While OpenAI is busy building its own chips, Groq, SpaceX, and even companies that used to make shoes are racing to lease out compute.

The Equity Podcast crew asks: Are neoclouds the new oil? And how long will the demand last?

OpenAI just shared its plans to spice things up with Jalapeño, its custom inference chip built with Broadcom, joining Google, Apple, and SpaceX in a growing list of companies building their way out of single-supplier risk. The goal is less of a clean break and more of a hedge. Custom silicon means more control, hardware tuned to specific needs, and the kind of performance gains Apple unlocked when it ditched Intel.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what the custom chip trend means for the industry and a few deals of the week.

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

01:28 OpenAI’s Jalapeno chip and the race for custom silicon

07:33 Memory chip crunch and rising costs for consumers

09:12 Nvidia, Grok, and the neocloud pivot

13:18 What’s the point of data centers in space?

18:25 AI agent loops: hype or next big thing?

27:56 Agility Robotics goes public via SPAC

32:49 A24 takes Google DeepMind investment

35:47 Outro

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