Equity

The hardware world had a brutal week, with iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes all filing for bankruptcy.  Each company faces its own mix of tariff pressures, supply chain issues, and shifting markets, but together they tell a larger story about the challenges of building physical products in an era of global trade tensions and cheap overseas competition. From the Roomba maker that almost got acquired by Amazon to the e-bike company that couldn't escape its Chinese supply chain, this week's bankruptcies are a warning sign for hardware startups everywhere.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O'Kane discuss what went wrong for three once-promising hardware companies, plus Amazon's massive OpenAI bet and Trump's new approach to AI regulation.  Listen to the full episode to hear more news from the week, including:  How "slop" became Merriam-Webster's word of the year — and why it's become bigger than just AI-generated content  Why Databricks raised $10 billion at a $134 billion valuation (in a Series L!) instead of just going public already  The Coursera-Udemy merger and whether online course platforms can survive the AI era  Chapters:  00:00 - Introduction  00:24 - AI slop is Merriam-Webster's word of the year  06:07 - Amazon's $10 billion OpenAI investment  10:43 - Databricks raises $10 billion in a Series L  14:14 - Coursera acquires Udemy  19:17 - Hardware bankruptcies: iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes  26:21 - Trump's AI executive order targets state regulation  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

Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse Ventures and former chief growth officer at Rivian, thinks we're entering an era of major re-industrialization in the US — one where factories run on AI-powered robots, not cheap overseas labor.   Behl, who helped scale Rivian from a conference room idea in 2015 to a publicly traded EV maker, is now investing in the next wave of industrial and mobility startups, including two Rivian spinouts: Also and Mind Robotics. It's part of Eclipse's larger bet that the physical world is finally ready for the kind of disruption software saw a decade ago.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec sat down with Behl to talk about why Rivian keeps spinning out companies, what founders in the "physical world" need that software founders don't, and why automation is becoming necessary if the US wants to compete without Chinese supply chains.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Behl looks for founders who are both "hyper-optimistic" and grounded in reality, and why that combination is surprisingly rare, even in Silicon Valley.  How vertical integration worked for Rivian but won't work for most startups today.  Behl's prediction that autonomy will become "real and something we can touch and feel" in the next five years.  Subscribe to Equity on 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 baby was born in a Waymo this week, and it wasn't even the first one.  What started as a novelty story quickly became a reminder of how autonomous vehicles have quietly become part of everyday life, complete with all the messiness that entails. The real coming-of-age story this week, however, wasn't happening in San Francisco's robotaxis. It was playing out in Hollywood, where Netflix made an $82 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming and studio business.    Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec and Anthony Ha discuss what happens when the startup that used to mail you DVDs grows up and tries to buy a legacy entertainment empire as well as the other headlines that caught their eye.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Boom Supersonic is selling jet engines to data centers to fund its supersonic flight dreams  Why Hinge's CEO is leaving to start an AI dating app, and whether AI can actually fix dating  The rise of AI circular deals and what CoreWeave's CEO says about companies investing in their own customers  A fertility startup using AI-designed antibodies to expand beyond ovulation tracking  Subscribe to Equity on 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

ElevenLabs has made a name for itself building realistic AI voices.     What started as two Polish engineers annoyed by terrible movie dubbing has grown into a profitable company now valued at $6.6 billion, doubling its valuation from just nine months ago. The company recently announced a $100 million tender offer led by Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from a16z and others, as its tech powers everything from Fortnite characters to customer service bots and goes toe-to-toe with OpenAI to become the default voice of AI.    Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation with CEO Mati Staniszewski from this year's Disrupt, where he made a surprising admission: he thinks voice models will be commoditized in just a couple of years. So what's ElevenLabs' plan when everyone else catches up?    Listen to the full episode to hear about:   Why ElevenLabs is pivoting from just voice models to building a conversational AI agent platform  How the company is tackling deepfakes with watermarking, AI detection, and device authentication  Why Staniszewski believes there will soon be more AI-generated content than human content  ElevenLabs' push into music generation and partnerships to fuse audio with video models  Subscribe to Equity on 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

AWS announced a wave of new AI agent tools at re:Invent 2025, but can Amazon actually catch up to the AI leaders? While the cloud giant is betting big on enterprise AI with its third-gen chip and database discounts that got developers cheering, it's still fighting to prove it can compete beyond infrastructure.  This week on Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the ROI on AI agents, plus the collision course between Hollywood and generative AI, and why everyone wants their own version of Spotify Wrapped.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Hollywood filmmakers are drawing hard lines between performance capture and AI, and another spiked attempt at AI regulation  Nothing's $5 million community funding round and whether letting consumers invest is genuine community-building or just IPO hype  Autolane's $7.4 million raise to build "air traffic control for robotaxis"  Wrapped battles from Spotify, YouTube, and others chasing their viral moment  Subscribe to Equity on 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