Meta’s Muse just stole the spotlight from OpenAI and Anthropic

When AI leaders at OpenAI and Anthropic started talking about “pacing the frontier,” maybe someone should have asked: what pace? It’s turned into model drop week for both companies as Anthropic rolled out Opus 5.5, followed by OpenAI’s GPT-6 model updates just 90 minutes later. But the company that stole the spotlight this week was Meta, whose personal AI agent Muse is reportedly outpacing ChatGPT’s early numbers and is headed for smart glasses and a tiny Tamagotchi-style device next. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into Meta’s consumer AI strategy and what it means for the startups trying to build on top of this technology, from where the money is flowing to which AI products might actually become part of people's daily lives. They also get into a16z's new school for aspiring founders and two very different AI and hardware deals. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How a16z's Horowitz Andreessen Academy plans to pave a new path for aspiring founders, and why the Equity crew sees echoes of the Thiel Fellowship and Silicon Valley's long-running anti-college streak Why Oura's $2.2 billion IPO looks more like a payday for existing shareholders than a major fundraising event for the company Ema’s $77 million raise to sell teams of AI agents that automate HR, IT, and finance workflows, with Google and Microsoft among its early enterprise customers Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Ha?

  This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, your energy technology partner.

• 0:05Kirsten Korosec?

  It's model drop week for Anthropic, OpenAI, and most surprisingly Meta, whose Muse model is stealing the spotlight and reportedly outpacing ChatGPT's early mobile numbers. Also this week, Andreessen Horowitz is launching its own school for aspiring founders straight out of high school, and we're keeping our eye on a couple of deals this week, including the IPO of smart ring maker Aura.

• 0:39Kirsten Korosec?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, September 25th, and I'm Kirsten Korosec, Transportation Editor here at TechCrunch, and I'm joined, as always, by our Weekend Editor, Anthony Ha, and Senior Reporter, Special Project, Sean O'Kane. Welcome you two, and I have a very important question, which is, did you catch Tilly Norwood and her flawless interviews that happened when she was on her, when she was on her big press tour?

• 1:16Anthony Ha?

  I was ignoring the press tour because I don't really have any interest in the idea of AI actors, or I'm intellectually interested, but I have no interest in actually seeing them in a movie, which I think is how most normal people feel, but you know, you can get some headlines that way. And Tilly didn't do so great, from what I hear. She basically switched to speaking Mandarin during an interview with Piers Morgan, and it was a little disconcerting for Piers.

• 1:40Sean O'Kane?

  There's a lot that's disconcerting for Piers Morgan.

• 1:44Anthony Ha?

  One of many things, yeah.

• 1:46Kirsten Korosec?

  One of many things. Yeah, it was pretty cringe. And the only reason why I bring it up, because like, counter to that, President Trump said that, you know, AI has reached superintelligence. And I thought that that was a good counterpoint, like you could just turn and point to Tilly and say, Exhibit A, no.

• 2:08Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I think it's, um, I think it's fair to say that this is not a measured decision of him sitting and pondering the meaning of superintelligence, he being President Trump. But rather, it seems like he is very much caught in this sort of debate about AI safety, and he is very much taking the position of, no, like, AI is great. Everyone should love AI. You know, unfortunately for him, a lot of the polling data suggests that certainly most Americans don't feel that AI is great. And so he's decided to do a little one-man presidential rebranding campaign, where he is just calling it superintelligence, and that's what we should all call it.

• 2:51Anthony Ha?

  And yeah, we'll see if it catches on. I don't know that I've seen it immediately take off, but anything's possible.

• 2:58Kirsten Korosec?

  Is it superintelligence, though?

• 3:00Anthony Ha?

  Is, is artificial intelligence superintelligence? Well, okay, great. This is what we're going to argue about for the next 40 minutes.

• 3:07Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah.

• 3:08Anthony Ha?

  No, I don't think so, but we can see, I mean, there is definitely some news that maybe certain tech executives would argue that we're getting closer. I mean, they've been arguing that for years now, and we've seen that, you know, and this is kind of the, one of the, the big things that we're going to be talking about this week is all these new AI models, you know, we have new things, new models from Anthropic, new models from OpenAI, and then I think the one that got the most attention was Facebook slash Meta with a new version of Muse, which Kirsten, you were keeping a close eye on.

• 3:38Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, to me, what's really interesting is, just to back up a minute, we have a number of releases. So we've got, you know, Anthropic releasing Opus 5.5, and then OpenAI is right there, then, you know, Muse, we're going to get to that in a second. But I want to stop and just ask, I thought we were pacing the frontier, and it doesn't seem like we're pacing the frontier, Sean.

• 4:04Sean O'Kane?

  I mean, it's a, it's a fast pace, right? That is a very careful choice of words, apparently, by our, our AI overlords to allow them some room. You know, I love language, so here we are.

• 4:18Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, but seriously, I mean, do you think that, is it so vague that it can mean anything? And should we be tying model releases to what pacing the frontier means? Because, you know, these are probably releases that could just be small improvements. Certainly, they're, they're talking about pretty big improvements, but not every model release is going to be groundbreaking. Of course, they want to keep up with the competition. So can you have both, I guess? Can you pace the frontier and also have a new model release every three months?

• 4:50Anthony Ha?

  Certainly, the argument that Sam Altman and Dario Amadei are making is that yes. And, and to be fair, I mean, I think these are probably model releases that have been in the works for a while now, you know, they, they're not necessarily responding right away to, you know, debates that have been happening in the last few weeks. But the vision that they're trying to present is, hey, we can be careful, we can be deliberate, we can make these changes, like having these independent, you know, auditors, you know, working with us and making sure we're kind of holding to our commitments. But at the same time, we can continue developing new technologies. So, and I think that's like a fair argument to make. The question then is, from the outside, what does pacing look like?

• 5:31Anthony Ha?

  Does it just look exactly the same as what, what it did before? And if so, then like, what has actually changed?

• 5:39Kirsten Korosec?

  I mean, I think that's a fair question. I mean, now, I'm pretty sure the audience know, follows pretty closely the different models, but I will note that, you know, Anthropic, they have Opus 5.5, and I think it is notable that this is their most expensive tier. So they are, you know, releasing more capable models that are not the cheapest. These are, you know, clearly geared more for, you know, the enterprise clients. So, I mean, I don't know if that is going to continue, that sort of theme, but they are very interested in growing the enterprise side of things, just as OpenAI.

• 6:19Sean O'Kane?

  Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this dynamic a few times now, over the last month or two of, you know, I, I was making the case a couple of weeks ago, they're just not structurally built in a way that slowed down, a real slowdown, like makes a lot of sense. I think another piece of that that is worth pointing out, you know, that you just basically highlighted, but to say it even sharper, like, they have found opportunity. I wouldn't want, I wouldn't go so far as to say like, they've struck gold, but like, enterprise applications for this technology is something that they are all trying to get as much as they can. And so there's just, you know, that part of it is not going to slow down anytime soon, that's for sure.

• 7:01Kirsten Korosec?

  So how do you counter that, or, or how do you put Muse, which is this new personal AI agent that's just been released by Meta, and clearly a bet on consumer, like, how does that fit into what you just described, which is, at least with other frontier AI model companies, seeing opportunity and business within, within enterprise, because Meta Connect, which is their big annual that just happened, and they are like, you know, all in on Muse, that is very clear.

• 7:32Anthony Ha?

  That was definitely like, very head spinning for me, because it certainly feels like what we've seen, what we've been talking about has been this shift towards enterprise. Not exclusively, but certainly that's where it seems like the money, the attention is going. And, you know, maybe some of that is also like, because of the relative position of these different companies, you know, OpenAI and Anthropic, obviously, they are very, you know, kind of in the lead in a lot of ways, but also they're hoping, planning to go public in the next, you know, either this year or next year, in the case of OpenAI. And so there's this feeling of, oh, I think we got to actually make money now. And, and, you know, and not to say that they're not making money now, but because the costs are so high, they have, and they have, and the valuations are so high, they have to make money, you know,

• 8:17Anthony Ha?

  on this scale that's essentially unprecedented. And I think they're seeing enterprise as the way to do that. And potentially, I wonder if, you know, Meta, for a variety of reasons, sees a different opportunity, and so you could, there's a part of me that's like, yeah, wait, did they sort of not get the memo? But, but I think more charitably, you could say, well, if that's where OpenAI and Anthropic are going, then maybe there is more of an opportunity for Meta to make the kind of much more consumer friendly, may continue like, advancing AI on the, you know, consumer side.

• 8:52Kirsten Korosec?

  We can complain about, or criticize, or critique Meta all day long, but they're very good and have established track record of embedding themselves in everyday people's lives. I mean, there's a reason why Facebook has so many users, Instagram, WhatsApp, and I've never really thought of them as an enterprise product anyway. So I would, I think it's smart for them to continue to push on the consumer piece. You know, Sean, you just tried, you've already tried Muse, which has already been out for a couple of weeks, and I'm wondering if you see it being successful in the bid to become part of every part of your life?

• 9:34Sean O'Kane?

  Not really.

• 9:35Kirsten Korosec?

  No? Okay.

• 9:37Sean O'Kane?

  Not, not really.

• 9:38Kirsten Korosec?

  I totally thought you were going to say something very different.

• 9:41Sean O'Kane?

  No, you know, I, I understand why some people think that is going to be the case. You know, we should say, I'm sure a lot of people understand this, but this is like, roughly Meta's kind of like, ground up version of like, a, an on-your-iPhone or on-your-Android app of OpenClaw, which we talked about a couple of months ago, which Meta went out and basically bought and integrated those folks' work, where they were basically taking like, Mac Minis and running, you know, their own sort of like, it was the first big explosion of like, holy smokes, these agents can do all this stuff for me while I'm out and about, and I can just text with it and let it control my whole computer. And so there's a lot of the same kinds of elements of that at play,

• 10:25Sean O'Kane?

  and having it in your hand on an app that works with like, a relatively good chatbot. You know, as the interface, it does seem pretty like powerful. If I wanted to keep blinders on, I would say, you know, one of the first things that I did with it was, you know, because it makes a suggestion for you. It makes a bunch of suggestions for you as to like things that it can do. And one of them was like, you know, I'll scan to see if you have any like unclaimed funds, right? Like this thing that like, I think no one ever really thinks about and often is going to completely miss. Because there's just not a lot of unclaimed property funds out there in your name. Surprise, surprise, there were some for me. And so like, it helped me make some money on my first day and that was pretty cool.

• 11:10Sean O'Kane?

  Like, I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't been prompted by this thing to do it. And there's a check on its way to me in the mail. Fantastic. That ends pretty quickly, right?

• 11:18Kirsten Korosec?

  I mean, you just, you just killed, you just killed your own argument. I don't see how that wouldn't become widely, wildly popular then.

• 11:24Sean O'Kane?

  But it's not a thing, so it's, but it's not a thing that's like repeatable. That's like a, it's a kind of, that's more like a party trick type thing. And also something that like, I should have just been looking out for that by myself. I get that that's partially what agents are there for, because the, the ability to constantly be operating and, and doing it, sorry, tenfold, a hundredfold compared to what work you have to put in. There's some power in that, but you know, the more sustainable version of that, the thing that Meta has talked up a lot over the last couple of days is, you know, taking that idea and applying it to your real, true everyday financials, like giving it your, your information for your credit card, your Gmail account, like all this other stuff, like, do things that we've seen other companies do, like Rocket Money or whatever, where it'll go cancel subscriptions that you're not using,

• 12:07Sean O'Kane?

  or identify double charges, you know, things that frankly, the credit card companies should be doing already. And at that point, you just run into that trust wall with Meta, right? Like, I think one of the reasons that I was willing to explore this and was kind of curious to stick with it a little bit even through to today, is that somewhat shockingly, when I downloaded it, I, I just assumed that it would like really instantly prompt me and like plug me right into Threads, Instagram, Facebook, which I don't really use ever, and, and pull up that context immediately. But it didn't, and it was like working with me like I was a stranger at first, which made me more willing to use it, because I didn't feel like Meta had everything on me already.

• 12:51Sean O'Kane?

  But you can see as you start to use it, it really tries to grab you and pull those things into the system, so that it can learn all this stuff about you. And, you know, at that point, it's just like, I don't know that I will ever trust Meta the same way. I think it's an interesting timing for me, having just upgraded my iPhone and getting onto the new iOS with the new Siri that actually works and can do some controls on your phone in a way that is surprising and helpful, that it's never been able to do. You know, thinking about how much I've been using that over the last week, and how much more, how much more willing I would be to have the Siri version of a Muse, take that information, because I just trust Apple more with that really sensitive information.

• 13:35Sean O'Kane?

  And not only trust it with the information from a cybersecurity perspective, but from the fact that it's not, its business is not to sell me a bunch of crappy ads, right? Like Meta's business is to sell you ads. And yes, they'll make the argument that the more they know about you, the more accurate and like interesting the ads will be. Wake me up when we get to that fever dream. But like, that's just been the thing that's in my head. And I haven't, you know, beyond the, the one-time money lever that I got, which was great, I don't feel like I've found anything else that's really all that useful, other than the fact that it is, you know, to Anthony's point, really tailored at keeping it sort of consumery in your interactions with it, which I do think helps it, and is why people are talking about it so much.

• 14:19Anthony Ha?

  And I have to say, Sean, despite your negativity, I think you did just convince me that I should try it out, if only to try to pull the one-time money lever.

• 14:26Sean O'Kane?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Anthony Ha?

  And then maybe never again.

• 14:27Sean O'Kane?

  I mean, it's worth the shot.

• 14:29Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, you, you might have money sitting out there, you know? I mean, I will say this, like, I get your point, but I will push back a little bit because,

• 14:39Kirsten Korosec?

  yes, there are reasons to not trust Meta, but people continue to use their products and love their products and use them all the time to the point where it's like an addiction, which is a social media component. And I think that if they do those one-off tasks, like find money for you, that is a way to build trust. I think the bigger question is, if given a choice, the consumer has to pick a Muse type of personal agent and Siri, and Siri is already in their phone, which is sitting in their hand all the time. You know, you can kind of see where it will go to Apple's favor. But Meta has a response for that, which is two things. They're all in on glasses, which they revealed this week at Connect, including, by the way,

• 15:23Kirsten Korosec?

  a solution to their, their perv glasses, as people call them. But they're putting Muse within those glasses. And they also, kind of as like a one more thing type of announcement, showed off this little Tamagotchi style. I, I don't know if I would call it a wearable, but you can put it on a keychain, you can wear it around your neck, you can hold it in your hand, in your pocket, and Muse is in that too. And that one is the most interesting, because I thought about this morning and I'm like, it's so cute. I feel like it's meant for kids. And I'm kind of wondering if that's the market they're going to push, which is a whole new group of users that might not have phones.

• 16:01Sean O'Kane?

  And that may be the case. One thing I definitely want to say, as someone who's used Muse a bunch and is now looking at those products, I think there's a, a big gap that they need to close between what the software can do right now, and when those products come out and how it gets used. Because, like, when I say this is kind of like, and Meta has admitted this week, that it basically is like, built to be like OpenClaw. It really is like OpenClaw. Like, there are times in the Muse app where it's like popping up like an overlaid browser window in the app, being like, you know, showing you, or maybe even handing you over control to like click, like tap click a cursor into a box, so that you can fill out information in that web browser.

• 16:45Sean O'Kane?

  And like, how is that going to work on glasses? How is that going to work on a little, you know, two inch by two inch piece of tech? Like, it's not there yet. And so like, those are, those are definitely things that hold promise for them. But I don't know how that's going to work with the, with the current version of the software. I'm sure they'll iterate, they'll find ways around it, but yeah, I don't know.

• 17:05Anthony Ha?

  I mean, that Tamagotchi device that you talked about, Kirsten, was definitely one of the most striking things to me, which also tied into their sort of demonstration of this kind of avatar for, for the AI as well. And this feeling that, I mean, one, that they're trying to like, again, I don't think they said this explicitly, but it did feel like it was kind of like a kiddy version of it, which, or at least kid-friendly, which I have a lot of reservations about, because I think, as much as there are sort of questions about mental health and how people relate to these like chatbots and things like that, I think that then, generally speaking, the, the last people who should be spending a lot of time talking to chatbots as kids, in fact, you know, I live in New York City, that now that is essentially not allowed in, in the New York City schools up to eighth grade.

• 17:48Anthony Ha?

  I mean, I understand why, given the sort of atmosphere around AI right now, that, that it makes sense to try to put a kind of friendlier face on AI, but I also don't know if that's really a good thing in the long term. But I, I imagine we could probably go back and forth on this for, for a while. And there's a lot else that we want to get to, including this announcement from Andreessen Horowitz about, actually speaking of, of, you know, younger people.

• 18:13Kirsten Korosec?

  Kids.

• 18:13Anthony Ha?

  A new education in it. In this case, not kid kids, but, um, it's, I mean, right on the, right on the cusp. What moves our world forward? Energy. History has been shaped by it, revolutions won with it, and progress dependent on it. For 190 years, Schneider Electric has been a leading force in this story, creating the technologies that harness energy and transform the competitive landscape. And today, in the dawning era of energy and industrial intelligence, Schneider is helping customers build more efficient, resilient, and sustainable operations across every sector. From data centers to homes, from buildings to industry. Schneider Electric, your energy technology partner. Discover more at se.com.

• 18:56Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, right on the cusp. So this announcement is a new academy and, you know, for anyone who's followed tech for a really long time, I just want to remind everyone that like every few years, there is like a new idea, which is actually an old idea, and it promises all sorts of things. In this case, the Horowitz-Andreessen Academy is aimed at aspiring founders. It is very expensive and has some absolutely amazing classes. I don't know if you've checked this out at all, but there's some pretty fun ones in there. And I'm just wondering, who is going to be? Paying for this because the counterpoint is the Thiel Fellowship,

• 19:41Kirsten Korosec?

  which has been around for a long time and encourages people to drop out of college if they have a great idea and they get money. They don't actually have to pay for money. So is there a world in which they get money from the Thiel Fellowship and then spend money to go to the academy so they can become really good founders? I don't know.

• 19:58Anthony Ha?

  That does seem like a really great sort of one hand washing the other kind of situation.

• 20:02Kirsten Korosec?

  It's a circular economy, Anthony, you know, it starts, it's, it goes through all the founder stuff.

• 20:07Anthony Ha?

  That's how they do things in Silicon Valley. I, I think one nuance to it is that they are saying the first class, which I believe will be 50 students, is going to be free. And then the subsequent classes after that, they will charge what they're saying is the equivalent of an elite university tuition. And I think that, I mean, for a relatively small group of students, that I, it, it's not hard for me to imagine at all that just as there's a lot of interest in the Thiel fellowships and in these kinds of sort of entrepreneurship programs, that there will be an audience for this. I don't know how large or how transformative it will actually be.

• 20:47Sean O'Kane?

  I mean, let's just take a step back. Big week for teens, right? Like Meta is going to give you a new device that you can talk to while you ride in a Waymo in certain cities, all the way to your how to accomplish regulatory capture at the Horowitz and Dreeson University. You know, I, yeah, I mean, I think you're right. Like, I think this is something that is going to be pretty focused and there won't be, you know, this is not something that is going to be competing with the Ivy Leagues anytime soon. And I don't think it's meant to be that. You know, this is a situation where, not to just default to the cynical read, like I tend to do sometimes, but.

• 21:24Kirsten Korosec?

  You're not cynical, come on, no.

• 21:26Sean O'Kane?

  You know, I'll put it this way. Broadly speaking, there has been, you know, a pushback against expertise, to put it lightly, over the last decade. And that goes into the government, that goes into universities, you know, that goes into the media to a certain extent. And so this is, to me, a natural outgrowth of that where, you know, the idea that you are going to be better suited, hearing from guest lecturers like, you know, Travis Kalanick or even the CEO of Perplexity, is, is going to better prepare you for life as a Silicon Valley founder.

• 22:08Sean O'Kane?

  Like, there's an element of that, that, that is true, but this is just, to me, like, the sort of embodiment and, and making more material, that idea that like, you know, the people who have been trained to teach you at the universities are charlatans and fraudsters and don't have that lived experience and therefore you should come give us the money to educate you.

• 22:31Kirsten Korosec?

  It definitely skews a little bit cynical. I will say that I can see how they might be thinking in the very early days, which is there are these institutions that have sprung up out of, like, more traditional academics that have sort of a cult following and it is a very specific group of people. I think of like the Rhodes Scholar, for example. And, and if you are that and if you have that designation, you're in this special group and it's secretive, but has a lot of power and influence. And I could see them wanting to create something like that. And I don't think there's anything wrong with creating like very specific hands-on experience

• 23:13Kirsten Korosec?

  and, you know, mate, hopefully teaching them lessons of what not to do as much as of what to do. There are some pretty funny classes in here, like the Geometry of Luck, which is a life philosophy class. I don't know what we're going to actually see as a society as a result of these groups of people. We're going to have to wait and see, I think. We do see evidence of what's happened with the Thiel Fellowship people and I would say it's a mixed bag, right? Like, you can see some people have gone on to be very successful and we've seen people who have gone on to be successful and then totally implode and make really bad choices. So maybe they would benefit from learning what not to do at an early stage in their founding career.

• 23:55Anthony Ha?

  I think you can sort of compare this to a lot of different things. Definitely the Thiel Fellowship is one and particularly that kind of celebrating of the kind of like dropout, you know, ethos of like, hey, like school is a waste of time, go do what you want to do, which I think is sort of admirable in a lot of ways, less so in, in others. And I think you can also compare this to just sort of this, yeah, this broader trend of Silicon Valley or, you know, other kind of like Silicon Valley adjacent people kind of being frustrated with the education system and trying to come up with their own alternatives. And I don't think there's been a great track record for that, that, you know, the Thiel Fellowship has, you know, continued, but I think there've been a lot of kind of failed attempts, things that haven't gone anywhere. And I think part of the question I would be asking if I were thinking about applying,

• 24:40Anthony Ha?

  which I'm many, many years past doing, is also that there was this sort of period where, you know, there was also just a million different sort of like learn to code kind of schools. And I think for a period, that probably was a great thing to, to invest in. And then now I think that there's more questions about whether or not those are actually the most marketable skills. And so I think there's also a question of like, if you're just sort of focused, like molding yourself for this one very specific role, is that actually, are you then going to be well suited to, you know, what the job market looks 10 years from now, 20 years from now? I mean, you could argue that somebody who got a standard liberal arts education is also in, you know, has, has some worries about that. So it's not like there's anything that exempts you from that stress, but, you know, especially

• 25:24Anthony Ha?

  if this is actually going to be charging like serious, serious tuition fees, like, I can imagine somebody thinking that they are like about to go like crush it and then, you know, hitting some hard realities of what the job market looks like.

• 25:37Kirsten Korosec?

  But the connections, I will push back on that. I think that the connections that they're going to get, if it's a small cohort, as they, they suggest 50 people and they have these speakers coming in and then certainly there's going to be other VCs they're going to be interacting with. I think the networking alone is what people are going to be paying for as much as the knowledge. And that is very important in this day, I will say, of, there's plenty of accounts of AI slop hitting the job seeker market and trying to cut through the noise and trying to reach a human being to get a job. If you don't become a founder, you have a lot of connections suddenly and, and that can be incredibly valuable.

• 26:16Sean O'Kane?

  Yeah, I mean, the connections are for sure the primary thing here, I think, even though it's dressed up and all this other stuff. But to Anthony's point, like, this is a thing that repeats across Silicon Valley where there are things that we should probably be collectively as a society trying to figure out, like, what does education look like in the future in a world with artificial intelligence as capable as it is already and probably getting more capable by the day? And before we're even able to have that conversation, stuff like this pops up and it's just going to break the way it's going to break. The other thing is like, to your point, Kirsten, you know, I, I struggle to imagine that there's going to be a lot of conversations at this thing about, you know, people learning from

• 26:56Sean O'Kane?

  what they got wrong, when one of the names on the academy is the guy who says that introspection is for losers and that like he doesn't think back on anything at all. You know, like, you know, so that's the thing that makes me wonder, like, what are you actually getting here, you know, from the actual courses or whatever you want to call them? If you're, if your ultimate philosophy, sitting from the top, looking down, is that, you know, you can't learn from your mistakes? Are you setting people up in any way to succeed beyond those connections that you're making by only focusing on like how they were wronged and what they got right?

• 27:32Anthony Ha?

  I mean, Kirsten and Sean, I mean, fair point about the connections and I'm sure that's definitely the big benefit. You know, I think frankly, that's also the big benefit of most elite universities.

• 27:43Kirsten Korosec?

  100%.

• 27:45Anthony Ha?

  In that sense, and especially again, if that price tag is, is going to be the same, it's just like, great, cool. You've like reinvented like parts of like the elite university. Nice job. But yeah, we'll, we'll see how it turns out.

• 27:57Kirsten Korosec?

  Source call. Call us if you end up going to this school or, or if your kid goes to this school. Let us know how it goes.

• 28:04Anthony Ha?

  Including if it's a great experience, maybe, you know, Sean and I will, will look like idiots for being cynical and then we're as, as good journalists.

• 28:12Kirsten Korosec?

  Totally possible to hear that.

• 28:13Sean O'Kane?

  Absolutely.

• 28:14Anthony Ha?

  But yeah, let's talk about a couple of deals. The first one is Aura's IPO. It's going to be a $2.2 billion IPO that values the company at up to $14.1 billion. And it looks like essentially, I mean, this is not going to be a big fundraising event for Aura itself, but really more about sort of providing that payday to all their existing investors. Are you guys tracking this closely? Do you think this is going to be an important IPO?

• 28:40Kirsten Korosec?

  I mean, I'm not tracking it super closely as I am some of the others, but I do find it interesting because this is, you know, a hardware meets software company. And I think that the components of the IPO filing are interesting because the shareholders, Aura and its shareholders are together, offering 50 million shares at a price range of like 40 to 44, but most of the proceeds are going to go to the shareholders. So to your point earlier, it's going to be a big payday for them. So then what happens afterwards when they're, you know, openly trading on the marketplace? Is, will there be folks who jump in on that? And, you know, I think the hard thing for any company that does hardware is to show

• 29:23Kirsten Korosec?

  and appease and get shareholders excited about what is coming ahead. And it's not enough to just have a good product that exists. You always have to be showing more. And so I'll be really watching Aura more for the long term, like over the next year or two, more closely than I will be on their like first day debut.

• 29:43Sean O'Kane?

  So would you say you'll be tracking their health as a public company?

• 29:49Kirsten Korosec?

  Have you been sitting on that for a while? Nice, I like it.

• 29:51Sean O'Kane?

  No, it just came to me. I, I asked Muse for a good pun and it gave me one.

• 29:56Kirsten Korosec?

  Hey, see, you're using Muse even now in the middle of this show.

• 29:59Sean O'Kane?

  I know, I didn't actually ask Muse. I came up with that with my own brain. Can you imagine? I mean, is it, I, I think you guys hit most of this here. The only thing I'll add to it is. I think we've seen some very big IPOs this year. We've seen a lot of VCs get very rich off of IPOs this year and more power to them. That's certainly going to have lasting effects for the startup scene going forward. This one feels to me like one of the weirder IPOs. It just, I mean, I understand that they're, they're a popular product. Is there more to that? Is there a higher ceiling that they can reach? I don't know about that, especially as other big companies keep pushing into this space. Apple's working on a competitor to this. So I guess we'll see. And then the other thing that I always watch with stuff like this,

• 30:44Sean O'Kane?

  especially with consumer products is you're public now, you're sort of accountable as shareholders. You have all these new pressures on you. How does that distort the product? Like, does Aura, as a product, start to get a little bit worse as the company feels pressure to squeeze a little bit more out of its customers? Like, hopefully not, but we'll see.

• 31:05Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, it is a, it is a we will see moment. I want to squeeze in one other deal because we started the show kind of talking about the idea of like AI and enterprise. And, you know, even though there are these giant companies going after that, there are also small companies going after that. And there's a company called Emma, E M A, that raised 77 million. And their whole deal is that they sell teams of AI agents that automate workflows across HR, IT, and finance, rather than doing one task at a time. And the only other thing I'll note, because I want to hear from you two, is that this is an India, a company based in India. So you're seeing definitely some AI startups coming out of that country and getting backed

• 31:50Kirsten Korosec?

  from funds based in that country, which I think is super interesting as well.

• 31:54Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, to me, this is one of those deals that, I mean, part of it because of like the scale of some of the, you know, the potential IPOs and later stage rounds that we talk about here, like, it, you know, 77 million doesn't sort of like excite quite the same way, but it is like, that's a significant early stage deal. And it's one of the ones you're just like, yep, everything about this makes sense. Like, this is, you know, an area where I think a lot of startups are interested. Of course, then you start to ask, well, why is this the one that that seems to be getting, you know, at least some, some early investment? One thing that jumped out at me is that, you know, Google and Microsoft are both early enterprise customers. I imagine that it's not necessarily something that's super widespread

• 32:36Anthony Ha?

  adoption across either company yet. I could be wrong, but I suspect not. It's probably like a more closer to like an early pilot. But that suggests, right, that even companies that have their own, you know, AI technology and models see an opportunity to be using these agents from, from this startup.

• 32:54Sean O'Kane?

  As always, the durability, you know, that's what I'm looking for. Is this something that will be on the roster of tools that those big companies use for a long time? Or not really? You know, you would have to imagine that they have versions of this that they can probably make work on their own. And so, you know, I guess that's always been the question with SaaS companies and big tech companies, right? Like, you certainly can, we've seen the sales forces of the world show that you can build massive businesses out of that and do the software for these tech companies instead of it coming from in-house. So if they can get out ahead of it and really prove the worth, like, is a really interesting trend that I think we're going to be following for a while over the next few years.

• 33:36Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I think this is definitely a space that we're going to be seeing some big companies emerging. Maybe it'll be Emma, maybe it'll be something else. But in the meantime, Equity will be back next week. And of course, we're also going to have Disrupt in October. She should come to that. We're going to have a live taping of Equity there. Kirsten, Sean, and I will get to do this face to face. And in the meantime, to get updates about that, you can follow us at EquityPod on X and threads.

• 34:03Rebecca Bellan?

  Equity is hosted by TechCrunch senior reporters and produced by Teresa Locan Solo with editing by Cal. Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and find out what's next at techcrunch.com/events. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.