On one hand, US-based, Black-founded startups have already raised $643M, 70% of what was raised in the entirety of last year.

But dig a little deeper into the numbers, and you’ll find that in the words of Crunchbase’s head of research: “…data has shown a persistent decline in funding to Black-founded companies that outpaces the overall decline in startup funding.”

The biggest IPO in history dropped this morning on the Nasdaq — a debut so big, our team thought it deserved its own bonus Equity podcast episode.

On this special bonus episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Senior Reporter Sean O’Kane called up our AI Editor Russell Brandom to help him break down the $2 trillion valuation, Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire, and what it all means for Anthropic and OpenAI still waiting in the wings.

No matter how viable it may be in the long term, AI has already reshaped the economy in expected,and unexpected, ways.

The latest Equity podcast dives right in as we enter the OpenAI and Anthropic IPO frenzy this summer: