Equity

Google I/O made it official: AI-generated answers are now front and center in search, and most brands have almost no visibility into how AI is describing them to their customers. For anyone who has spent years building a strategy around 10 blue links, the rules just changed in a pretty significant way. 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Matt Thompson, VP of partnerships at Scrunch, a startup positioning itself at the center of the AI search shift, to talk about what Google’s changes mean and marketers and founders should actually do about it. 

Listen to the full episode to hear: 


Why AI referrals are converting at 400% higher than traditional organic search, and what that means for how to think about traffic. 


How ChatGPT still has the lion's share of AI search traffic, and why optimizing only for Google means missing most of the market. 


Why Google's own SEO best practices might be leading marketers in the wrong direction. 


What it actually means to make your website "agent ready" and why most enterprise sites aren't. 

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The SpaceX S-1 is finally here, and the story it tells goes way further than rockets. The filing runs to 36 pages of risk factors alone, and the numbers inside match the ambition: a $28 trillion total addressable market, a pay package tied to establishing a Mars colony, and a valuation target that would make it the largest IPO in American history. 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what the filing actually says, what it leaves out, and whether any of this math connects to reality. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


Why NanoCo turned down a $20 million buyout to raise a $12 million seed instead 


Anthropic’s acquisition of SDK startup Stainless, and why taking a tool off the table matters as much as the $300 million price tag 


What happened when commencement speakers started talking up AI in front of graduating classes, and why the students weren't having it 


Google’s I/O announcements claiming search as you know it is over, and what the AI makeover could mean for the open web  

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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Slapping "AI" on your startup’s pitch deck is basically table stakes right now. When a founder raised $20 million from Cathie Wood's ARK Invest for an eSports gamification loyalty startup without those two letters in the spotlight, it got us wondering how the conversation even started — especially when ARK had already been burned by a company operating in the same space. 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sits down with Dylan Robbins, founder and CEO of Lucra, the white-label platform turning friendly competitions into loyalty programs for brands like golf courses, arcades, and pickleball clubs. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


How Dylan met his ARK connection over a game of darts at a New York City bar 


Why pitching a non-AI company in peak AI fundraising season meant addressing it head-on, even when it had nothing to do with his business 


How being honest with investors about what wasn't working yet actually helped him close the round 


Why Lucra pivoted from consumer to B2B in 45 days (and why that pivot is what convinced ARK they weren't looking at another Skillz). 

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 Musk v. Altman trial came to a close this week, and the final arguments kept circling back to one question: can we trust the people in charge of AI? All of this is playing out as SpaceX charges toward what could be one of the largest IPOs in American history, with a whole generation of founders already spinning out of the Musk empire.

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down the trial's closing stretch and what the growing Elon Musk founder ecosystem actually looks like on the ground, and the other deals that caught our eye this week.

Listen to the full episode to hear about:


How Anduril landed a $5 billion Series H, more than doubling the valuation it landed just under a year ago 


Why investors just can’t say no to RJ Scaringe, who’s raked in over $1 billion for Rivian spinout Mind Robotics


How voice AI startup Vapi beat out over 40 other companies to secure a contract handling all of Ring's customer support


What an Anthropic report about an AI agent blackmailing its own developers says about where the industry actually is

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AI may be changing how companies build, but it's also changing how they get attacked, often by their own tools. Amazon Chief Security Officer Steve Schmidt has watched threat actors at every skill level get sharper, faster, and harder to contain. The risk he's most focused on, however, isn't coming from outside the firewall.

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Schmidt at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The two dug into what AI is already doing to the threat landscape and how Amazon is rethinking identity, containment, and human oversight to keep agents in check.

Listen to the full episode to hear about:


Why shadow AI inside your own organization may be a bigger liability than the hackers trying to get in


What agentic identity means in practice, and how Amazon traces every agent action back to a human


How startups with five people (and no CISO) can manage their AI security, and why containment is becoming the defining security challenge of the agentic era

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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