Equity

Self-driving truck startup Waabi's billion-dollar fundraise isn't just about trucks.  

The deal, for $750 million up front plus another $250 million from Uber tied to deployment milestones, marks a major expansion into robotaxis for the company founded by former Uber AI chief Raquel Urtasun. It also feels like another chip from Uber on the autonomous vehicle roulette table. With more than 20 AV partners worldwide, the question isn't just whether Waabi can deliver on its plans to deploy over 25,000 robotaxis, but whether Uber's bet-on-everything strategy actually works. 

Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Sean O'Kane and Anthony Ha discussed Uber's AV partnership strategy, why Waabi's "simulation-first" approach might be different, and more of the week's headlines. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 

Anduril's drone race recruitment stunt and whether it's the future of hiring or just good PR 

Phia’s $35M raise for an AI shopping assistant as brick-and-mortar stores close their doors 

Northwood Space's $100M Series B and the booming space infrastructure market 

Who’s really winning in TikTok's messy US ownership deal, and the competitors trying to capitalize 

The IPO window cracking open, and how SpaceX plans to go through it 

Chapters: 

00:00 Intro 

02:13 Palmer Luckey's bold recruiting strategy 

04:04 Phia raises $35M for sustainable shopping 

06:27 Browser extensions & the privacy problem 

09:59 Northwood Space's $100M Series B & Space Force contract 

12:17 The rise of dual-use space companies 

14:01 Waabi's $1B valuation & beyond trucking 

16:36 Uber's strategy: Betting on every AV partner 

19:12 TikTok's US deal & immediate outage 

21:46 TikTok competitors gain ground 

24:03 IPO window opening: Ethos, Serve, and SpaceX 

27:57 Will Elon actually take SpaceX public this time? 

29:11 Outro 

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SpaceX is reportedly lining up four major Wall Street banks for a 2026 IPO that could provide the reset the market needs. 

The company just completed a tender offer at an $800 billion valuation, and secondary market demand is through the roof. If SpaceX goes public anywhere near its rumored $1.5 trillion valuation, it could trigger an IPO cascade for other late-stage unicorns like OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks. 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan spoke with Greg Martin, Managing Director at Rainmaker Securities, to discuss why this IPO feels different, how tech employees are cashing out through secondary markets before companies go public, and what investors are actually looking for in pre-IPO shares. 

Listen to the full episode to hear: 

Which other late-stage unicorns are seeing the most secondary trading action right now. 

Why SpaceX is ready to go public, despite previously saying it “wouldn't IPO until rockets were flying to Mars regularly” (and why Martin doesn’t think SpaceX will continue on its debut path if the market tanks) 

The "Elon halo effect" and how much of SpaceX's valuation is based on Musk himself 

What happens when SpaceX employees want to sell shares before the IPO 

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

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The World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos felt different this year, and not just because Meta and Salesforce took over storefronts on the main promenade. AI dominated the conversation in a way that overshadowed traditional topics like climate change and global poverty, and the CEOs weren't holding back. There was public criticism of trade policy, warnings about AI bubbles popping, and a lot of talk about what comes next for the industry. 

Meanwhile, back in Silicon Valley, AI startup Humans& raised a $480 million seed round with no product on the market, just a vision for "social intelligence" AI and a team of ex-Anthropic, Google, and xAI employees. 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane discuss why raising hundreds of millions before building a product is apparently the new norm, which conversations took over Davos this week, and more. 

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

Whether Meta's 10% layoffs at Reality Labs means the end for the metaverse, and who’s defending Meta's VR investments 

Serve Robotics' acquisition of Diligent, a startup bringing delivery bots into hospitals 

OpenAI’s rumored earbuds and what we expect to see from the AI company’s first hardware product. 

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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Today on Equity, we're teaming up with our newest podcast, Build Mode.

In this interview, Build Mode host Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Ross Fubini of XYZ Ventures and Leslie Feinzaig of Graham & Walker Ventures to pull back the curtain on how VCs build their own go-to-market strategies.

They dig into what it’s really like raising a first fund, why founder-market fit applies to investors too, and how the best investor relationships start years before you ever need the money.

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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AI companies are clustering around healthcare and fast. 

In just the past week, OpenAI bought health startup Torch, Anthropic launched Claude for Health, and Sam Altman-backed MergeLabs closed a $250 million seed round at an $850 million valuation. The money and products are pouring into health and voice AI, but so are concerns about hallucination risks, inaccurate medical information, and massive security vulnerabilities in systems handling sensitive patient data. 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with health care, what other products can expect an AI-makeover, and more. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:  

How Anthropic's co-work tool could threaten Salesforce and other enterprise software giants 

Bandcamp’s move against AI, banning AI-generated music from its platform 

Why fusion energy is heating up, with startups like Type One Energy suddenly raising hundreds of millions 

The latest on Luminar's bankruptcy and a potential bidding war overits LIDAR assets 

Chapters: 

00:00 - Introduction  

00:29 - Waymo testing in New York City? 

02:13 - Bandcamp bans AI-generated music  

04:57 - Luminar's bankruptcy and LIDAR fire sale  

10:28 - Type One Energy's fusion funding frenzy  

16:10 - AI's healthcare land grab  

23:28 - Voice AI deals heat up  

25:26 - Anthropic's co-work tool threatens enterprise software 

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AI agents are supposed to make work easier. Instead, they're creating a whole new category of security nightmares. 

As companies deploy AI-powered chatbots, agents, and copilots across their operations, they're facing a new risk: how do you let employees and AI agents use powerful AI tools without accidentally leaking sensitive data, violating compliance rules, or opening the door to prompt-based injections? Witness AI just raised $58 million to find a solution, building what they call "the confidence layer for enterprise AI." 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan was joined by Barmak Meftah, co-founder and partner at Ballistic Ventures, and Rick Caccia, CEO of Witness AI, to discuss what enterprises are actually worried about, why AI security become an $800 billion to $1.2 trillion market by 2031, and what happens when AI agents start talking to other AI agents without human oversight. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:  

How enterprises accidentally leak sensitive data through "shadow AI" usage. 

What CISOs are actually worried about right now, how the problem has evolved rapidly over 18 months, and what it will look like over the next year. 

Why traditional cybersecurity approaches don't work for AI agents. 

Real examples of AI agents going rogue, including one that threatened to blackmail an employee. 

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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After years of chatbots and image generators, AI is finally leaving the screen. At CES 2026, that shift became impossible to ignore. 

The annual tech showcase in Las Vegas was dominated by "physical AI" and robotics, from Boston Dynamic's newly redesigned Atlas humanoid robot to AI-powered ice makers (yes, really). The companies in attendance clearly want consumers to know: AI isn't just capable of answering questions anymore. It's ready to movecar parts in factories, catchcatching drones with net guns, and dance in automaker booths. 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane break down everything we saw at CES 2026 and more deals from the week that caught our eye. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about:  

Discord’s rumored IPO, years after shutting down a Microsoft acquisition 

xAI's massive $20 billion raise and the dark side of Grok's content moderation failures 

How Mobileye is getting into the humanoid robotics game with its acquisition of Mentee Robotics 

OpenAI's potential shift toward audio-first, screenless AI experiences 

Chapters:

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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Vanessa Larco, partner at Premise and former partner at NEA, thinks 2026 will finally be the year of consumer AI. 

Larco, who's been investing in consumer and prosumer for years, thinks we're about to see a shift in how consumers spend time online, with AI powering “concierge-like” services. The question is, will legacy consumer products like WebMD and TripAdvisor continue to exist as standalone apps, or will they just get absorbed into ChatGPT or Meta AI? And where can startups carve out an AI-powered niche for themselves? 

Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Larco to talk about why consumer is back, what OpenAI won't kill, and where the real opportunities are hiding. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 

Why Larco thinks OpenAI won't build marketplace businesses that require managing real humans. 

Larco’s take on "disposable software" and why AI apps “should be treated like Word docs.” 

How Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses turned Larco into a believer in voice interfaces (and why she thinks screens are optional for most tasks). 

More predictions for 2026, including another huge year for M&A. 

What new business models stablecoins could unlock.  

00:00 - Introduction  

00:53 - Why founders are excited about consumer again  

04:40 - The moat against OpenAI: Managing real humans  

09:22 - Apps as disposable as Word docs  

12:48 - Social media in the AI era 

18:48 - Meta Ray-Bans and why wearables are actually good  

23:35 - Stablecoins and consumer fintech opportunities  

26:54 - M&A predictions for 2026 

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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Fizz is betting that Gen Z is tired of performing their lives on Instagram and TikTok.  

What started as a pandemic-era group chat frustration has turned into the dominant social platform on college campuses across the US, focused on the 99% of life that doesn't make it into a highlight reel. Capturing the attention of a demographic typically glued to Instagram and TikTok, the app's hybrid anonymous model and hyperlocal focus has made it what Solomon calls "the biggest college social app since Facebook.”  

Today we're bringing you a conversation that Dominic Madori Davis had with Fizz’s co-founder and CEO Teddy Solomon from this year's Disrupt, digging into why he thinks social media stopped being social.  

Listen to the full episode to hear: 

Why Solomon thinks Instagram and TikTok became pure entertainment platforms, and why that created an opening 

How Fizz uses 7,000 volunteer student moderators plus AI to keep the platform safe 

The company's expansion strategy beyond college and what "Global Fizz" actually means 

Solomon’s case for why New York is a better place to build a consumer company than San Francisco 

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 - Introduction  

01:34 - What broke in social media  

04:03 - Building for the 99% of life  

07:29 - Content moderation at scale  

11:16 - The risks of anonymous social  

13:22 - Pandemic origins and IRL community  

16:49 - Why the company moved to New York  

19:45 - Scaling with "arguably the most retentive social product in history"  

21:32 - Almost getting arrested at Pepperdine…for donuts 

26:09 - The future of social media 

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