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Why top talent is walking away from OpenAI and xAI | Equity Podcast

AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the ⁠disbanding of its mission alignment team⁠ to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode”…

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AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the ⁠disbanding of its mission alignment team⁠ to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s ⁠Equity⁠ podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into the week’s biggest deals and departures, from billion-dollar bets on fusion and robotics to the tech exodus reshaping AI companies.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:46 AI Super Bowl ads ⁠aren’t quite landing⁠ outside of Silicon Valley
04:31 Apptronik raises $935M for humanoid robotics
09:05 Will automakers partner with humanoid robotics startups?
13:05 Inertia Enterprises raises $450M for fusion energy
18:44 What the Epstein files reveal about ⁠Silicon Valley dealmaking⁠
30:56 The exodus at xAI and OpenAI, and what it means for the AI race
37:22 Outro
Subscribe to Equity on ⁠YouTube⁠,⁠ Apple Podcasts⁠,⁠ Overcast⁠,⁠ Spotify⁠ and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on⁠ X⁠ and⁠ Threads⁠, at @EquityPod.

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3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. @NugentDubaele

    February 13, 2026 at 8:21 pm

    End-near believer here. Even I think Elon’s XA80B passes ETH/Bitcoin performance Q4/early 2026. Has it all.

  2. @ichrisone

    February 14, 2026 at 1:51 pm

    Ouch! Who is going to compete with Anthropic? Just Google? Tangent here but this feels like classic unbridled Capitalism. 2 options at the end of the day for everything! 1 option better than communism. 😅. In reasoning that’s not much of a choice. False dilemma.

  3. @seanmchugh2866

    February 14, 2026 at 8:57 pm

    white liberal woman, the word equity fixed to the top left of the video, claiming “talent” is leaving. …i’m not sure if i need to watch this video to get the message…

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Science & Technology

Is the $1.7B a Bet on Atoms Itself, or Just on Travis Kalanick’s Name?

A startup hitting unicorn status used to be a sign of its legitimacy as an actual business. But with $1.7B raised for Travis Kalanick’s nascent Atoms, the Equity podcast crew asks whether this is proof of a great idea or just proof that his name sells:

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A startup hitting unicorn status used to be a sign of its legitimacy as an actual business.

But with $1.7B raised for Travis Kalanick’s nascent Atoms, the Equity podcast crew asks whether this is proof of a great idea or just proof that his name sells:

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Upload vs Download Speed: What Actually Makes Home Internet Fast

This video is a paid partnership with GFiber. Upload vs download speed: which one is actually making your home internet feel slow? If your video calls freeze, your files take forever to sync, or your livestream stutters, the problem is usually your upload speed — and most providers don’t advertise it. In this video, we…

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This video is a paid partnership with GFiber.

Upload vs download speed: which one is actually making your home internet feel slow? If your video calls freeze, your files take forever to sync, or your livestream stutters, the problem is usually your upload speed — and most providers don’t advertise it. In this video, we break down the difference between upload and download speed, what symmetrical internet speed means, and how GFiber (formerly Google Fiber) delivers 100% fiber internet with upload speeds that match your download speeds on every plan.
GFiber has kept the same monthly price for gigabit internet since 2012 — no annual contracts, no forced bundles, free installation, and month-to-month flexibility. See what real customers say on the GFiber channel: youtube.com/@GFiber

#UploadSpeed #FiberInternet #GFiber

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Science & Technology

Did Investors Pay a $1.7B Pemium to Declare “Travis Is Back?”

Travis Kalanick’s robotics startup just raised $1.7B with Uber, and Andreessen Horowitz among its big investors. Equity digs into whether all this excitement is actually about the business…or about its backers paying a premium to be first to declare “Travis is back.”

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Travis Kalanick’s robotics startup just raised $1.7B with Uber, and Andreessen Horowitz among its big investors.

Equity digs into whether all this excitement is actually about the business…or about its backers paying a premium to be first to declare “Travis is back.”

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