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Equity

Maybe it's a good thing that we're not seeing too many AI unicorns

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2365 Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo and Becca Szkutak kick off the show dissecting a bill which aims to regulate AI at the model level. Naturally, some VCs and founders as well as students and professors are in an uproar about it. But we have to ask, is regulation in the name of safety such a bad thing? Short answer: It depends. Then the trio got into the deals of the week, including OpenAI’s potential new investment in webcam maker Opal. We also discussed some major changes at the executive level within OpenAI and what that could mean about what’s going on internally. Becca then wanted to talk about a new startup called why?!, which was founded by ex-Clubhouse employees and aims to be a networking, messaging and dating app all in one. And Kirsten wanted to drill down on electric vehicle maker Lucid’s new $1.5 billion capital infusion from the Saudi wealth fund. We then shifted gears to talk about just how many new unicorns were born in the U.S. this year so far and the surprising diversity of sectors they were in. And lastly, we dug into a couple of notable M&A deals in the fintech space, including one this week in which Payoneer scooped up a five-year-old Singaporean startup called Skuad for $61 million in cash as well as Stripe’s latest buy. We had a blast this episode, so give it a listen!

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech Crunch's flagship podcast about the business of

0:15.8

startups. Today is Friday August 9th. I'm Marianne Asavado and joining me

0:20.4

today is Tech Crunch Senior reporter and editor.

0:23.6

Kirsten, Cora sec.

0:24.7

Kirsten, how are you?

0:26.6

I am great.

0:27.8

I'm actually in California right now.

0:30.3

Helping out family watching small children, so as almost as exciting as the deals we cover week to week but

0:37.2

Slightly spicier slightly spicier

0:40.3

It's such a good auntie. Well, we're also joined by TC senior reporter on the Venture Bee and co-host of our sister show found Becca Scutac.

0:48.3

Becca, how have you been? I've been good. It's not 95 in humid in New York this week I wore a jacket last night so I'm feeling incredible

0:56.8

Oh wow a jacket in August I can't even imagine

1:01.2

Yeah, so mood is definitely better.

1:03.2

Oh, good.

1:04.2

Well, we've got a lot going on today.

1:06.3

We're going to be talking about Open AI and Opel, one new startup founded by ex clubhouse

1:11.8

employees and Lucid and then into our themes we'll take a look at

1:16.4

2024 unicorns and some FinTech MNA. Before we start though Yeah I just have to talk about like so Slack was

1:26.2

super busy yesterday everyone here was chatting about and I think the rest of the

1:30.6

tech world has been sort of buzzing about this AI regulation bill

1:34.2

that's winding its way through the California state legislator.

1:38.3

So this is Bill 1047.

...

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