This week Mary Ann, Kirsten, and Alex gathered to chat through a massive sheaf of news including deals of the week from PermitFlow, Cake and Match Group, Klarna's board, and why video game startups could be a surprise 2024 winner. A note before we get to the rundown that Reddit filed to go public after we had recorded this episode, so notes on its IPO filing are not included in this particular episode. Don’t think that we won’t discuss its S-1, it just came too late for this particular entry. More to come!

On today's episode, we're talking about Reddit's upcoming IPO (again), along with some impressive raises for edtech startup Loora, Bioptimus and Dili. As usual, we'll wrap up with the latest in Venture Land, including a new foodtech fund and the largest African venture fund out there!

Today on Equity, Alex is back on the mic and talking through the latest for stocks and crypto, Planity's hefty Series C, TikTok in trouble (again), and a slew of M&A in Startup Land.

On today's news round up, Alex, Mary Ann and Karyne are talking through Deals of the Week from Rasa, Hippo Harvest, and a startup at the intersection of AI and crypto. We're also digging deep into venture capital’s year of transition and YC’s new call for startups.

Welcome to our Wednesday show, in which we talk through the week’s leading startup and venture capital news. Today we have an absolute pile of material, so let’s get to work: Bret Taylor’s new startup is turning heads: Known for his work at Facebook, Salesforce and OpenAI, Taylor’s new startup Sierra is building conversational AI agents. It has raised a mountain of capital to date, which it might need given that it’s not alone in its niche. FlowFi’s counter-cultural decision: FlowFi is building software to help startups keep their books more intelligently. But it’s not going to try and replace human inputs into financial work. Instead, it’s pairing its software with a labor marketplace so that startups can blend human and computer intelligence. If this means more GAAP accounting for startups, we’re here for it. Bold and Antithesis snag new capital: Bold raised $50 million for its Latin American fintech business, in good news for the sector and region that once went together like peanut butter and honey. Meanwhile Antithesis raised $47 million for its software testing service. Homebrew up, Foundry out: Homebrew is putting together an interesting new $50 million fund, while Foundry has announced that after its current, $500 million fund, it’s out of the game.

This morning we have an interesting mix of stories, which bring technology, politics and AI together in interesting ways. To work: Stocks: It’s another big week for earnings, including Hubspot, Instacart, Monday.com, and Cisco. We should learn a lot about the state of software and hardware sales as last year ended, and what some critical tech names see for the rest of the year. Crypto: Prices are up in the crypto world over the last week. Coinbase reports this week as well, which should give us a feel for how optimistic the leading North American crypto company is feeling. Waymo: Some folks set fire to a Waymo car in San Francisco. Which is so goddamned dumb that I would pull my hair out if I had any. Bugcrowd: A $102 million round? You love to see it. Mega-rounds have become less common in recent quarters, so when bug-bounty-focused Bugcrowd put together just such a round, we had to talk about it. AI field trips: No matter where you are founded, you are going to need to keep tabs on the AI work going on in Silicon Valley.

Today on Equity, we're digging deep into our favorite deals of the week from Starship Technologies and Ambience Healthcare, why Adam Neumann wants to buy WeWork from bankruptcy. We'll also discuss LatAm startups that are seeing success, earnings, ad spend, and the state of the economy.

We're taking a deep look at a number of startup fundraisings, including new capital for vertical saas, fintech and edtech, how quickly SUMA Wealth is growing, why Bluesky is flying high. We're also taking a look at a new early stage fund in Europe and a crypto app with real traction - we promise.

On today's episode, Crypto price movements after the spot Bitcoin ETF, yet another reason for investors to think twice about working with Russian companies, and we close it out by wondering if every startup is now an AI startups.

This week on Equity, we're going over startup raises that caught our eye and bigger deals of the week, including Zum's $140M round, why Ramp is on an acquisition spree, and how the tech layoff season simply refuses to fade away.