Equity is back from Disrupt and  fired up for the rest of the year. Here’s what Alex got into today:

• Stocks are not peppy to start the week, while crypto prices have also moderated in recent days.
• Alex could not not talk about the Cisco-Splunk deal, mostly to promise that he’ll finish that post today come hell or high water.
• The Amazon + Anthropic news is the biggest item of the day. A $1.25 billion deal that could stretch to $4 billion is no small fee. And with Google and Amazon and Anthropic tied up and Microsoft buddied to OpenAI we could be seeing big tech choosing sides in the LLM model war.
• Meta is building AI chatbots, while Apple is working to build more stuff in India.
• To close out, Correcto’s neat round, and the finalists from Startup Battlefield 2023 — more on the winner of Battlefield here.

For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.

Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

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