinese supply chains. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why Behl looks for founders who are both "hyper-optimistic" and grounded in reality, and why that combination is surprisingly rare, even in Silicon Valley. How vertical integration worked for Rivian but won't work for most startups today. Behl's prediction that autonomy will become "real and something we can touch and feel" in the next five years. Subscribe to Equity on 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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    30 分
  • Netflix growing up, data center jet engines, and the circular AI economy

    Netflix growing up, data center jet engines, and the circular AI economy
    2025/12/12
    A baby was born in a Waymo this week, and it wasn't even the first one. What started as a novelty story quickly became a reminder of how autonomous vehicles have quietly become part of everyday life, complete with all the messiness that entails. The real coming-of-age story this week, however, wasn't happening in San Francisco's robotaxis. It was playing out in Hollywood, where Netflix made an $82 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming and studio business. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec and Anthony Ha discuss what happens when the startup that used to mail you DVDs grows up and tries to buy a legacy entertainment empire as well as the other headlines that caught their eye. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Boom Supersonic is selling jet engines to data centers to fund its supersonic flight dreams Why Hinge's CEO is leaving to start an AI dating app, and whether AI can actually fix dating The rise of AI circular deals and what CoreWeave's CEO says about companies investing in their own customers A fertility startup using AI-designed antibodies to expand beyond ovulation tracking Subscribe to Equity on 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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    28 分
  • ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore

    ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore
    2025/12/10
    ElevenLabs has made a name for itself building realistic AI voices. What started as two Polish engineers annoyed by terrible movie dubbing has grown into a profitable company now valued at $6.6 billion, doubling its valuation from just nine months ago. The company recently announced a $100 million tender offer led by Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from a16z and others, as its tech powers everything from Fortnite characters to customer service bots and goes toe-to-toe with OpenAI to become the default voice of AI. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation with CEO Mati Staniszewski from this year's Disrupt, where he made a surprising admission: he thinks voice models will be commoditized in just a couple of years. So what's ElevenLabs' plan when everyone else catches up? Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why ElevenLabs is pivoting from just voice models to building a conversational AI agent platform How the company is tackling deepfakes with watermarking, AI detection, and device authentication Why Staniszewski believes there will soon be more AI-generated content than human content ElevenLabs' push into music generation and partnerships to fuse audio with video models Subscribe to Equity on 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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    24 分
  • Nothing wants your money, AWS wants your trust, and Spotify wants your data

    Nothing wants your money, AWS wants your trust, and Spotify wants your data
    2025/12/05
    AWS announced a wave of new AI agent tools at re:Invent 2025, but can Amazon actually catch up to the AI leaders? While the cloud giant is betting big on enterprise AI with its third-gen chip and database discounts that got developers cheering, it's still fighting to prove it can compete beyond infrastructure. This week on Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the ROI on AI agents, plus the collision course between Hollywood and generative AI, and why everyone wants their own version of Spotify Wrapped. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why Hollywood filmmakers are drawing hard lines between performance capture and AI, and another spiked attempt at AI regulation Nothing's $5 million community funding round and whether letting consumers invest is genuine community-building or just IPO hype Autolane's $7.4 million raise to build "air traffic control for robotaxis" Wrapped battles from Spotify, YouTube, and others chasing their viral moment Subscribe to Equity on 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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    30 分
  • This VC charges $0 for PR, and has 12 unicorns to show for it

    This VC charges $0 for PR, and has 12 unicorns to show for it
    2025/12/03
    Tech is racing ahead while society struggles to keep up. Masha Bucher, founder and GP of Day One Ventures, built her firm around closing that gap by combining venture capital with hands-on PR to help portfolio companies not just raise money, but actually break through the noise. Day One's been an early backer of companies like World, Superhuman, and Remote.com, with 12 of its portfolio companies hitting multibillion-dollar valuations. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Bucher to talk about why traditional PR is broken, how she picks founders, and why every startup founder now needs to be chronically online. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why Bucher thinks being a VC first makes her better at PR, and why the traditional PR model is "misaligned" for startups. How she vets building teams and finds the “most exceptional founders.” Why founders can't just pick one platform anymore, along with Bucher’s simple – and potentially contentious -- advice for getting started on social media. Subscribe to Equity on 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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    32 分
  • Supabase CEO on the "painful" decisions that built a $5B company

    Supabase CEO on the "painful" decisions that built a $5B company
    2025/11/28
    Vibe coding has taken the tech industry by storm, and it's not just the Lovables and Replits of the world that are winning. The startups building the infrastructure behind them are cashing in too. Supabase, the open-source database platform that's become the backend of choice for the vibe-coding world, raised $100 million at a $5 billion valuation just months after closing $200 million at $2 billion. But co-founder and CEO Paul Copplestone has a surprising strategy: he keeps turning down million-dollar enterprise contracts, betting instead that vibe coding will birth the next generation of companies. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sat down with Copplestone to explore Supabase's rise and what it means for the database race. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why Copplestone believes "the death of Oracle won't take a generation" The technical moonshots Supabase is funding to make Postgres even more scalable How he decides which enterprise deals to turn down, and why it still "feels very painful" Subscribe to Equity on 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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    30 分
  • The Nordic startup scene has quietly become one of tech’s fastest-growing hubs

    The Nordic startup scene has quietly become one of tech’s fastest-growing hubs
    2025/11/26
    Ten years ago, raising €1 million in Copenhagen was enough to make waves in the region’s tech scene. Today, the Nordics are turning out billion-dollar companies like Lovable — which hit $200M in revenue just 12 months after launching. Dennis Green-Lieber, founder of AI-powered customer intelligence platform Propane, has had a front-row seat to that shift over the last 15 years. His take? The region's social safety net gives founders room to take real swings without putting their personal lives on the line, and they're accelerating faster than Silicon Valley as a result. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with Green-Lieber to talk about the Nordic startup ecosystem, from its collaborative culture to its deep tech future. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How Danish founders can access free quantum computing power and what that means for the region's deep tech ambitions Why the cultural shift from "don't stick your neck out" is creating a new generation of globally ambitious founders The hidden problem AI tools are creating for startups that can now ship products in days instead of months Subscribe to Equity on 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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    28 分