Equity

SpaceX is reportedly lining up four major Wall Street banks for a 2026 IPO that could provide the reset the market needs. 

The company just completed a tender offer at an $800 billion valuation, and secondary market demand is through the roof. If SpaceX goes public anywhere near its rumored $1.5 trillion valuation, it could trigger an IPO cascade for other late-stage unicorns like OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks. 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan spoke with Greg Martin, Managing Director at Rainmaker Securities, to discuss why this IPO feels different, how tech employees are cashing out through secondary markets before companies go public, and what investors are actually looking for in pre-IPO shares. 

Listen to the full episode to hear: 


Which other late-stage unicorns are seeing the most secondary trading action right now. 


Why SpaceX is ready to go public, despite previously saying it “wouldn't IPO until rockets were flying to Mars regularly” (and why Martin doesn’t think SpaceX will continue on its debut path if the market tanks) 


The "Elon halo effect" and how much of SpaceX's valuation is based on Musk himself 


What happens when SpaceX employees want to sell shares before the IPO 

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
01:39 The Booming Secondary Market for Pre-IPO Shares
04:06 SpaceX as an IPO Bellwether
06:31 Why Elon Musk Changed His Mind on Going Public
10:04 The Race to a Trillion-Dollar Valuation
12:27 The Elon Halo Effect on Valuations
15:17 What Signals an Upcoming IPO?
17:50 How Secondaries Drive Better Price Discovery
20:47 How SpaceX Secondaries Actually Work
24:03 What Investors Want from Pre-IPO Companies
25:11 The Have and Have-Not World of Secondaries
26:42 Outro

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The World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos felt different this year, and not just because Meta and Salesforce took over storefronts on the main promenade. AI dominated the conversation in a way that overshadowed traditional topics like climate change and global poverty, and the CEOs weren't holding back. There was public criticism of trade policy, warnings about AI bubbles popping, and a lot of talk about what comes next for the industry. 

 

Meanwhile, back in Silicon Valley, AI startup Humans& raised a $480 million seed round with no product on the market, just a vision for "social intelligence" AI and a team of ex-Anthropic, Google, and xAI employees. 

 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane discuss why raising hundreds of millions before building a product is apparently the new norm, which conversations took over Davos this week, and more. 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear more from the week, including: 


Whether Meta's 10% layoffs at Reality Labs means the end for the metaverse, and who’s defending Meta's VR investments 


Serve Robotics' acquisition of Diligent, a startup bringing delivery bots into hospitals 


OpenAI’s rumored earbuds and what we expect to see from the AI company’s first hardware product. 

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Today on Equity, we're teaming up with our newest podcast, Build Mode.

In this interview, Build Mode host Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Ross Fubini of XYZ Ventures and Leslie Feinzaig of Graham & Walker Ventures to pull back the curtain on how VCs build their own go-to-market strategies.

They dig into what it’s really like raising a first fund, why founder-market fit applies to investors too, and how the best investor relationships start years before you ever need the money.

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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AI companies are clustering around healthcare and fast. 

In just the past week, OpenAI bought health startup Torch, Anthropic launched Claude for Health, and Sam Altman-backed MergeLabs closed a $250 million seed round at an $850 million valuation. The money and products are pouring into health and voice AI, but so are concerns about hallucination risks, inaccurate medical information, and massive security vulnerabilities in systems handling sensitive patient data. 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with health care, what other products can expect an AI-makeover, and more. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:  


How Anthropic's co-work tool could threaten Salesforce and other enterprise software giants 


Bandcamp’s move against AI, banning AI-generated music from its platform 


Why fusion energy is heating up, with startups like Type One Energy suddenly raising hundreds of millions 


The latest on Luminar's bankruptcy and a potential bidding war overits LIDAR assets 

Chapters: 

00:00 - Introduction  

00:29 - Waymo testing in New York City? 

02:13 - Bandcamp bans AI-generated music  

04:57 - Luminar's bankruptcy and LIDAR fire sale  

10:28 - Type One Energy's fusion funding frenzy  

16:10 - AI's healthcare land grab  

23:28 - Voice AI deals heat up  

25:26 - Anthropic's co-work tool threatens enterprise software 

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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AI agents are supposed to make work easier. Instead, they're creating a whole new category of security nightmares. 

 

As companies deploy AI-powered chatbots, agents, and copilots across their operations, they're facing a new risk: how do you let employees and AI agents use powerful AI tools without accidentally leaking sensitive data, violating compliance rules, or opening the door to prompt-based injections? Witness AI just raised $58 million to find a solution, building what they call "the confidence layer for enterprise AI." 

 

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan was joined by Barmak Meftah, co-founder and partner at Ballistic Ventures, and Rick Caccia, CEO of Witness AI, to discuss what enterprises are actually worried about, why AI security become an $800 billion to $1.2 trillion market by 2031, and what happens when AI agents start talking to other AI agents without human oversight. 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear:  


How enterprises accidentally leak sensitive data through "shadow AI" usage. 


What CISOs are actually worried about right now, how the problem has evolved rapidly over 18 months, and what it will look like over the next year. 


Why traditional cybersecurity approaches don't work for AI agents. 


Real examples of AI agents going rogue, including one that threatened to blackmail an employee. 

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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