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TechCrunch follows technology businesses through the choices founders make and the consequences of emerging products. The selection combines the Equity Podcast, Build Mode conversations and shorter…
TechCrunch follows technology businesses through the choices founders make and the consequences of emerging products. The selection combines the Equity Podcast, Build Mode conversations and shorter pieces about AI, digital identity and financing. It is well suited to viewers interested in startups as operating businesses: how they find money, develop an offering and respond when new technology changes what customers or competitors can do.
Funding is approached from several angles. A conversation with Kickstarter's Everette Taylor examines the case for crowdfunding before venture capital, while another episode asks whether that route could replace an initial funding round. A founder interview with Ashley Tyrner-Dolce explores building a business through bootstrapping and eventually selling it. These subjects make financing a matter of choices and trade-offs rather than simply a headline about the size of a deal.
AI coverage includes a reporter's digital twin, questions about trusting Meta with one's digital life and discussion of AI's role on both sides of hacking and defence. The material moves between demonstrations of something newly possible and questions about what using it means. Equity episodes also take up the language surrounding AI and the funding of technology businesses.
The result is a channel where a product experiment can sit beside a founder's account or a discussion of investment. Entrepreneurs can find different ways to think about raising money and building a company, while technology followers can examine the commercial and personal questions behind new tools. The range of formats makes it possible to follow either the business story or the implications of a particular product.
Latest episode
Amazon and others are done keeping their data center deals secret | Equity Podcast
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…
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.
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
YouTube Shorts
10th Annual Crunchies Awards
1st and Future
2012 Crunchies Awards
2013 Crunchies Awards
Apple News
Ask a VC
Battlefield Africa 2018
Best of CES | CES 2014
Best of Disrupt NY 2014
Best of Disrupt NY 2015
Best of Disrupt SF 2014
Bubbleproof
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