Equity

By TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane, Theresa LoconsoloBusiness Entrepreneurship News Technology Business News

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Equity episodes

October 28The 'Vulnpocalypse' is coming for the internet’s aging code, says Wiz’s CTO
The PHP scare may have faded from your feed, but the cleanup is far from over. Last week, two critical bugs in the open source language behind roughly 70% of websites left organizations scrambling to fix their systems, with some taking sites offline until the vulnerabilities could be patched. According to researchers who found the bugs, this is only the beginning, as AI changes how quickly novel vulnerabilities can be uncovered and exploited.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks with Tomer Schwartz, CTO of Exposure Management & AppSec at Google-owned Wiz, who was part of the scramble --- alongside OpenAI, research group Calif, and the PHP team --- to fix the bugs. On the show, Schwartz and Bellan get into what the race looked like from the inside, how early-stage startups can build with security in mind, and why patching by hand won’t scale.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Why Tomer says Wiz couldn’t have found these bugs without AI, and how custom tooling tested dozens of ideas over a weekend.
How a bug was able to sit in plain sight for more than a decade, and what changed to make it exploitable.
Why leaks are almost baked into coordinated disclosure, and how Wiz planned for it.
Who’s still unpatched and whether small business owners running WordPress sites need to worry.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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32 min
October 23The PHP Armageddon reminds us that the internet is held together by glue and dreams
The internet is having an off week, to say the least.
Security researchers at OpenAI and Google-owned Wiz used AI to uncover critical flaws in PHP, the open source language behind roughly 70% of websites, including those built on WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento. The holes date back more than a decade, and now that a fix is out, companies are scrambling to patch their systems as attackers try to exploit the them.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and Anthony Ha dig into why AI-powered bug hunting could make this the first of many internet-wide scares, what Elon Musk’s careful choreography says about where a Tesla-SpaceX merger is headed, and more of the week’s headlines.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Elon Musk’s pledge to give every kid in America a SpaceX share, announced just hours after Anthropic unveiled its public benefit fund
Character.AI’s bankruptcy, Disney’s deal to hire most of its staff, and Anthony’s case for rethinking what “acquihire” means
OpenAI’s acquisition of Orchestra Bio and what it says about the company’s “no side quests” strategy
Otter’s surprise $320 million raise from General Catalyst’s growth fund
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:
0:00 – Intro: PHP security crisis, Tesla and SpaceX, and Otter.ai's $320M raise
0:55 – TechCrunch Disrupt recap and the Elizabeth Holmes documentary
2:50 – Critical PHP vulnerabilities threaten millions of websites
8:01 – AI's role in discovering and exploiting cybersecurity flaws
13:09 – The future of AI-powered cybersecurity
17:07 – Are Tesla and SpaceX finally merging?
19:10 – Elon Musk's influence over both companies' boards
22:50 – Why a Tesla-SpaceX merger could make financial sense
25:27 – Musk's plan to give American children SpaceX shares
27:08 – Character.AI's bankruptcy and Disney's involvement
30:21 – OpenAI acquires biotech startup Orchestra Bio
33:00 – Otter.ai raises $320 million from General Catalyst
35:30 – Outro

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36 min
October 21Meta and Instinct are racing to build your AI assistant. Wabi has a different idea.
It seems like every big AI player is building a personal agent. Meta has Muse, OpenAI launched Dots, and a startup called Instinct recently raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. But Eugenia Kuyda thinks the next generation of AI assistants needs to do more than book your restaurant reservations and find you hidden money in your Gmail.
Kuyda, who founded AI companion app Replika, has just launched Wabi, a personal AI agent that organizes your life into separate conversations, brings other people into the mix, and builds custom apps around what you're trying to do. The idea is to make AI less of a solo productivity tool and more of a way to spend time with the people who matter to you.

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks with Kuyda about why she thinks AI agents should bring people together instead of keeping them glued to a single chatbot, how Wabi plans to compete in a crowded and expensive market, and what it takes to get people comfortable giving an AI access to their email.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Why Kuyda thinks single-threaded AI chats get worse as you use them, and how separate threads improve the user experience.
How Wabi is approaching compute costs and monetization while its app is free.
Whether phones will remain the primary way people access AI, even as operating systems become more AI-first.
What Kuyda looks for when deciding whether an AI startup deserves users' trust.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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31 min
October 16Physical AI is more than robots, says the Nvidia veteran now investing in it
Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.
This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have its “ChatGPT moment” — that day when the shockingly capable chatbot was launched in late 2022. (General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte told Equity earlier this year that a single general foundation model would make much of today’s specialized robotics work redundant, and be that moment.)
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with Vishwanath to discuss where she’s writing first checks as the founder and managing partner of Techable VC. They also talked about what she’s learned as one of the first women executives to spin out of Nvidia and launch her own early-stage firm investing in physical AI across robotics, materials science, and life sciences.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Why Vishwanath defines physical AI as more than robots: “a molecule, a material, a medicine,” or a machine on a factory line.
What she means by “conscious automation.”
Why the best opportunities solve big problems like family-run factories that can't find workers to surgeons facing burnout.
Why she wants founders to see their VC as their moat, and how years at NVIDIA built the network she now uses for due diligence and customer introductions.
Where she thinks the U.S. and China each have the edge, and why humanoids should be good for more than dancing.
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 Intro
01:03 Amulya’s path from Intel to Nvidia, and why she left
04:39 What physical AI meant in 2018 vs. now
06:12 Beyond dancing robots: industrial and surgical use cases
09:31 What “conscious automation” means
12:12 Cutting through the hype: the “Lego era” of robotics
16:43 Why your VC should be your moat
20:30 Biggest bottlenecks for physical AI founders
22:30 U.S. vs. China in physical AI
25:43 Are humanoids just for entertainment?
28:10 The most promising near-term areas
29:22 Outro

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31 min
October 14Who’s the sheriff in AI’s wild west? (Equity Live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026)
The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane took over the Builders Stage Tuesday morning to tackle a growing challenge for the AI industry: what happens when AI agents go off-script, and who’s responsible for keeping them in check?
Recent incidents, from Anthropic pulling internal evaluations off the live internet after agents misbehaved to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calling for an “emergency brake” on AI models, have brought agent security into focus. The Equity team unpacked whether the problem calls for better engineering, new regulation, or both, and why startups are raising millions to secure AI agents.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
The Anthropic agent mishaps, including a false police report that went nowhere after landing in a spam folder
Nadella’s call for an AI emergency brake, and why the hosts wonder what took so long
The funding race to secure AI agents, from AIR’s $50 million raise to Reco’s $55 million and Oak’s $60 million for agent identity, plus Sequoia-backed Cymphony
Why independent verification and certification could be key to building trust, and whether Big Tech will buy its way out of the problem
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads.
Chapters:

00:00 Intro and what we’re excited for at Disrupt
01:34 Durability, security, and Anthropic’s rogue agents
04:41 Nadella’s “emergency brake” post
06:33 NVIDIA’s OpenShell and the engineering-vs-regulation debate
10:04 The agent security startup boom: AIR, Reco, Cymphony
13:38 When agents go rogue in real life
15:55 Certifications and standards
19:33 HiddenLayer and the jump to production
20:40 Will Big Tech just acquire these startups?
22:52 Consumer trust and agent adoption
25:05 Predictions: acquisitions vs. independent verifiers
27:26 What’s coming up at Disrupt
29:02 Outro

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30 min
October 09Amazon drops data center NDAs, and AI agents want your credit card
Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access to their inboxes, files, and credit cards — if they can get websites to let them in.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Sean O’Kane, and Rebecca Bellan dig into whether ditching NDAs will change how data center deals get done, why trust may be the real product for personal AI startups, plus a couple of deals of the week.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
The White House’s plans to make plans with its new Super Intelligence Force
Ghost’s $3,499 computer built to run AI agents around the clock, and why the Equity crew doesn’t see it going mass market
Tab, Underdog, and Hark pitching privacy as their product, plus the business model that could turn your agent into a salesperson
United, Apple, and Amazon putting up walls against outside agents
Lambda’s reported $4 billion raise, and the single customer behind $35 billion of its backlog
Uber’s $2.3 billion all-cash deal to get into the office catering space with ezCater
We’ll see you next week at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Get 25% off your tickets with code Equity25, and we’ll see you on the Builders Stage Tuesday at 9 am.
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 Intro
0:55 Trump’s “superintelligence force” and the great AI rebranding
3:19 Amazon drops NDAs on data center deals
9:17 Why the AI industry has a communication problem
12:51 Personal AI agents: finding money in your inbox
15:27 Ghost’s $3,500 computer built for personal AI
19:16 Trust is the product: privacy-first agent startups
27:36 Lambda’s $4B raise and the neo cloud backlog problem
31:22 Uber’s $2.3B move into catering
35:10 Outro

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38 min
October 07 After selling to P&G and Lululemon, these founders are building for life beyond the screen
Tristan Walker and Brynn Putnam both built and sold major consumer companies. Now, they’re building products designed to bring people together.
Today on Equity, we’re bringing you a conversation TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandom had on stage at the latest StrictlyVC event in New York. Russell sat down with Walker, who sold Bevel maker Walker & Company to Procter & Gamble and is now building leathercraft trade school Heirloom, and Putnam, who sold fitness startup Mirror to Lululemon and is now CEO of Board, a touchscreen console that combines board games and video games.
The two repeat founders talk about what they learned from their first companies, why they’re focused on physical skills and shared experiences now, and how AI could make hands-on, human connection more valuable rather than less. Walker explains why he sees growing demand for mastery and trade skills, while Putnam talks about using technology to bring people together instead of pulling them into individual screens.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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28 min
October 02Call it AI, call it Super Intelligence, only 2% of consumers are buying it
This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.” Trump also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as “super intelligence,” and meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products, even as the biggest money in AI still appears to be coming from the enterprise.

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into this week’s AI moves, the ugly economics of consumer AI, plus the shifting IPO market and a handful of startup deals.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
What Oura pulling its IPO, plus Anthropic’s leaked S-1 and OpenAI going back to private funding, says about how picky public markets have gotten
Quartermaster’s $140M raise to bring real-time sensors to an industry that AI basically hasn’t touched yet: maritime shipping
Why Atomic, a supply-chain startup from ex-Tesla vets, is already running 90% of DoorDash’s purchasing
How Startup Battlefield finalist Charter Space raised $5M to bring insurance to satellites
Speaking of Startup Battlefield, join us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where Equity will kick things off with a live show on the Builders Stage at 9 a.m. Get 25% off your tickets with code Equity25.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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39 min
September 30A 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?

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33 min
September 25Meta’s Muse just stole the spotlight from OpenAI and Anthropic
When AI leaders at OpenAI and Anthropic started talking about “pacing the frontier,” maybe someone should have asked: what pace? It’s turned into model drop week for both companies as Anthropic rolled out Opus 5.5, followed by OpenAI’s GPT-6 model updates just 90 minutes later. But the company that stole the spotlight this week was Meta, whose personal AI agent Muse is reportedly outpacing ChatGPT’s early numbers and is headed for smart glasses and a tiny Tamagotchi-style device next.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into Meta’s consumer AI strategy and what it means for the startups trying to build on top of this technology, from where the money is flowing to which AI products might actually become part of people's daily lives. They also get into a16z's new school for aspiring founders and two very different AI and hardware deals.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
How a16z's Horowitz Andreessen Academy plans to pave a new path for aspiring founders, and why the Equity crew sees echoes of the Thiel Fellowship and Silicon Valley's long-running anti-college streak
Why Oura's $2.2 billion IPO looks more like a payday for existing shareholders than a major fundraising event for the company
Ema’s $77 million raise to sell teams of AI agents that automate HR, IT, and finance workflows, with Google and Microsoft among its early enterprise customers
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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36 min

About Equity

From the publisher's feed

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…