Equity

In this episode, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos talks with Goodwater Capital co-founder Chi-Hua Chien, whose career spans some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology shifts, from helping source Accel’s investment in Facebook as a young associate to backing a new generation of consumer and AI startups. While much of the venture world is focused on models, chips, and infrastructure, Chi-Hua argues that history suggests the biggest long-term winners of the AI era may be the application companies built on top of them.

They talk about why AI startups are reaching unprecedented revenue levels with remarkably small teams, what’s driving today’s soaring valuations, and why he believes many infrastructure businesses will eventually face the same commoditization pressures seen in previous technology cycles. He also shares what he’s seeing inside consumer AI, from hyper-personalized entertainment and women’s health platforms to new products built around voice, agents, and individualized experiences. And they discuss the increasingly public tensions between founders and VCs, why some of the most interesting fintech innovation is happening outside the U.S., and why Chi-Hua believes one of the biggest opportunities in consumer technology may be helping people reconnect in the real world.
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Just as last week was ending, the US government forced Anthropic to pull its two newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns after Amazon researchers allegedly found a way to bypass Fable 5's guardrails. 

Cybersecurity researchers have since signed an open letter calling the move dangerous, and Anthropic itself noted the same jailbreaks exist in other models. So is this a genuine security concern, or just the latest chapter in a messy relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration? 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane, and Rebecca Bellan unpack what the ban means for developers building on Anthropic's platform and for anyone watching the IPO, why it might accidentally be good for the company, and more of the week’s headlines. 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear more about: 


Why the UK's social media ban for users under 16 might be the lesser of two evils 


What the SpaceX-Cursor acquisition tells us about xAI's strategy (and its gaps) 


Jeff Bezos's $12B bet on physical AI with Prometheus, the startup trying to build an "artificial engineer" 

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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Tokenmaxxing was the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, with CEOs encouraging employees to push AI usage as far as it would go. Then the bill came due. Uber reportedly blew through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their org, and Meta killed its internal leaderboard. 

This tension between hype and ROI is exactly where NEA partner Tiffany Luck lives these days. She got her start convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, and now she's all in on AI, especially when it comes to the possibilities for "magic moments" in the consumer business. 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Luck joins Rebecca Bellan to talk about the future of personal agents, her thoughts on this year's AI IPOs, and how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend. 

Listen to the full episode to hear: 


What the tokenmaxxing-to-ROI shift means for how companies measure AI spend. 


Why forward deployed engineers are becoming a "Trojan horse" for AI adoption. 


How enterprises are mixing and matching models instead of committing to one provider. 


Why Tiffany thinks value is being created at every layer of the AI stack, not just at the model layer. 

 

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 

00:51 Tiffany Luck's path from Lot18 to Amazon to VC 

3:45 Magic moments: Waymo, healthcare, and the gap in personal agents 

7:36 Privacy, security, and trusting AI with your life 

10:39 IPO outlook: Anthropic vs. OpenAI on public markets 

13:58 Compute, infrastructure, and where the value sits 

15:41 What’s the ROI on tokenmaxxing? 

27:07 Forward deployed engineers as a ‘Trojan horse’ 

32:49 Outro 
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Tokenmaxxing was the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, with CEOs encouraging employees to push AI usage as far as it would go. Then the bill came due. Uber reportedly blew through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their org, and Meta killed its internal leaderboard. 

This tension between hype and ROI is exactly where NEA partner Tiffany Luck lives these days. She got her start convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, and now she's all in on AI, especially when it comes to the possibilities for "magic moments" in the consumer business. 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Luck joins Rebecca Bellan to talk about the future of personal agents, her thoughts on this year's AI IPOs, and how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend.  

Listen to the full episode to hear: 


What the tokenmaxxing-to-ROI shift means for how companies measure AI spend. 


Why forward deployed engineers are becoming a "Trojan horse" for AI adoption. 


How enterprises are mixing and matching models instead of committing to one provider. 


Why Tiffany thinks value is being created at every layer of the AI stack, not just at the model layer. 

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 biggest IPO in history dropped this morning on the Nasdaq — a debut so big, our team thought it deserved its own bonus Equity podcast episode.  

On this special bonus episode, Senior Reporter Sean O'Kane called up our AI Editor Russell Brandom to help him break down the $2 trillion valuation, Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire, and what it all means for Anthropic and OpenAI still waiting in the wings. 

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 
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