Tokenmaxxing was the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, with CEOs encouraging employees to push AI usage as far as it would go. Then the bill came due. Uber reportedly blew through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their org, and Meta killed its internal leaderboard.

This tension between hype and ROI is exactly where NEA partner Tiffany Luck lives these days. She got her start convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, and now she’s all in on AI, especially when it comes to the possibilities for “magic moments” in the consumer business.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Luck joins Rebecca Bellan to talk about the future of personal agents, her thoughts on this year’s AI IPOs, and how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend.

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

00:51 Tiffany Luck’s path from Lot18 to Amazon to VC

3:45 Magic moments: Waymo, healthcare, and the gap in personal agents

7:36 Privacy, security, and trusting AI with your life

10:39 IPO outlook: Anthropic vs. OpenAI on public markets

13:58 Compute, infrastructure, and where the value sits

15:41 What’s the ROI on tokenmaxxing?

27:07 Forward deployed engineers as a ‘Trojan horse’

32:49 Outro

Weezer visits WIRED to answer their most searched questions on Google. What does Weezer mean? Weezer x Olivia Rodrigo? What do Weezer fans call themselves? What Weezer song has the iconic riff? What is Weezer’s biggest hit? Does Weezer like Green Day? Does Weezer like Nirvana? Answers to these questions and many more await on Weezer’s WIRED Autocomplete Interview.

Watch more from WIRED | Autocomplete Interview:

#Weezer #Rock #WIRED

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History Professor Jonathan Rees joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about the Industrial Revolution. Why did coal miners take canaries into the mines? What caused The Great Smog in London (1952)? What are the most important inventions to come from the Industrial Revolution? Answers to these questions and many more await on Industrial Revolution Support.

WIRED recommends:

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#IndustrialRevolution #AI #WIRED

00:00 – Industrial Revolution Support
00:13 – Spinning yarn and saving time since 1764
01:01 – 1700s: Steam engines. 2026: Prompt engines.
02:16 – The miner’s choir
02:36 – Stow, pick, pack, repeat
03:59 – Productivity? High. Visibility? Zero.
04:44 – The Eric Williams argument
05:10 – Move it or lose it, punk
06:31 – Bring your child to work day
07:28 – All hail King Ludd
08:09 – The Henry Ford effect
08:49 – Bessemer’s world, we’re just living in it
09:53 – Rudder-to-rudder during rush hour
10:50 – “Any color you like, as long as it’s black.”
11:26 – Factories, fossil fuels and Fortune 500s
12:53 – The epicenter of the Industrial Revolution
13:31 – The mass production glow-up
14:14 – The weaver’s lament
16:27 – Crop it like it’s hot
17:33 – 4 eras, 1 seismic shift in civilization

Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►►
Listen to the Get WIRED podcast ►►
Want more WIRED? Get the magazine ►►

Follow WIRED:
Instagram ►►
Twitter ►►
Facebook ►►
Tik Tok ►►

Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV.

ABOUT WIRED
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized.