Equity

As concern over AI safety and rogue agents continue to make headlines, it’s no surprise that cybersecurity stocks are rising, or that investors are pouring massive amounts of capital into startups trying to build the next generation of security for an AI-native world. We’re even seeing companies like Instinct and Simile bring in nine-figure checks and valuations that wouldn't have made sense a few years ago.



With a front row seat to it all is Shardul Shah, a partner at Index Ventures who’s spent nearly two decades investing in cybersecurity and enterprise software — including six consecutive rounds in cloud security startup Wiz, which Google acquired for $32 billion earlier this year in one of its largest acquisitions ever.



On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Shah joins Rebecca Bellan to break down why he thinks periodic, human-in-the-loop security can’t keep up anymore, and why Index continues investing in AI-native security companies at stages that once required much more proof.



Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

Why Shah thinks cyber insurance should be most companies’ first move in managing AI-era risk

What happens when a single attacker can deploy a 10,000-agent ransomware swarm, and why that could force cybersecurity to become more machine-to-machine

How Wiz’s founders paved the way for a new generation of startups, including Frame and Enigma

Shah’s take on “pacing the frontier,” and why he thinks even a slowdown in model capability wouldn’t cool off cybersecurity investment

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

02:02 Why AI is creating a new cybersecurity category

05:16 The cyber insurance layer most companies overlook

09:15 Why Index is betting on AI-native security platforms

12:40 Will Wiz become a talent factory for new startups?

14:46 What actually makes a founder worth betting on

16:11 The hard part of knowing when to double down

18:53 Why Shardul says he’s not a visionary investor

21:16 How AI could reshape the entire security stack

24:18 What makes an AI security startup defensible

25:14 Why he doesn’t want to find “the next Wiz”

26:48 Why investors are writing huge checks so early

29:39 What happens to AI valuations if the frontier gets paced

31:01 Outro
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A week after an Anthropic researcher's doomsday warning rattled the AI world, the company's CEO Dario Amodei has outlined his plan to “pace the frontier” of AI development. The proposal leans on independent safety evaluators and coordination between AI labs in democratic countries, and it's already picked up some industry support, along with some pointed pushback from Nvidia's Jensen Huang.



On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into whether companies can agree on what slowing down means and who gets to police it. Plus, WordPress parent Automattic's boardroom coup, and a couple of the week's biggest deals.



Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

The golden parachute deals struck during Matt Mullenweg's 33-hour ouster from Automattic, and why the drama could give him even more control over technology that powers much of the web

Whether May Mobility's SPAC can deliver more than $300 million in potential funding, and why becoming a “public robotaxi company” comes with some big caveats

DoorDash's $425 million investment in Wonder and the race to automate food from order to delivery

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

00:00 Intro
1:00 Dario Amodei's plan to "pace the frontier"
5:03 Jensen Huang pushes back
9:08 Can market forces alone keep AI safe?
12:30 Third-party evaluators: how would they actually work?
15:27 Automattic's board tries to oust Matt Mullenweg
19:31 Comparing it to OpenAI's "the blip"
22:54 What's at stake in who controls WordPress
24:04 May Mobility's SPAC deal
28:42 Are SPACs back?
29:34 DoorDash invests $425M in Wonder
33:45 Outro
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“Why do I have to beg my grandparents to put on their hearing aids, but no one has ever needed to ask me to put on my glasses?”



That’s the question that drove Matthew de Jonge to spend six years building Fortell, an AI hearing aid startup that recently raised $163 million from the likes of Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias. The buzzy startup aims to build hearing aids that understand the sounds around you in real time, figure out what’s important and turn down the rest — instead of turning everything up at the same time, as most hearing aids do.



On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by de Jonge to break down what it takes to disrupt a decades-old industry where five companies make 97% of the products, insurance won’t cover the cost, and innovation has been slow to arrive.



Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

How de Jonge went from mechanical engineering and a hedge fund career to building handheld ultrasound machines at Butterfly Network, and why that experience gave him the confidence to take on hearing aids next.

The AI architecture behind Fortell's approach, including a custom chip built by a former Google TPU designer.

Why the five companies that dominate the hearing aid industry have been so slow to innovate, and how that shaped Fortell's pitch to investors.

De Jonge's take on Apple's AirPods as both a hearing aid alternative and an at-home hearing test, and why he sees them as complementary rather than a threat.

The regulatory hurdles around remote hearing aid fittings, and how state-level telemedicine laws are shaping Fortell's path to scale.

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

1:14 Why Matt built Fortell

5:16 The problem with hearing aids: everything's just... loud

7:36 How Fortell's AI separates important sound from noise

12:12 The funding pitch that won over Founders Fund and Thrive

16:31 Hearing aids vs. AI wearables (Meta, Apple, Legato)

20:34 Pricing, insurance, and the hearing aid "cartel"

23:25 Scaling up: new clinics and remote fitting

26:57 Outro
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An Anthropic researcher resigned this week, warning in a post on X that the company is “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. The company's own alignment lead even co-signed the message rather than walking it back. It's the kind of doomer warning the AI industry has flirted with before, but the timing, with Anthropic reportedly preparing for an IPO, makes it land differently.



On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the latest AI safety warning and what it says about the industry's race toward increasingly capable models. Plus, Apple's first big event under new CEO John Ternus and more of the week's headlines.



Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

Why Apple leaned hard into AI at its hardware event, and how always-on features baked into the Watch and AirPods may matter more than the splashy new foldable iPhone

How Stokes Space's $1 billion raise reflects a launch market that's suddenly wide open now that SpaceX is winding down its Falcon rockets

Why investors poured $2 billion into coding startup Cognition at a $48 billion valuation, and what it says about how much room VCs think is left in AI coding

What a $50 million seed round for floating nuclear reactors says about the scramble to power AI data centers

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

3:28 Anthropic researcher's resignation warning

9:33 What's actually being done about AI risk?

15:56 Apple's AI-first hardware event

19:56 The case against a standalone AI wearable

21:53 Always-on listening: watch, AirPods, and privacy tradeoffs

26:43 The foldable iPhone's odds

27:16 Stoke Space raises $1B for a reusable rocket

31:17 Cognition raises $2B, betting on room for more AI coding players

34:13 BlueCore Energy's floating nuclear reactors

37:38 Outro
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AI companies have been talking about superintelligent AI like it's inevitable, but recent safety incidents like OpenAI's Hugging Face breach are demonstrating the potential dangers of deploying AI systems that are more capable than humans. So what happens when we can't reliably control what these systems do?

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by Connor Leahy, an AI researcher, entrepreneur, and now the U.S. Executive Director of nonprofit ControlAI, which is pushing for a far more radical approach to AI safety: stopping companies from developing superintelligence altogether. Leahy explains why he thinks the risks have become too great to manage through alignment and containment alone, and how what sounded far-fetched six months ago is now being backed by a wave of new legislation.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

His take on the Sanders-Casar “Ban Superintelligence Act,” the parallel legislation in the U.K. that Control AI advised on, and why he thinks the U.S. bill may go further than necessary.

How he views frontier AI labs less as companies simply chasing returns and more as political actors, and what that means for the trillions of dollars being poured into data center buildouts.

Why Leahy thinks the real point of no return is when AI can build better AI, creating a potentially runaway cycle of self-improvement

The case for international “trust but verify” agreements, and why Leahy thinks it isn't actually in China's interest to build superintelligence.

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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