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Fusion energy has been "20 years away" for decades, but has the science finally caught up? Private investment in fusion companies surged from $10 billion to $15 billion in just months, and the money is coming from places you wouldn't expect.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan and guest host Tim De Chant sit down with Rachel Slaybaugh, general partner at DCVC, to break down why serious investors are finally treating fusion as a real asset class, and what the return thesis actually looks like when no one expects a power plant in their fund lifetime.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why the investment thesis for fusion looks less like traditional VC and more like biotech or SpaceX, and what "fusion euphoria" has to do with it  What the Q value milestone actually means, and how close leading startups are to hitting the number that could trigger a public market opening  How superconducting tape and AI-assisted plasma physics are quietly doing as much work as the big headline science breakthroughs  Why one fusion company merging with Trump Media and Technology Group had Tim doing a double-take at his inbox  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

The gap between AI insiders and everyone else is widening, and the spending, suspicion, and even new vocabulary are starting to show it. While OpenAI is busy buying up everything from finance apps to talk shows, a certain shoe company just rebranded as an AI infrastructure play, and Anthropic unveiled a model it says is too powerful to release publicly ...but apparently not too powerful to demo to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what's actually being built in AI infrastructure, who's winning the enterprise battle between OpenAI and Anthropic, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm just piled $60M into UK self-driving startup Wayve, and what Uber's $300M milestone bid says about who's winning the AV race  How data center startup Fluidstack is positioning itself for the frontier labs, including a reported $50B agreement with Anthropic  What Claude Code's moment at the HumanX conference reveals about where the OpenAI vs. Anthropic rivalry is actually playing out  Why tokenmaxxing, and Meta's leaked internal leaderboard, might say more about optics than actual productivity  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  00:25 Allbirds is now an AI company, apparently  04:48 Why chipmakers are betting on Wayve  12:01 Fluidstack wants $1B to build AI data centers  16:24 OpenAI buys a finance app and a talk show  21:27 Anthropic vs. OpenAI in enterprise  24:15 The Anthropic model they won't release to the public  26:47 Why AI feels so distant to everyone else  30:47 What even is tokenmaxxing?  34:49 Parasail's $32M bet on cheaper AI inference  36:39 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc got COVID despite being vaccinated and boosted, he tried to fund research for a better solution. What he quickly found out? You can't just write a check in biotech. Regulators require a commercialization plan, and philanthropy doesn't move science through clinical trials or get you a license on university IP. Now, he's bootstrapping a cancer drug platform targeting pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills 90% of its patients, and intentionally waiting to raise from his network until peer-reviewed papers can make his case.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Aloe Blacc to talk about what happens when a creator decides to build instead of just invest, how Aloe is watching AI reshape both the biotech and music industries in real time, and his thoughts on who actually wins.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  How he’s navigating a world where credibility is earned in data, not fame  How a University of Houston molecule discovery platform could cut years off drug development timelines  Why he thinks record labels, not artists or AI companies, will ultimately control the economics of AI-generated music  What Suno taught him about prototyping, and why his next album will still be recorded with live musicians  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

LLMs may have kicked off this AI boom, but the ceiling is closer than the hype suggests. As models run out of text data to train on, the companies and investors paying attention are already moving on. The next wave isn't better chatbots; it's machines that can understand the physical world. Luma AI, the Bay Area lab that raised over $1.4 billion from a16z, Nvidia, and Amazon, is betting on exactly that.  On episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan sat down with Amit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Luma AI, at Web Summit Qatar. Together, the pair dug into where the next trillion-dollar AI opportunity actually gets built, and whether the companies chasing it even know what they're building yet.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why video, audio, and images are the real frontier for AI training data, not text  What an "intelligent world model" actually is, and why Jain thinks most companies building them are getting it completely wrong  The case for why AI won't kill creative jobs, and why Jain thinks studio heads are the real problem  How the path from video generation to robotics to AGI is simpler than anyone's making it sound  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  01:13 Why LLMs are hitting a ceiling  02:43 The data problem & what comes after LLMs  04:30 What actually makes a world model a world model  06:05 Why 3D data is a dead end  07:39 What Luma is building next  09:08 How much humans stay in the loop  10:00 Near-term use cases for agentic video  11:22 Will AI kill jobs in film & production?  13:30 Why the entertainment industry is already dying  15:27 Why we actually need more content, not less  17:46 Luma's roadmap: generation, understanding, and robotics  19:54 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snowflake is betting that the future of AI isn’t just analyzing data, it’s acting on it. That means a shift away from chatbots and toward autonomous agents that can actually get work done. And Snowflake is reorganizing fast to keep up, from shipping hundreds of AI features to restructuring teams along the way.On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to unpack the company’s transformation and what it signals about where AI is headed next. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why Ramaswamy believes the chatbot era is ending and the agentic era is beginning. How Snowflake is evolving from a data warehouse into an AI and applications platform. What “shipping with your data” actually looks like in practice. Why the company is making big internal changes to support its AI push. 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 00:17 Snowflake’s AI shift and agentic future 01:45 Why 2026 marks the end of chatbots 04:09 Cortex Code, Snowflake Intelligence, and new products 06:09 Who benefits: non-technical users & enterprises 07:35 Adoption challenges and why AI pilots fail 12:11 How AI is reshaping jobs and skills 14:39 Layoffs, automation, and the future of documentation 18:37 Snowflake’s evolution into an AI platform 21:04 Competition: Databricks, hyperscalers, and AI giants 25:01 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech companies are racing to build data centers in space, pitching orbital compute as the next frontier for AI infrastructure, even as the technical and economic realities remain far from clear. Add in OpenAI’s massive $122 billion round and Bluesky’s latest AI backlash, and the message is clear: The future of AI is being shaped as much by ambition and hype as it is by real-world constraints.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane unpack these massive capital bets, user backlash, and off-world compute plans along with Whoop’s major valuation and the literal downfall of robot Olaf.   Listen to the full episode to hear about:  OpenAI’s $122 billion fundraise and what its near-trillion-dollar valuation says about expectations for AI.   Whoop’s $575 million raise and the shift toward “wearables 2.0” (and what happens to all that data).   Bluesky’s AI-powered feed builder and why it triggered a major user backlash.   The rise of data centers in space and whether they are financially or physically feasible.   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 00:20 A humanoid Olaf robot collapses at Disneyland Paris 03:30 OpenAI raises $122B at an $852B valuation 11:30 Whoop lands $575M and bets big on wearable data  18:50 The risks (and value) of personal health data 23:00 Bluesky’s AI feed builder sparks backlash 30:00 Can Bluesky keep growing — and compete with X? 36:30 The race to build data centers in space 44:30 SpaceX, Starlink, and the business of orbital compute 49:30 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The VC middleman is getting cut out faster than anyone expected. Family offices and private wealth firms are going direct: writing checks, taking board seats, even incubating companies from scratch. And more founders are starting to notice. In February alone, family offices made 41 direct investments, including one Midwest-based firm that led a $230 million Series B into an AI chip startup.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Mitch Stein and Ari Schottenstein, founder and head of alternatives at ARENA Private Wealth, to find out what this shift means for founders, cap tables, and the future of AI investment.    Listen to the full episode to hear:  How Arena landed the lead on Positron's $230 million Series B, and why the CEO specifically wanted them on his cap table  How Arena does due diligence on technical companies  What "tourist capital" actually looks like, and the red flags founders should watch for as family offices flood into AI deals  Why some VCs are quietly unhappy about this trend (and why Arena thinks that's their problem)  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   03:13 Why family offices are going direct now  06:03 The gen 2 & gen 3 family office shift  07:22 Is this strategic or just AI FOMO?  10:17 How Arena got into the Positron deal  14:30 Why founders want private wealth on their cap table  18:31 Due diligence on technical companies  21:56 Red flags founders should watch for  25:04 Are VCs threatened by this trend?  27:47 Taking board seats & level of involvement  34:17 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When an 82-year-old Kentucky woman was offered $26 million from an AI company that wanted to build a data center on her land, she said no. Sure, that same company can try to rezone 2,000 acres nearby anyway, but as AI infrastructure stretches further into the real world, the real world is starting to push back.  That tension is everywhere this week, from OpenAI shutting down its Sora app to courts finally starting to hold social platforms accountable. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what it looks like when the AI hype cycle meets reality.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why rival prediction market CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket are co-investing in a $35M VC fund  How drone startups like Zipline, Lucid Bots, and Brinc are finding real traction where other robotics plays have stalled  What Kleiner Perkins' $3.5B raise says about where the biggest VC firms think the next AI wave is going  Why two separate court verdicts against Meta in the same week could be the “tobacco moment” for social media  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  00:30 Would you turn down $26M for your farm?  03:56 Rivals Kalshi & Polymarket CEOs are investing together  10:28 Deals for drones: Zipline, Brinc & Lucid Bots  18:17 Kleiner Perkins goes all-in on AI with $3.5B raise  22:52 OpenAI shuts down Sora  28:04 Meta gets hit with dual verdicts  34:56 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past few years, a new category of mobile apps has quietly exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. They're called “micro dramas” — short-form, mobile-first scripted shows designed to be watched vertically on your phone. Think soap opera meets TikTok, complete with secret billionaire romances, disapproving werewolf mothers-in-law, and cliffhangers engineered to keep users tapping. The leading app, ReelShort, made $1.2 billion in consumer spending last year alone.   On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan and TechCrunch senior reporter Amanda Silberling sit down with Henry Soong, founder of Watch Club, who thinks the micro drama industry is still "in its MySpace era." He has a vision for what the Facebook moment could look like.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why micro dramas took off in China while Quibi burned through $2 billion and failed in the U.S., and what that gap reveals about content, product, and business model.  How Watch Club is targeting a completely different audience than ReelShort and Drama Box.  The tension between building an intentional social experience and optimizing for engagement the way TikTok does.  Whether AI is coming for the werewolf billionaire romance script. Amanda has thoughts.   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  01:11 Why micro dramas, and why now?  04:25 What makes Watch Club different  07:29 The monetization model problem  18:52 Optimizing for intentionality, not engagement  24:23 Why Quibby failed (content, product & business model)  28:22 Defensibility: tech company or studio?  31:36 AI, the WGA, and the future of storytelling  33:44 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jensen Huang took the stage at Nvidia's GTC conference this week in his signature leather jacket to deliver a two-and-a-half-hour keynote, projecting $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027, declaring that every company needs an “OpenClaw strategy,” and closing with a rambling Olaf robot that had to get its mic cut. The message was hard to miss: Nvidia wants to be foundational to everything, from AI training to autonomous vehicles to Disney parks.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down what Nvidia's growing web of AI infrastructure partnerships actually means for startups, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Travis Kalanick’s return building a "wheelbase for robots" with his new startup Atoms, and the crew has questions about Kalanick’s acquisitions along the way  Rivian’s partnership with Uber to build robotaxi versions of its R2 in a deal worth up to $1.25 billion, while pushing back its EBITDA target to do it  Frore landing a $1.64 billion valuation for its AI chip cooling systems  xAI rebooting, again, with only two of its original eleven co-founders still standing  Garry Tan's Claude Code setup went viral at SXSW (Spoiler: the crew is not impressed).  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  00:20 Garry Tan's Claude Code setup goes viral at SXSW  03:37 Travis Kalanick is back with a new startup  12:51 Uber and Rivian's $1.25B RoboTaxi deal  20:54 Chip cooling startup Frore becomes a unicorn  22:56 Nvidia GTC recap: $1 trillion in sales projections  31:42 Elon Musk is rebooting xAI...again  36:37 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project to being valued at $1.7 billion.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-founders Anastasios Angelopoulos and Wei-Lin Chiang to determine how a team like theirs can build a neutral benchmark when the companies they’re ranking are also their backers.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  How Arena actually works, and why its founders say you can't game it the way you mighta static benchmark.  What "structural neutrality" actually means, and whether taking money from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic is a conflict of interest.  How Arena is moving beyond chat to benchmark agents, coding, and real-world tasks with a new enterprise product.  Why Claude is currently winning the expert leaderboard for legal and medical use cases.  Arena's bet on what comes after LLMs, and why agents are next on the leaderboard.  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  03:00 How Arena's leaderboard works, and why it's different from static benchmarks  07:00 Reproducibility concerns and how to scale  08:45 Can Arena stay independent while taking money from the labs it ranks?  11:15 Diversity, fraud prevention, and abuse mitigation  18:15 Arena's "data moat"  19:20 Agent benchmarking and expert leaderboards  21:40 Open sourcing data  22:45 How do Arena's rankings shape AI development?  24:15 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to Index Ventures Partner Shardul Shah, cybersecurity startup Wiz sits “at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend.” Those tailwinds powered what just became the largest venture-backed acquisition in history — Google's $32 billion deal, finalized after a declined 2024 offer, antitrust review on both sides of the Atlantic, and an extra $9 billion to sweeten the pot.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O'Kane sit down with Shah to dig into what made Wiz worth that price tag, and also cover more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why a DOGE employee allegedly walked out of the Social Security Administration with a thumb drive full of personal data, and the questions it raises about access to sensitive systems  Taya and Sandbar, the latest startups betting voice is the next big AI interface — but do normal consumers agree?  Palmer Luckey raising for a retro gaming startup at a $1 billion valuation  Meta’s acquisition of Moltbook, the viral AI agent social network  The latest in the Anthropic vs. DoD saga, including tech workers at OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft signing their names on a legal brief in support of Anthropic  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  00:16 Did a DOGE employee steal your SSN?  02:53 AI note-taking wearables are back: Taya & Sandbar  09:18 Palmer Lucky's retro gaming startup ModRetro  13:39 Meta acquires AI agent social network Moltbot  18:54 Inside Google's $32B Wiz acquisition with Shardul Shah  28:41 Anthropic's lawsuit against the DoD  38:40 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, venture capitalists have been skeptical of beverage startups, citing thin margins and brutal distribution as reasons most brands never break out. But a new wave of “functional soda” companies has been challenging that assumption, including Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand that grew from a kitchen experiment into a $1.95 billion acquisition by PepsiCo.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by Poppi co-founder Allison Ellsworth to talk about building a beverage startup in a venture world dominated by SaaS and AI. From pitching on Shark Tank while nine months pregnant to scaling a digital-first brand during COVID, and now returning as a Shark herself, Ellsworth shares how social media, fast marketing bets, and customer feedback helped turn a niche drink into a category-defining company.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Ellsworth’s Shark Tank return, and how she evaluates founders on the other side of the pitch.  How Ellsworth turned a personal health issue into Poppi and built early traction at farmers' markets.  Why TikTok and community-driven marketing helped the brand rack up billions of views and loyal fans.  The risky decision to buy a last-minute Super Bowl ad, and how the team executed it in days.  What it’s like selling a startup to PepsiCo while trying to preserve the brand’s identity.  Why beverage startups almost inevitably need acquisition-level distribution to scale.  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

The Pentagon has officially designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the two failed to agree on how much control the military should have over its AI models, including its use in autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. As Anthropic’s $200 million contract fell apart, the DoD turned to OpenAI instead, which accepted and then watched ChatGPT uninstalls surge 295%. As the stakes keep rising, the question remains: how much unrestricted access should the military have to an AI model?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what startups should think about when chasing federal contracts, especially when nobody seems to know what to do with AI in Washington, and more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Paramount’s massive deal with Warner Bros, and the Equity crew’s ideas for what the new HBO Max-Paramount+ hybrid should be called  MyFitnessPal's acquisition of Cal AI, the calorie-tracking app built by teenagers  Who dropped $1 billion on Pinterest’s AI mission and how the company spent it on share buybacks. (Spoiler: Kirsten has thoughts.)  Anduril is raising again at a reported $60 billion valuation  Whether companies should brace themselves for the SaaSpocalypse, or if it’s just another chapter of the AI hype cycle   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

Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the VC treadmill to succeed? Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later, PopSockets has proven that the bootstrapped, low-dilution path more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor's determination.      On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with founder and former CEO of PopSockets David Barnett to talk about how he scaled from a Boulder garage, stood up to Amazon at a $10–20 million cost, and eventually handed off the CEO role to someone who'd grown up inside the company.    Listen to the full episode to hear:  How a house fire and some insurance money became the unlikely seed funding for a global brand  What nearly sinking the company in manufacturing defects actually taught him about building one that lasts  How ignoring his investors' advice turned out to be the right call  What he looked for in a successor CEO (and why culture was non-negotiable)  What he'd do completely differently if he launched PopSockets today  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  01:15 From philosophy professor to phone grip inventor  05:17 How a house fire funded PopSockets  07:33 Manufacturing nightmares nearly killed the business  10:08 The local toy store that proved it could work  13:14 The $20M Amazon standoff  16:09 Growing too fast?  18:20 Beating counterfeits in China through brand building  19:11 Why David never wanted to be CEO  23:07 The worst advice received, and what to do instead  26:35 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices