Meta released Glimmer this week, an open-weight AI model anyone can download and run on their own hardware — a contrast to Muse Spark, the company’s more powerful model that stays locked behind its own APIs. The release landed alongside a letter from Mark Zuckerberg arguing AI should be “for everyone” rather than controlled by a handful of labs, but as Equity’s hosts point out, the vision comes with some asterisks.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan take a look at Glimmer, Zuckerberg’s 6,500-word manifesto, and more of the week’s headlines, from the true cost of the AI industry’s energy needs to a $250M acquisition gone very wrong.
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00:00 Intro
1:20 Would you buy a $300 cocktail robot?
3:08 Meta’s Glimmer and the “AI for everyone” pitch
8:03 Anthropic starts watermarking its writing, and users have thoughts
14:34 Amazon’s data center and its natural gas problem
16:37 The startups racing to keep the grid from melting down: Form Energy, Reservoir, and Discovered Materials
23:28 Joby Aviation buys into defense with Resonant Sciences
28:24 The $250M VideoVerse-Minute Media deal, a missing CEO, and a mess of lawsuits
32:37 Outro
@Anthonie.Bishop
August 14, 2026 at 12:15 pm
This podcast is sponsored by Meta* and Muse AI* 😂. Let’s not talk about the judgment of them praying on children. The jury found Meta misled the public about the safety of its platforms and knowingly enabled child sexual exploitation. But… yeah ! Keep endorsing and marketing billionaires; great job TC ! Profits over values !
@DrEdwardMercer
August 14, 2026 at 5:12 pm
Anthropic flipped the switch today. Claude Code now runs on auto by default.
Their own study: humans caught 14% of dangerous commands. The AI caught 89%.
They removed the human from the loop because the human was the weakest link.
Document AR-2026-11-04-100 | Status: UNRESOLVED