Equity

Elon Musk spent the better part of three days on the witness stand this week in his lawsuit against OpenAI, and it's already getting messy. Emails, texts, and his own tweets are surfacing in court, and there are plenty more witnesses to come. Musk's argument against OpenAI? By converting the company to a for-profit model, Sam Altman betrayed the “nonprofit for the benefit of humanity” mission Musk signed up to fund. As Musk keeps reminding the courtroom: “You can't steal a charity.” 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec and Sean O'Kane break down what's actually at stake in the courtroom and what to watch for as Altman and others take the stand, plus deals, defense tech, and what Big Tech's earnings week revealed about the limits of the AI spending era.

Listen to the full episode to hear about:


Why cloud was the winner of earnings week, and what AWS, Google, and Microsoft's numbers say about where enterprise AI spending is actually landing


The scholarship app founder taking Sallie Mae to court after they acquired his startup…and began selling its student data to ad networks and universities


BMW i Ventures new $300 million fund with its sights set on AI


How defense tech startup Scout AI is pitching “military AGI” using vision-language-action (VLA) models

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AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool in AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool almost overnight, and Runway has a front-row seat to the shift. The New York-based company has raised close to $860 million at a $5.3 billion valuation, and its models are going toe-to-toe with the most well-funded labs in the world, including Google and OpenAI.  

And the technology goes way beyond making videos: it's now pushing into general world models with applications in gaming, robotics, and maybe something closer to general intelligence. 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, host Rebecca Bellan sits down with co-founder and CEO Cristobal Valenzuela to talk about where video generation goes from here, and why Runway's ambitions now reach well beyond Hollywood. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


Why Valenzuela thinks the real constraint on filmmaking has never been technology, and what changes when it is 


How Runway thinks about world models differently than Google and other labs building in the space 


What "nonlinear media" means, and why real-time video generation opens up use cases way beyond content creation 


Why Valenzuela pushes back on the idea that AI companions are “inherently dystopian” 

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 

00:56 Can AI really replace Hollywood? 

04:18 Why "AI slop" fears miss the point 

08:23 Research lab, software company, or creative studio? 

13:42 From video generation to world models, explained 

17:36 Omni models and multimodal training 

17:50 The three pillars: linear media, non-linear media, physical AI 

19:31 Real-time video and the "Characters" product 

22:33 Are AI companions inherently dystopian? 

25:59 Physical AI and robotics 

28:35 Where growth is coming from: enterprise and prosumer 

29:31 Outro 
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A new era is on the way for Apple as Tim Cook plans to step down from his CEO role in September, handing the reins to hardware chief John Ternus.  

Ternus may be inheriting one of the most durable businesses in tech, but he’s also stepping into a very different ecosystem than the one Cook spent decades shaping. The App Store’s 30% cut is under pressure, the behind-the-scenes power Apple once held over developers is being challenged, and AI-native apps are changing what it means to build on Apple’s platform. 

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what this transition means for startups and a closer look at some of the week’s biggest deals — including SpaceX's $60B option on Cursor. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


Why Anthropic’s Mythos model is raising questions about both safety and marketing 


The $5 billion Amazon-Anthropic deal that looks a lot like every other circular AI infrastructure play 


What the SpaceX-Cursor agreement (and that $10 billion breakup fee) says about Elon Musk's AI strategy post-xAI merger 


Why fintech Revolut and AI chip startup Cerebras' public market plans have us wondering whether this is actually the year the IPO market reopens 

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 

00:26 Anthropic's Mythos accessed by “unauthorized groups” 

04:28 Is Amazon's $5B Anthropic investment just another circular deal? 

09:53 SpaceX and Cursor’s $60B option 

18:25 Is this finally the year of the IPO? 

21:38 SpaceX, Revolut, and Cerebras: the IPOs to watch 

26:41 Tim Cook's retirement plans 

29:15 What a new Apple CEO means for startups and the App Store 

35:59 Outro 
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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. 
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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 
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