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1. 

   21 Aug 2026 · 41 min

   The DOJ is investigating a16z. What does this mean for venture capital?

   Andreessen Horowitz has two partners sitting on the boards of companies that now compete with each other: Ben Horowitz at Databricks and Martin Casado at Fivetran. Nothing too scandalous on the surface, except the Department of Justice has reportedly been investigating the arrangement for almost a year, dusting off a 112-year-old antitrust law that's rarely used against VCs. Board conflicts aren't exactly new, and these companies weren't necessarily direct competitors when a16z first invested in them. But as portfolio companies expand into each other's markets, the DOJ's scrutiny raises a…

2. 

   19 Aug 2026 · 33 min

   AI has a GPU pricing problem. Silicon Data wants to fix it.

   The AI buildout shows no signs of slowing. And with hundreds of billions of dollars a year going into data centers and GPUs, compute has become the single biggest cost for anyone building AI products. But for all that spending, there still isn’t a straightforward way to put a price on compute — or for firms to hedge their exposure when the price changes. Silicon Data just closed a $30 million Series A to change that. The startup aims to become the reference price for GPU rental and an index that a Wall Street futures contract would settle against. The company plans to launch its compute…

3. 

   14 Aug 2026 · 35 min

   Meta's 'open' AI, data centers' hidden costs, and a $250M deal gone very wrong

   Meta released Glimmer this week, an open-weight AI model anyone can download and run on their own hardware — a contrast to Muse Spark, the company’s more powerful model that stays locked behind its own APIs. The release landed alongside a letter from Mark Zuckerberg arguing AI should be “for everyone” rather than controlled by a handful of labs, but as Equity’s hosts point out, the vision comes with some asterisks. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan take a look at Glimmer, Zuckerberg’s 6,500-word manifesto, and more of the week’s…

4. 

   12 Aug 2026 · 31 min

   Why Sandbar thinks it’s voice-enabled ring can avoid the AI hardware graveyard

   AI notetaking hardware has taken off over the past couple of years, with credit-card-sized devices, pendants, pins, and even transcribing earbuds all promising to capture your meetings and turn them into summaries and action items. Now, a whole wave of wearables — rings especially — are betting people want to capture stray thoughts and ideas the same way. One of the companies chasing that bet is Sandbar, the startup behind the private voice ring Stream, which has raised $36 million to date, including a $23 million Series A led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures. On this episode of TechCrunch's…

5. 

   7 Aug 2026 · 29 min

   Jill Lepore on the ‘Artificial State’ and why Silicon Valley's leaders are bad sci-fi readers

   Historian Jill Lepore has a theory about why tech companies often use soaring language to describe their products — almost as if they're forming a new government. And whether you're thinking of Twitter's old “town hall in your pocket” or Anthropic's Claude constitution, it's a theory that doesn't paint Silicon Valley in a very flattering light. In Lepore's upcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian and New Yorker writer argues that tech companies are gradually taking on the functions of democratic government — whether that’s Twitter…

6. 

   31 Jul 2026 · 36 min

   AI labs want to pump the brakes, but Amazon and SpaceX are still blasting off

   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…

7. 

   29 Jul 2026 · 31 min

   ‘If this isn't addiction, I don't know what is’: Light Phone's founders get real about screen time and building for the anti-smartphone generation

   With the Light Phone, Kaiwei Tang and Joe Hollier have spent over a decade exploring the value of simplicity in our relationship to technology, partnering along the way with players like Andrew Yang, Kendrick Lamar, and Pete Davidson. Now, with a new flip phone and a growing wave of “attention activists” pushing back on big tech, they think the rest of the world is finally catching up to them. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Amanda Silberling talks with Tang and Hollier about the company's newly announced flip phone, why they think the anti-smartphone backlash is only just…

8. 

   24 Jul 2026 · 39 min

   ‘AI communism’, rogue models, and the why Kimi K3 spooked Wall Street

   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…

9. 

   22 Jul 2026 · 34 min

   Menlo Ventures’ Matt Murphy says the lesson for founders now is that a great model isn't enough

   Anthropic leaped to a $47 billion revenue run rate by May, compared to $9 billion in 2025. It’s the kind of growth that Menlo Ventures' Matt Murphy says he's never seen in 25 years of investing, not in the internet wave, not in mobile, not in the first cloud boom. Menlo led Anthropic's $500M Series D, and Murphy has had a front-row seat as the company went from a pre-revenue, pre-launch bet to one of the most valuable startups out there. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort talks with Murphy about backing Anthropic before anyone else would, why a great model was never…

10. 

    17 Jul 2026 · 35 min

    Apple's lawsuit couldn't come at a worse time for OpenAI

    Apple filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI last Friday, and it's not messing around. The complaint alleges a pattern of misconduct reaching all the way up to OpenAI's chief hardware officer and claims more than 400 former Apple employees now work at the company. OpenAI's response so far has been carefully hedged, and the timing couldn't be worse with the company reportedly eyeing an IPO as early as later this year. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the lawsuit could mean for OpenAI's own hardware ambitions…