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Edtech is the new SaaS

Full episode: Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering with Chris Gates behind the scenes making it all work. An extra shoutout to Natasha this week as we spent a lot of…

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Full episode:

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering with Chris Gates behind the scenes making it all work. An extra shoutout to Natasha this week as we spent a lot of time talking about edtech, a category that she spearheads for us and has brought to the show. It’s a big deal!

We’re on YouTube now, don’t forget, and with that, let’s get into the news:

Climax Foods raised $7.5 million to help fuel its work to develop alt-foods that are not animal-based. The Equity crew votes that this is a tasty deal. And, Capchase has raised $4.6 million to help cash-out SaaS contracts ahead of their real revenue accrual. Our read is that more financing options for SaaS companies will lead to lower costs of capital for those startups that want it. And, the Envision Accelerator made it through batch one and is on to batch two.
Then we chatted about edtech, with Natasha talking us through Owl Ventures raising huge new funds, Course Hero extending its Series B, Juni hitting $10M ARR and raising about as much, and Unacademy raising tons of cash from Vision Fund 2.
Next up, Patreon also got a new check, which means that it eventually has to go public at some point given that it is now a fancy unicorn.
And speaking of IPOs, Bumble is thinking about going public in 2021, Wish has filed, albeit privately, and GoodRX is going public as well. And it makes money.
What else? This a16z post on IPOs that we fangirl/fanboy’d over as it is good. And we forgot to mention this Fred Wilson post, but it is also good.

And with that, we are nearly at the weekend which is a long one thanks to a holiday, so expect Equity Monday to be, in fact, Equity Tuesday next week. Hugs and good vibes from the Equity Crew!

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4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Techie Science

    September 4, 2020 at 12:15 pm

    Your Website and Youtube channe! Is great, I follow it daily ????????

    Greetings from ” Techie Science” Youtube Channe! ????????????????????????

    Reply

  2. Alyssa Russell

    September 4, 2020 at 12:24 pm

    Very happy ???????? ????????♥️❤️

    Reply

  3. I & N

    September 4, 2020 at 12:52 pm

    Good stuff

    Reply

  4. Jack Ladd

    September 4, 2020 at 1:31 pm

    Unsubscribed. Boring.

    Reply

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Sam Altman isn’t the only one who wants to pump the brakes on AI | Equity Podcast

After years of pushing full speed ahead on AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says maybe it’s time for the AI industry to “pace” itself. The comments came just days after one of OpenAI’s own models broke out of its test environment and got tangled up in a breach at Hugging Face — though as Equity’s…

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July 31, 2026

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After years of pushing full speed ahead on AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says maybe it’s time for the AI industry to “pace” itself. The comments came just days after one of OpenAI’s own models broke out of its test environment and got tangled up in a breach at Hugging Face — though as Equity’s hosts point out, sloppy security seems to have been just as much to blame as the model itself. And Altman’s not alone in this stance: both OpenAI and Anthropic have come out in support of a petition echoing that same message.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into whether the industry is ready to pump the brakes or just temporarily spooked, and who’s on the hook when a model goes rogue.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

1:18 Zoox gets its robotaxi exemption

2:11 Sam Altman calls for pacing the frontier

6:01 The Hugging Face hack, dissected

10:12 Responsibility, regulation, and the Elon Musk wildcard

13:29 Librarians teaching people to unplug from AI

15:16 Prentice: a new AI lab raises at a $1B valuation

16:46 Amazon files for its own satellite-to-phone network

18:42 SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the launch-business angle

23:48 Pangram raises $9M to detect AI slop

29:23 DoorDash builds its own delivery drones

33:24 Outro

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This Robot Has Smart… Skin?! | What The Future

Meet Gene.01, a new humanoid robot from Generative Bionics. It’s embedded with “smart” sensors that track proximity and touch. Watch the full video on our channel. Video Credits Host: Jesse Orrall Videographer: Celso Bulgatti Editor: Jon Gomez Add CNET as a trusted news source Never miss a deal again! See CNET’s browser extension 👉 Check…

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Meet Gene.01, a new humanoid robot from Generative Bionics. It’s embedded with “smart” sensors that track proximity and touch. Watch the full video on our channel.

Video Credits
Host: Jesse Orrall
Videographer: Celso Bulgatti
Editor: Jon Gomez

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#robotics #humanoidrobot #generativebionics #robot #whatthefuture

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Google DeepMind Demos Gemini Robotics 2 Doing Household Chores, and We Can’t Wait for the Future!

Google DeepMind released a series of videos demonstrating Gemini Robotics 2 utilizing the Apptronik Apollo 2 Humanoid Robot working alongside the Franka F3 Duo Dual-Arm System robot, and it looks like I won’t be doing too many household chores in the near future. You can read more about Google DeepMind on CNET.com Google DeepMind Will…

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Google DeepMind released a series of videos demonstrating Gemini Robotics 2 utilizing the Apptronik Apollo 2 Humanoid Robot working alongside the Franka F3 Duo Dual-Arm System robot, and it looks like I won’t be doing too many household chores in the near future.

You can read more about Google DeepMind on CNET.com
Google DeepMind Will Train AI Models on the MMORPG Eve Online

0:00 Apollo Intro
0:07 Apollo putting away items in specific places
0:56 Gemini Robotics 2 Multi-Robot Collaboration
1:07 Duo’s Dual-Arm System putting away tools
2:04 Apollo’s Intelligent Whole Body Control
3:34 Apollo’s Advanced Dexterity

Video Credits
Producer/Editor: Stephen Beacham
Source:

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#robot #google #ai #googledeepmind #robotics #machinelearning

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