Equity

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

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

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

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

A week after an Anthropic researcher's doomsday warning rattled the AI world, the company's CEO Dario Amodei has outlined his plan to “pace the frontier” of AI development. The proposal leans on independent safety evaluators and coordination between AI labs in democratic countries, and it's already picked up some industry support, along with some pointed pushback from Nvidia's Jensen Huang.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into whether companies can agree on what slowing down means and who gets to police it. Plus, WordPress parent Automattic's boardroom coup, and a couple of the week's biggest deals.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The golden parachute deals struck during Matt Mullenweg's 33-hour ouster from Automattic, and why the drama could give him even more control over technology that powers much of the web  Whether May Mobility's SPAC can deliver more than $300 million in potential funding, and why becoming a “public robotaxi company” comes with some big caveats  DoorDash's $425 million investment in Wonder and the race to automate food from order to delivery  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  00:00 Intro 1:00 Dario Amodei's plan to "pace the frontier" 5:03 Jensen Huang pushes back 9:08 Can market forces alone keep AI safe? 12:30 Third-party evaluators: how would they actually work? 15:27 Automattic's board tries to oust Matt Mullenweg 19:31 Comparing it to OpenAI's "the blip" 22:54 What's at stake in who controls WordPress 24:04 May Mobility's SPAC deal 28:42 Are SPACs back? 29:34 DoorDash invests $425M in Wonder 33:45 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Anthropic researcher resigned this week, warning in a post on X that the company is “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. The company's own alignment lead even co-signed the message rather than walking it back. It's the kind of doomer warning the AI industry has flirted with before, but the timing, with Anthropic reportedly preparing for an IPO, makes it land differently.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the latest AI safety warning and what it says about the industry's race toward increasingly capable models. Plus, Apple's first big event under new CEO John Ternus and more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Apple leaned hard into AI at its hardware event, and how always-on features baked into the Watch and AirPods may matter more than the splashy new foldable iPhone  How Stokes Space's $1 billion raise reflects a launch market that's suddenly wide open now that SpaceX is winding down its Falcon rockets  Why investors poured $2 billion into coding startup Cognition at a $48 billion valuation, and what it says about how much room VCs think is left in AI coding  What a $50 million seed round for floating nuclear reactors says about the scramble to power AI data centers  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  3:28 Anthropic researcher's resignation warning  9:33 What's actually being done about AI risk?  15:56 Apple's AI-first hardware event  19:56 The case against a standalone AI wearable  21:53 Always-on listening: watch, AirPods, and privacy tradeoffs  26:43 The foldable iPhone's odds  27:16 Stoke Space raises $1B for a reusable rocket  31:17 Cognition raises $2B, betting on room for more AI coding players  34:13 BlueCore Energy's floating nuclear reactors  37:38 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After years of pushing full speed ahead on AI, Sam Altman says maybe it’s time for the AI industry to “pace” itself. The comments come just days after one of OpenAI's own models broke out of its test environment and got tangled up in a breach at Hugging Face, though as Equity’s hosts point out, sloppy security seems to have been just as much to blame as the model itself. Altman's not alone in this stance: both OpenAI and Anthropic have come out in support of a petition echoing that same message.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into whether the industry is ready to pump the brakes or just spooked, and who's on the hook when a model goes rogue.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The viral “Avoiding AI” workshops hosted by librarians to help people opt out of AI features they didn't ask for  How Amazon's new 5,000-satellite bid to connect directly to your phone could turn up the heat on SpaceX (even though it's unclear if anyone actually wants satellite-to-phone service)  Why somehow there's room for one more AI lab: Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus's new startup, Prentis, is in talks to raise $100M at a $1B valuation  How Pangram raised $9 million to help publishers, teachers, and readers tell human writing from AI slop  Why DoorDash is building its own drone delivery business instead of just relying on partners like Wing and Flytrex  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  1:18 Zoox gets its robotaxi exemption  2:11 Sam Altman calls for pacing the frontier  6:01 The Hugging Face hack, dissected  10:12 Responsibility, regulation, and the Elon Musk wildcard  13:29 Librarians teaching people to unplug from AI  15:16 Prentice: a new AI lab raises at a $1B valuation  16:46 Amazon files for its own satellite-to-phone network  18:42 SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the launch-business angle  23:48 Pangram raises $9M to detect AI slop  29:23 DoorDash builds its own delivery drones  33:24 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chinese AI lab Moonshot's open model Kimi went viral this week for reasons that had less to do with the model itself and more to do with how the U.S. AI industry reacted to it. Meanwhile, an unreleased OpenAI model wandered outside its test environment and ended up connected to a real security breach at Hugging Face — a reminder that “China risk” isn't the only kind of AI risk worth worrying about.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into why Kimi K3 set off a fresh round of AI panic, the industry’s response to an OpenAI staffer's “regulatory FUD” post, and what that OpenAI breach means for AI security more broadly.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why EVs are getting killed off across the U.S. even as automakers roll out new models, and how Rivian and Ford, and a wave of new startups are betting on different EV strategies to survive  What Sila's $300 million raise says about where battery investment is headed even as EV demand cools  Travis Kalanick's comeback with a $1.7 billion raise for his robotics startup, Atoms, and why we’re surprised to see Uber among its investors  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  1:39 Chinese AI model Kimi sparks a Wall Street freakout  10:45 OpenAI model breaks out of a test, Hugging Face breach  15:53 Why EVs are getting killed off in the U.S.  20:35 Tax credits, free markets, and the road ahead for EVs  28:56 Sila raises $300M for battery materials  32:20 Travis Kalanick's Atoms raises $1.7B, with Uber as an investor  36:39 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices