Equity

Women are making real progress in venture capital, according to a new report from the nonprofit All Raise. The percentage of women and nonbinary partners at top firms has doubled in recent years, even as the market cooled.

On this week’s Equity, All Raise CEO Paige Hendrix Buckner joins TechCrunch’s Dominic-Madori Davis to unpack what’s driving that momentum, and where the industry is still falling short. Pay gaps persist, and the largest firms still have few women in senior partner roles, but there are signs of meaningful change ahead.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How investors are responding to the current DEI backlash

The impact that women starting their own firms are having on the industry

What progress All Raise hopes to see in the next five years

Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned. 

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

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

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OpenAI is making a serious play for the federal government. The company just announced a deal that gives U.S. agencies access to ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per year. Yes, really. It’s part of a new “blanket purchase agreement” aimed at getting OpenAI’s tools into federal departments fast and a clear sign the company wants to lock down the public sector before anyone else can.

The move is aggressive, strategic, and could shape how generative AI gets deployed across everything from admin work to national security. It also puts serious pressure on rivals like Anthropic, Google, and Amazon to figure out their own government strategy, and fast.

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec is joined by guest hosts Rebecca Bellan and Sean O’Kane to break down what OpenAI’s bold government push means for the broader AI landscape, data privacy and model access in federal settings, and how this all connects to OpenAI’s longer-term roadmap — including what we know so far about GPT-5.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

Tesla’s board re-ups Elon Musk’s $29 billion stock package, and what happens if that $56B pay plan comes back from the dead

How Joby Aviation’s acquisition of Blade is an infrastructure play

Why Vogue’s AI-generated Guess ad is sparking a backlash in the fashion world

Post-acquisition whiplash as Cognition lays off staff just three weeks after buying rival AI startup Windsurf

As always, Equity will be back for you next week, so don’t miss it!

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

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

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Figma managed something rare in today's market: it stayed independent, survived a failed Adobe acquisition, and went public on its own terms. But its post-IPO performance tells a more complex story about startup exits in 2025.

Jai Das, President and Partner at Sapphire Ventures, joined Rebecca Bellan on Equity to discuss what Figma's IPO really signals about the current climate for startup exits. With more than a dozen IPOs under his belt including MuleSoft, Square, and Box, Das broke down Figma's debut, which was 40x oversubscribed and briefly surged to $125 per share before settling closer to $90.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned.

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us 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

Meta is still going all-in on the AI talent war, with Mark Zuckerberg reportedly reaching out to top recruits himself, throwing around jaw-dropping compensation packages that top $1 billion over multiple years. And Meta’s latest target? Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machines Lab. It's a bold play in an already overheated market.

While Zuck eyes new talent, Anthropic is preparing to raise a massive round of its own at a staggering $170 billion valuation, nearly tripling its worth in just months. On paper, it looks like the AI cash floodgates are wide open. But all this endless money raises some serious questions about sustainability.

On today's episode of Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Max Zeff unpack the reality behind these eye-popping figures. With compensation packages skyrocketing and funding rounds swelling, how long can this race actually last?

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

Figma’s IPO, which is massively oversubscribed ahead of its NYSE debut

Ramp’s rapid rise to a $22.5 billion valuation in just 45 days

Why the Pentagon’s Golden Dome defense program may not be the big break startups are hoping for

The escalating AI chip race, from Groq’s $600 million raise to Tesla’s $16.5 billion deal with Samsung, all while geopolitical tensions flare over chip exports to China

Equity will be back for you next week, so don’t miss it!

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us 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

If you've been hearing about Trump's AI Action Plan and wondering who it actually benefits, you're not alone.

On today's episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Amba Kak and Dr. Sarah Myers West from the AI Now Institute, a think tank focused on the social implications of AI and the consolidation of power in tech industry. Their recent report, dubbed Artificial Power, lays out the political economy driving today's AI frenzy and what’s at stake for everyone else.

Artificial Power pushes back on what AI Now calls the "too big to fail" myth, arguing that AI companies are pouring billions into massive compute infrastructure and foundational models, often with government support, despite shaky business models and limited public accountability. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about:

AI’s growing consolidation and how it mirrors Big Tech’s power dynamics.

Why Silicon Valley is cheering on Trump's AI agenda, and the challenges of regulating AI.

The disconnect between AGI hype and current, real-world harms.

What a democratic, just, and accountable AI future could look like.

Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned.

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us 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

The big AI companies seem to be in a celebratory mood after President Donald Trump unveiled his AI Action Plan — not surprising, perhaps, since the plan was shaped by Trump's Silicon Valley allies.

Today, on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha look at how the Trump administration plans to reshape the AI landscape, making it harder for environmental regulators to block data center construction, for state governments to oversee AI development and safety, and for tech companies to develop what conservatives see as "woke" AI.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about this week's startup and tech news, including:

Equity will be back for you next week, so don't miss it!

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us 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

AI is entering a new phase where access to top talent is becoming as important as, if not more important than, compute or data. The market for AI researchers is so overheated, it’s starting to look a lot like pro sports — complete with outsized contracts and unprecedented infrastructure needs.

On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan chatted with Deedy Das, principal at Menlo Ventures. Das has seen this shift from multiple angles, first as an engineer and product leader at Google, Facebook, and AI startup Glean, and now as an investor helping technical founders figure out how to build enduring companies in this new AI landscape.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Why Meta is spending billions on both compute and researchers.

How compensation packages and acquisitions are warping startup hiring and retention.

What motivates top researchers to leave, even when they’ve already made millions.

How VCs are thinking about key-person risk in the AI era.

Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned.

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, Mira Murati, just raised one of the largest seed rounds in history. Murati secured $2 billion in that seed round for Thinking Machines Lab — a startup so early, it hasn’t even revealed what it’s working on yet. The move is raising eyebrows across Silicon Valley, and it’s only the latest in a wave of top researchers splintering off from OpenAI to chase their own AI moonshots.

Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Rebecca Bellan and Anthony Ha break down what’s fueling the OpenAI talent shuffle, investor enthusiasm, and a former employee’s behind-the-scenes peek inside the company. Either way, the team agrees: seed rounds really have changed.

Listen to the full episode to hear more news from the week, including:

The drama around xAI's safety practices keeps coming, with researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic publicly criticizing Musk's AI startup over Grok's latest scandals and what they reveal about broader AI safety gaps

Uber investing hundreds of millions into premium robotaxis with Lucid and Nuro. Kirsten and Rebecca have some thoughts on whether this is a smart move or more AV déjà vu

The AI coding assistant sector is heating up with major acquisitions. Devin-maker Cognition acquired Windsurf just days after Google poached the latter’s leadership in what's becoming a pattern of reverse acquihires

Jack Dorsey's latest string of vibe-coding projects and nonprofit hacker collective, all pointing back to his long-standing push for decentralized tech.

Equity will be back for you next week, so don’t miss it!

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

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

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hugging Face’s new AI robot, the Reachy Mini, has already racked up $1 million in sales just five days after launch. But the company isn’t trying to build a chore-doing humanoid just yet. Instead, Hugging Face sees the Reachy Mini as a hackable, desk-friendly device that's part entertainment, part entry point for developers and consumers to experiment with AI in physical form.

On this episode of Equity, co-founder Thomas Wolf joins to explain why open-source AI needs hardware, how Hugging Face is thinking about robotics long term, and what might happen if people actually start coding apps for their robots.

We'll also get into:

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

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

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hugging Face just launched Reachy Mini, an open source AI robot with big googly eyes and not much utility, and that’s kind of the charm. On this episode of Equity Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha break down the bot's debut, why it’s giving Seinfeld energy, and what it says about the future of open source hardware.

Listen to the full episode to hear more news from the week, including:

Grok’s wild week and Linda Yaccarino’s abrupt exit from X

How Rivian’s micromobility spinoff, Also, snagged another $200 million to build e-bikes, even though it hasn’t launched a product yet. 

LangChain reportedly closing a new round that would push its valuation to $1 billion, thanks in part to a pivot toward monetizing its developer tools

Equity will be back next week, so stay tuned!

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

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

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices