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
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@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.
@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.
@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…