Democrats’ historic victories in this week’s U.S. midterm elections could also transform the tech industry. The public voted on 41 data center-related ballot measures on Tuesday — in all but one, the majority voted to impose more restrictions on data center development. And even when data centers weren’t on the ballot directly, they were a major talking point, with newly-elected Democratic governors and congressmembers likely to support additional regulation. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and Anthony Ha discuss what the election will mean for the tech industry moving forward — not just when it comes to data centers (which OpenAI is already trying to rebrand), but also increased government scrutiny of Big Tech. Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Whether Google first satellite data center is ushering our orbital data center future If major layoffs at design software company Canva and website builder Squarespace can be blamed on AI  Marvell’s $115 billion acquisition of Lumentum, in one of the largest deals in history Why CrowdStrike just acquired of two AI security startups What NBCUniversal’s investment in Indian microdrama startup Elo Elo means for the media landscape Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 0:47 Founder Summit recap and an Equity team update 2:23 Midterm results and the data center backlash 7:49 OpenAI rebrands data centers as “compute campuses” 10:57 Wall Street cools on the data center buildout 13:30 Regulatory certainty and building outside the U.S. 15:45 Canva and Squarespace layoffs 20:37 Can AI chatbots replace products like Squarespace? 23:22 Marvell’s $115B Lumentum acquisition 26:51 CrowdStrike buys Fiddler AI and Dreadnode 30:20 Micro drama startup raises $80M 30:59 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Open source models are becoming more mainstream as enterprises, governments and startups alike rely on the promise of lower costs, more control, and more flexibility. But as increasingly capable models become more freely available, how do companies capture value? And with Chinese open models gaining ground, can American players keep up?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Irene Solaiman, Chief Policy Officer and SVP of Strategy at Hugging Face, about what startups need to know before building on open models, from choosing the right tools and infrastructure to navigating the trade-offs shaping the future of open AI.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why startups, enterprises, and governments are switching to open AI models to cut costs, and when it makes less sense to use the most powerful models.  Who makes money when the models are free to use, and whether the companies building them can capture the value they create.  Why the U.S. may need deep-pocketed players like Nvidia to build an open frontier model that can compete with China’s, and what’s at stake if Chinese models become the global default.  How recent attacks on open AI platforms are raising a difficult question: how do you keep an open ecosystem secure without closing it off?  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

After weeks of speculation and leaks, Anthropic finally released the S-1 filing for its IPO, showing revenue of $16.3 billion for the first half of 2026, with a net loss of $80.7 billion. At around the same time, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sparked a backlash after boasting about using her AI app Dazzle to answer questions about her daughter for a school presentation. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and Anthony Ha dig into the long-awaited financial details behind one of the industry’s biggest companies, looking at both the enormous opportunities and the many, many risks. They’re also joined by Amanda Silberling to discuss a more basic question facing the industry: Are AI execs too out-of-touch to build products for normal people? Listen to the full episode to hear more about: What Anthropic’s S-1 reveals about its enterprise strategy Why an Apollo economist said that AI has delivered “zero financial payoff” New funding for Bedrock Robotics, a startup building self-driving excavators Why manufacturing accelerator Re:Build just raised $2.1 billion Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The PHP scare may have faded from your feed, but the cleanup is far from over. Last week, two critical bugs in the open source language behind roughly 70% of websites left organizations scrambling to fix their systems, with some taking sites offline until the vulnerabilities could be patched. According to researchers who found the bugs, this is only the beginning, as AI changes how quickly novel vulnerabilities can be uncovered and exploited.   On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks with Tomer Schwartz, CTO of Exposure Management & AppSec at Google-owned Wiz, who was part of the scramble --- alongside OpenAI, research group Calif, and the PHP team --- to fix the bugs. On the show, Schwartz and Bellan get into what the race looked like from the inside, how early-stage startups can build with security in mind, and why patching by hand won’t scale.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Tomer says Wiz couldn’t have found these bugs without AI, and how custom tooling tested dozens of ideas over a weekend.  How a bug was able to sit in plain sight for more than a decade, and what changed to make it exploitable.  Why leaks are almost baked into coordinated disclosure, and how Wiz planned for it.  Who’s still unpatched and whether small business owners running WordPress sites need to worry.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The internet is having an off week, to say the least.  Security researchers at OpenAI and Google-owned Wiz used AI to uncover critical flaws in PHP, the open source language behind roughly 70% of websites, including those built on WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento. The holes date back more than a decade, and now that a fix is out, companies are scrambling to patch their systems as attackers try to exploit the them.    On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and Anthony Ha dig into why AI-powered bug hunting could make this the first of many internet-wide scares, what Elon Musk’s careful choreography says about where a Tesla-SpaceX merger is headed, and more of the week’s headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Elon Musk’s pledge to give every kid in America a SpaceX share, announced just hours after Anthropic unveiled its public benefit fund  Character.AI’s bankruptcy, Disney’s deal to hire most of its staff, and Anthony’s case for rethinking what “acquihire” means  OpenAI’s acquisition of Orchestra Bio and what it says about the company’s “no side quests” strategy  Otter’s surprise $320 million raise from General Catalyst’s growth fund  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 0:00 – Intro: PHP security crisis, Tesla and SpaceX, and Otter.ai's $320M raise 0:55 – TechCrunch Disrupt recap and the Elizabeth Holmes documentary 2:50 – Critical PHP vulnerabilities threaten millions of websites 8:01 – AI's role in discovering and exploiting cybersecurity flaws 13:09 – The future of AI-powered cybersecurity 17:07 – Are Tesla and SpaceX finally merging? 19:10 – Elon Musk's influence over both companies' boards 22:50 – Why a Tesla-SpaceX merger could make financial sense 25:27 – Musk's plan to give American children SpaceX shares 27:08 – Character.AI's bankruptcy and Disney's involvement 30:21 – OpenAI acquires biotech startup Orchestra Bio 33:00 – Otter.ai raises $320 million from General Catalyst 35:30 – Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seems like every big AI player is building a personal agent. Meta has Muse, OpenAI launched Dots, and a startup called Instinct recently raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. But Eugenia Kuyda thinks the next generation of AI assistants needs to do more than book your restaurant reservations and find you hidden money in your Gmail.  Kuyda, who founded AI companion app Replika, has just launched Wabi, a personal AI agent that organizes your life into separate conversations, brings other people into the mix, and builds custom apps around what you're trying to do. The idea is to make AI less of a solo productivity tool and more of a way to spend time with the people who matter to you.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks with Kuyda about why she thinks AI agents should bring people together instead of keeping them glued to a single chatbot, how Wabi plans to compete in a crowded and expensive market, and what it takes to get people comfortable giving an AI access to their email.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Kuyda thinks single-threaded AI chats get worse as you use them, and how separate threads improve the user experience.  How Wabi is approaching compute costs and monetization while its app is free.  Whether phones will remain the primary way people access AI, even as operating systems become more AI-first.  What Kuyda looks for when deciding whether an AI startup deserves users' trust.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.  This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have its “ChatGPT moment” — that day when the shockingly capable chatbot was launched in late 2022. (General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte told Equity earlier this year that a single general foundation model would make much of today’s specialized robotics work redundant, and be that moment.)  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with Vishwanath to discuss where she’s writing first checks as the founder and managing partner of Techable VC. They also talked about what she’s learned as one of the first women executives to spin out of Nvidia and launch her own early-stage firm investing in physical AI across robotics, materials science, and life sciences.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Vishwanath defines physical AI as more than robots: “a molecule, a material, a medicine,” or a machine on a factory line.  What she means by “conscious automation.”   Why the best opportunities solve big problems like family-run factories that can't find workers to surgeons facing burnout.  Why she wants founders to see their VC as their moat, and how years at NVIDIA built the network she now uses for due diligence and customer introductions.  Where she thinks the U.S. and China each have the edge, and why humanoids should be good for more than dancing.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  01:03 Amulya’s path from Intel to Nvidia, and why she left  04:39 What physical AI meant in 2018 vs. now  06:12 Beyond dancing robots: industrial and surgical use cases  09:31 What “conscious automation” means  12:12 Cutting through the hype: the “Lego era” of robotics  16:43 Why your VC should be your moat  20:30 Biggest bottlenecks for physical AI founders  22:30 U.S. vs. China in physical AI  25:43 Are humanoids just for entertainment?  28:10 The most promising near-term areas  29:22 Outro   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane took over the Builders Stage Tuesday morning to tackle a growing challenge for the AI industry: what happens when AI agents go off-script, and who’s responsible for keeping them in check?  Recent incidents, from Anthropic pulling internal evaluations off the live internet after agents misbehaved to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calling for an “emergency brake” on AI models, have brought agent security into focus. The Equity team unpacked whether the problem calls for better engineering, new regulation, or both, and why startups are raising millions to secure AI agents.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The Anthropic agent mishaps, including a false police report that went nowhere after landing in a spam folder  Nadella’s call for an AI emergency brake, and why the hosts wonder what took so long  The funding race to secure AI agents, from AIR’s $50 million raise to Reco’s $55 million and Oak’s $60 million for agent identity, plus Sequoia-backed Cymphony  Why independent verification and certification could be key to building trust, and whether Big Tech will buy its way out of the problem  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads.  Chapters:    00:00 Intro and what we’re excited for at Disrupt  01:34 Durability, security, and Anthropic’s rogue agents  04:41 Nadella’s “emergency brake” post  06:33 NVIDIA’s OpenShell and the engineering-vs-regulation debate  10:04 The agent security startup boom: AIR, Reco, Cymphony  13:38 When agents go rogue in real life  15:55 Certifications and standards  19:33 HiddenLayer and the jump to production  20:40 Will Big Tech just acquire these startups?  22:52 Consumer trust and agent adoption  25:05 Predictions: acquisitions vs. independent verifiers  27:26 What’s coming up at Disrupt  29:02 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access to their inboxes, files, and credit cards — if they can get websites to let them in.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Sean O’Kane, and Rebecca Bellan dig into whether ditching NDAs will change how data center deals get done, why trust may be the real product for personal AI startups, plus a couple of deals of the week.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  The White House’s plans to make plans with its new Super Intelligence Force  Ghost’s $3,499 computer built to run AI agents around the clock, and why the Equity crew doesn’t see it going mass market  Tab, Underdog, and Hark pitching privacy as their product, plus the business model that could turn your agent into a salesperson  United, Apple, and Amazon putting up walls against outside agents  Lambda’s reported $4 billion raise, and the single customer behind $35 billion of its backlog  Uber’s $2.3 billion all-cash deal to get into the office catering space with ezCater  We’ll see you next week at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Get 25% off your tickets with code Equity25, and we’ll see you on the Builders Stage Tuesday at 9 am.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  0:55 Trump’s “superintelligence force” and the great AI rebranding  3:19 Amazon drops NDAs on data center deals  9:17 Why the AI industry has a communication problem  12:51 Personal AI agents: finding money in your inbox  15:27 Ghost’s $3,500 computer built for personal AI  19:16 Trust is the product: privacy-first agent startups  27:36 Lambda’s $4B raise and the neo cloud backlog problem  31:22 Uber’s $2.3B move into catering  35:10 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tristan Walker and Brynn Putnam both built and sold major consumer companies. Now, they’re building products designed to bring people together. Today on Equity, we’re bringing you a conversation TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandom had on stage at the latest StrictlyVC event in New York. Russell sat down with Walker, who sold Bevel maker Walker & Company to Procter & Gamble and is now building leathercraft trade school Heirloom, and Putnam, who sold fitness startup Mirror to Lululemon and is now CEO of Board, a touchscreen console that combines board games and video games. The two repeat founders talk about what they learned from their first companies, why they’re focused on physical skills and shared experiences now, and how AI could make hands-on, human connection more valuable rather than less. Walker explains why he sees growing demand for mastery and trade skills, while Putnam talks about using technology to bring people together instead of pulling them into individual screens. 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