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

Venture capital is more concentrated than ever, making it increasingly difficult for early-stage founders to land their first check. So what does it actually take to stand out to investors?

In this special bonus episode of Build Mode () , host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Puneet Agarwal, managing partner at True Ventures () , to discuss what VCs are really looking for in 2026.

True Ventures has backed companies including Fitbit, Peloton, and Duo Security, and evaluates thousands of startups each year while writing roughly 20 checks. Puneet breaks down what makes founders stand out, how to get in front of investors without an established Silicon Valley network, and the biggest mistakes founders make during fundraising.

Recorded as part of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield masterclass series, the conversation also covers due diligence, term sheets, valuations, and why raising more money isn’t always better.

This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.” Trump also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as “super intelligence,” and meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products, even as the biggest money in AI still appears to be coming from the enterprise.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into this week’s AI moves, the ugly economics of consumer AI, plus the shifting IPO market and a handful of startup deals.

If you enjoy our show, join us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where Equity will kick things off with a live episode on the Builders Stage at 9 a.m.

Get 25% off your tickets with code Equity25 at TechCrunch.com/events.

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

0:53 TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

3:11 Trump, AI CEOs, and the era of “super intelligence”

11:09 Consumer AI gets a friendlier face with Muse and Dots

18:53 What Anthropic’s IPO plans say about the market

26:12 Quartermaster raises $140M to track what’s happening at sea

30:26 Ex-Tesla supply chain team builds Atomic

33:54 Charter Space brings insurance to the stars

36:02 Outro