OpenAI goes all in with Jony Ive as Google plays AI catchup

OpenAI just made its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s secretive device startup, io, in a $6.5 billion all-equity deal. Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone and other iconic Apple products, will now lead creative and design work at OpenAI through his firm LoveFrom. The goal? To take AI “beyond the screen” and build a new generation of AI-powered consumer devices. Beyond the tech, there’s a clear narrative play here. OpenAI is framing Altman as the Jobs-esque visionary and Ive as the design genius who makes it all real. Social media had a field day with the staged buddy shots of the duo, but the messaging is hard to miss: Take the iPhone launch, and make it AI. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha unpack the deal, dive into AI wearables, and discuss more of this week’s tech headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Max’s inside scoop from Google I/O: the return of Google Glass and developers’ reactions to Google’s AI-powered search upgrades Luminar drama from layoffs to CEO step downs and the lidar startup’s potential $200 million fundraising effort 23andMe’s second life, and what the company’s new buyer plans to do with users’ DNA data Equity will be back next week, so don’t miss it! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. 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, advancing energy tech.

• 0:16Kirsten Korosec?

  So Anthony, you know how like we are just in a time loop? And all that is presented new is really just what was presented in like the 2010s.

• 0:27Anthony Ha?

  Exactly. I mean, we're talking specifically about Google Glass, about Sergey Brin, who was at Google I/O saying, made some mistakes with Google Glass, but it's coming back. It's gonna happen this time.

• 0:38Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, it's gonna happen. And so Google I/O, which we are gonna talk about later, but they have this Android XR smart glasses. And as they were announcing all of these different features, I just kept going, isn't that what Google Glass was doing in like 2013, 2014? Did you ever get a pair?

• 0:58Anthony Ha?

  I never owned a pair. I've definitely like tried them out. Actually, Drew Olinoff, who is a long time sort of, you know, boomerang at TechCrunch. I don't actually, I think he was actually working at TechCrunch at the time. He even filmed a little video of himself with Google Glass that then like made it onto the Conan O'Brien show. So it was like, it like had a moment like 12 ish, you know, 11, 12 years ago. But it was also just deeply mockable. I was gonna say unpopular, which it was, but it was also just that like if you wore them, like people made fun of you. That was like the big thing.

• 1:30Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, before we get too deep into Google Glass 2.0, welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, May 23rd. I'm Kirsten Korosec, Transportation Editor.

• 1:45Anthony Ha?

  And I'm Anthony Hahn, Weekend Editor.

• 1:46Kirsten Korosec?

  On the show today, we have Deals of the Week on 23andMe. Does it have a second life? And Johnny Ive and OpenAI cannot wait to talk about that one. And then we're going to bring Max back on the show to talk about his time at Google I/O and drama at Luminar. Let's get into this 23andMe deal, which is an acquisition. It's a second life.

• 2:10Kirsten Korosec?

  I don't know. I don't know if you think of it as a second life. I sort of do.

• 2:13Anthony Ha?

  Well, it is a second life, but in the sense that, you know, it was definitely like not looking good. Right. This is a company that was filed for bankruptcy protection. I think there was a lot of concern about what was going to happen, particularly to the customers' data. And, and so now there's a pharmaceutical company, Regeneron. I don't know a ton about them, but they acquired 23andMe and they've said they're going to use the data for drug discovery. But I think probably the bigger question for a lot of people was like, what's going to happen with the data? And they said, oh, we're going to sort of abide by 23andMe's existing privacy policies, which I guess is good news, but I will say that, you know, for a long time, a lot of people I knew were doing 23andMe testing.

• 2:53Anthony Ha?

  I was always a little hesitant and I thought maybe I was being a little paranoid, but now I feel very justified. That, you know, again, I, this is not to say anything sinister about Regeneron, but just like, I don't think there's any sort of legal constraint that's going to like force them to use the data in the way that the customers maybe want.

• 3:12Kirsten Korosec?

  That name is actually like perfectly evil villainous name though, by the way. But putting that aside, that is my personal opinion. I, I think you're right on the customer data. So that, so what to me was really interesting is 23andMe went through bankruptcy protection in March and a lot of attention was placed on the company because of this data breach that exposed private and genetic data of something like, I think, seven million customers through 2023. And the company at that time, I kind of wanted to know what was going to happen with all this data. And then here we are back now with this acquisition. To your point, what do they do with the data now? And then what are the security protocols that they're going to do?

• 3:56Kirsten Korosec?

  To ensure that this doesn't happen again?

• 3:59Anthony Ha?

  Yeah. And I mean, is this something where essentially they're really treating this as like, hey, this is just a new data set that we're buying? I mean, they say they're going to continue the genomic service. And so in theory, you should still be able to go sign up for 23andMe and get tested. Now that they're owned by Again, not saying anything about the company itself, but a company with a very sinister sounding name, Regeneron, I would say that the ability of 23andMe to sign up new customers is down considerably. I mean, I think, again, the breach probably dealt a pretty fatal blow to that business anyway, but like, I don't imagine that their genomics business is going to be growing particularly quickly.

• 4:39Kirsten Korosec?

  Although people do have short memories, I will say this, and a rebranding, maybe even taking away the 23andMe name, rebranding, rebooting it as something else, I could see people then completely forgetting that what the root of that acquisition was and signing up for, you know, genetic testing. So TBD on that one. I want to really talk about this other incredible deal. I think it might actually be the biggest deal of the year in terms of size of deal and its potential for memes. And I'm talking about the Johnny Ive, Sam Altman, OpenAI mashup.

• 5:22Anthony Ha?

  Yeah.

• 5:23Kirsten Korosec?

  And this is just incredible to me.

• 5:26Anthony Ha?

  Well, so you mentioned the size, so it's a $6.5 billion acquisition of Johnny Ive's company, I/O, I think is how you pronounce it?

• 5:34Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Anthony Ha?

  If there's anything that would compete with that, a deal of that size, it would just be another OpenAI funding round or something.

• 5:40Kirsten Korosec?

  Fair, fair.

• 5:41Anthony Ha?

  But I lose track of like, when OpenAI raised its giant mega round. So yeah, it's certainly one of the biggest deals of the year, and it's supposed to be something where the crux of it is that Johnny Ive and his team are going to be helping OpenAI build a GenAI hardware device, and they're saying almost nothing else about it, except like basically the things that it's not, right? It's not going to be glasses. Sounds like he's kind of suspicious, he being Johnny Ive is sort of suspicious of wearables in general. So it's really not clear what this is going to be, but it's probably not going to look, it's not going to look like Google Glass, for example.

• 6:16Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, you know what image just popped in my head is I was like, well, what could be something that wouldn't be wearable, but that you could have in your pocket and you could interact with it. And so I was like, well, a phone, right? And I'm like, oh, are they going to bring back some sort of like iPod nano style device? We will see what they do, but I would like to point out that do we want to be carrying around a whole nother thing? And is it meant to replace the phone? And so I think that that is like a key question around any kind of hardware that supports AI. Is this a step change where we're just ditching our phone altogether? And then we just have our little like AI agents traveling around with us and

• 6:58Kirsten Korosec?

  we don't need the phone? I just can't really think of a piece of hardware that isn't wearable, that's not a phone. But I guess it's, but I guess it's up to them to figure that out.

• 7:10Anthony Ha?

  I mean, I imagine you have to imagine the long-term ambition is to replace the phone. I don't know that they're gonna try to do that right away. But I think it also speaks to this very odd place that, you know, OpenAI and GenAI in general are sort of in where it's like, obviously incredibly popular and many people use them. But at the same time, for a bunch of reasons, largely just because of how much money they've raised and what the expectations are, like, they still have to grow such a crazy amount, you know? So it's like, it's weird to talk about it as if it's not this widely adopted technology already, because it totally is. And yet, I think there's tremendous pressure on them to be like, an order of magnitude more popular than they already are, which I think is part of what, again, is to say, okay, what if it's not just, you know, a chatbot on your

• 7:55Anthony Ha?

  phone or on your laptop, but something that you wear with you? And it's just about trying to increase that footprint even more.

• 8:01Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, I think it's worth backing up a little bit here. And, you know, everyone, I think most people know, certainly, our audience knows who Johnny Ive is, which is the famed Apple designer. And he also has a company called Loveform, very human-centric design oriented.

• 8:17Anthony Ha?

  Love from, I think.

• 8:19Kirsten Korosec?

  And, yes, I'm so sorry, Love from. But he also had this, there's this I/O company, which was founded About two years ago, and I guess it's about a team of about fifty five engineers, scientists, product designers, a lot of ex Apple folks, and OpenAI already owned twenty three percent of I O. So this is something that they've been thinking about. I mean, yes, the announcement just happened, but hardware and how it combines with AI has been obviously something that's on their mind. And Johnny Ive is very much known as, like I said before, a human centric designer. So really, this deal is all equity deal, just acquiring the whole thing.

• 8:59Kirsten Korosec?

  And now it's really them coming together and telling the world, hey, we've been working on this, and this is very intentional, and expect something sooner rather than later.

• 9:09Anthony Ha?

  Right. And it's also, like you said, the OpenAI was already presumably an investor in, a major investor in I O. And so this is kind of them kind of going all in on this, and like, we really think this is, if not the future, at least a major component of our strategy going forward. I will say that the other, and this seems like a tangent, but I think actually is part of what's happening here, which is all of the messaging is about Sam Altman and Johnny Ive. And I think that it's interesting to think about, you know, that Johnny Ive obviously has this huge reputation on his own. But really, when people think about him, I think you think about him in the context of the design genius who kind of enabled Steve Jobs and sort of like, you know, the Jobs has sort of the big picture idea,

• 9:54Anthony Ha?

  and then Ive and his team turned it into these incredibly beautiful iconic products. And so, you know, I think a lot of people were making fun of these photos of Altman and Ive being super buddy buddy in a way that maybe didn't seem the most natural, or maybe seemed too natural. I don't know. You tell me. But I think that probably the thinking there was again about framing Altman as this Steve Jobs-esque visionary, and then Johnny Ive is the guy who's going to like turn that into beautiful products.

• 10:22Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I mean, the reason why earlier I said biggest deal in terms of deal size, but also memes is because the picture specifically has already taken off. And I'm sure most folks have seen it, but it supports the point you just made, which is, it's actually kind of like a very personal sort of intimate feeling photo, which is what I think is throwing a lot of people off because this is a business deal. But to your point, you know, Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs were this sort of team and the success of Apple and Apple products, specifically the iPhone and the iPod and, and things like this, like really were about those two.

• 11:03Kirsten Korosec?

  And it felt like a recreation of that, like a recreation of that relationship. We'll see what it produces, but that certainly seems, at least with that photo, was trying to communicate with the world.

• 11:15Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, exactly. And I think, I mean, who knows, right? Like, maybe it'll be something where when we, at the next OpenAI event, like Johnny Ive is going to be on stage, or if he's not on stage, there's going to be these beautiful product videos with, like, he narrates with that, like, very recognizable voice of his. But like, I think because, again, we just don't think of these two guys together, they're all, there's also a bit of an age difference where, you know, Ive is kind of like closer to like, you know, Steve Jobs's age, I think, like, you know, in his late 50s, I want to say. And Sam Altman is, you know, about my age, so like about 40-ish. So there's like more than a decade in between, which is not like the lot, it doesn't feel natural, I guess, is what I'm getting at.

• 11:51Kirsten Korosec?

  It had a fatherly vibe to it, you know? And that's what I mean. It was like, felt very personal. I do want to mention one other thing, which Maxwell's not on this show for the whole show, we're going to talk to him later, but he's been talking to folks, you know, at OpenAI and in the industry. And there is sometimes a little bit of a sense, specifically around this deal, that maybe OpenAI is trying to take on too much. And whether this is the right thing to be focused on. But, you know, you have to make money somehow with AI. And I think a lot of companies, I mean, how we opened the show with the Google Glass 2.0, there is a sense that you have to have some hardware that goes along with this AI, especially

• 12:34Kirsten Korosec?

  if you're going to have AI agents that consumers interact with all the time.

• 12:37Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I mean, I think there is a sense that this could be the thing that, you know, kind of gets OpenAI towards profitability, kind of expands customer footprint. It could be also, yeah, a huge distraction and part of what causes OpenAI to ultimately not succeed, which is like a crazy thing to say about a company that's already so big and so successful. But again, because I just think the stakes are so high, I think there are, there is still like a chance that that OpenAI, I mean, honestly, that goes away, but certainly like is not as successful as the investors are hoping and is not necessarily the colossus that it is right now in a few years.

• 13:13Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, we brought up, I've brought up Maxwell's name several times already. So after the break, we're actually going to hear from him. He's been sort of boots on the ground at Google I/O. And we're going to hear all about his insights, who he's talked to, and some of the biggest announcements from that event.

• 13:35Anthony Ha?

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• 14:01Kirsten Korosec?

  We are back from the break. I actually am recording this separately with Max because he's been in Silicon Valley, specifically around Google I/O. And so we are borrowing him for just a little bit to dig deep into what actually happened this week. And here's my impressions, Max. I'm wondering if you have the same, which is it was heavily, heavily weighted towards AI. It felt like a lot of like incremental improvements, a lot of proving to the world that, hey, we're, we're here, we're in the mix, we're competitive. And then there were a couple of standouts. But that was kind of my, my general vibe. What was it like there?

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yes, and hello, everyone. Yeah, at one point during the Google I/O keynote, Sundar Pichai put up a counter for how many words were said how many times. And the number one most said words were AI and Gemini. They were said about 90 times during the keynote. And then the third most said word was excitement. So I think that should give you a pretty good idea of just what the whole thing was about. They're really excited about AI, but not as much as they are about saying the word AI. I do want to kind of highlight the two big things that happened at Google I/O. From my perspective, there were so many announcements. It was easy to get lost in all of it. But I think the really big things that people should pay attention to

• 15:27Speaker 02

  were the ways AI is making it into Google Search and the smart glasses that Google is making.

• 15:34Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, so let's back up to the AI in Google Search. There have been a lot of complaints about Google Search over the past year or so, or maybe even longer. So what is it that they actually announced here that is relevant to Google Search? Is this just semantics to say, hey, we're improving it? Or are there real things happening here?

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is, I think, the first event I've seen in a while where Google has really put their money where their mouth is on this AI agent kind of paradigm that they've been talking about. So they're rolling out something called AI Mode in Google Search, which, if our listeners are familiar with perplexity, it's very similar to perplexity where people can just press a button and chat with an AI chatbot in Google Search. They're also, as part of AI Mode, they have something called Project Mariner, which is an AI agent that can browse the web for you. And it can go to all these websites and take actions for you. It can get tickets for you. It can get you online groceries and whatnot just by chatting with the agent.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  There's also Project Astra, which we've seen demos of, this kind of multimodal, real-time AI agent that you can chat with and can see what you see. That's making its way into Google Search. It's kind of replacing their like reverse image search feature in a much more engaging way. And then there's a lot of other agents that they kind of talked about that are going to kind of come down the funnel and end up in Google search in the next year or two. But this is a real shift. There are AI agents that are going to connect Google users to the web now instead of just Google search, you know, presenting them a list of 10 blue links. And it's a lot different from just the AI overviews.

• 17:21Kirsten Korosec?

  Okay, so yeah, that was gonna be my question. So anyone who uses Google now, you oftentimes see you type in something or you say something and you get that AI overview on the top and then below it might be the answer to your question, or it might be in the in the AI overview. Is that gonna go away? Did you get a sense that that's gonna go away?

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, in the short term, no. I mean, Google had no indication that, you know, AI overviews are going away. They actually said that 1.5 billion people a month receive AI overviews, which has led them to call it like the most used generative AI product in the world. And to some extent, that's true. But I would argue, you know, when I use Google search, I don't really have a choice for whether I use AI overviews. They just kind of happened to me. And then, you know, sometimes they say ridiculous things. I would say that AI overviews will probably be here for a while. But but this kind of vision of AI agents kind of bringing you the web that Google talked about during this I O, I found it to be a

• 18:25Speaker 02

  much more compelling kind of argument for how AI would really change search. I think AI overviews is very feels very clumsy. I think from the launch, it had a lot of stumbles. It was it didn't feel like quite the better experience that you were hoping for with AI. But I think these kind of agents that go out on the web and and do tasks for you and present information in these kind of unique ways. I think that is actually a much more compelling vision for how AI is going to change all this. But it has a lot of implications for the web.

• 18:56Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, well, and also, I'm just wondering, as you were listing off like all the different names, right? Project Mariner, Project Astro, like, how many AI agents do we need? And is this just like the evolutionary step? Meaning, it starts with a bunch of different AI agents that sort of do different things because they aren't good at doing everything yet. So they have the one that gets you the tickets. And then there's the one that gives you the restaurant, you know, reservations, so concierge. But eventually, do you see these all kind of coming together?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  I absolutely do. I think that these are kind of headed to be one kind of, you know, AI thing. And Google actually talked about that, this idea called Agent Mode, which they don't have yet. They said it's going to be rolling out soon to a select number of subscribers to their $200 a month, $250 a month plan, I should say, which they launched a ridiculous amount of money to pay for.

• 19:55Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, that's so much money. I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to think of like, what is $250? Sorry, I don't want to go like too far afield, but like, that just seems like a lot. But please, finish your point.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  That's too much. It is. But basically, the idea is Agent Mode will roll out to everyone eventually. And Agent Mode is kind of all of these things in one experience, where you don't need to kind of select the right agent or the right model. And you can just basically use Google's Agent Mode, so to speak, and it will kind of bring you all these things in various mediums. And I do think that that is, compared to AI overviews, I think that this is a much better idea.

• 20:37Kirsten Korosec?

  Before we move on, what was the reception for this piece? When you were there, you were at the event, you were actually there for a couple of days. So what was the sense from developers? And, you know, not the Google execs, I'm sure that they were all very excited about it, but other people on the ground? Was this a step change, like you reflected on? Or were people more cynical about it?

• 21:01Speaker 02

  People were, I think, excited about Google making these changes to Google Search. I think that there's been a perception that Google Search is going to be disrupted by ChatGPT and AI. And I think every developer I talked to has said for a while that Google really needs to, you know, change with the times and, and, you know, put their money where their mouth is. This is what they did during this I O, I think. I think they shipped these AI experiences right in the core product. I mean, you go to Google Search now in the U.S. and there is this AI mode thing, you know? I mean, like, you can't escape it. So they are trying to, you know, evolve their product, which they haven't really done for the last 20 years.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  So I do think that the reception from developers was Google has woken up. You know, they were asleep at the wheel for a while, but they're back.

• 21:51Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, speaking of something that is back, Google Glasses. So we did kick off the show, you know, kind of chatting about it a little bit. But I wanted to get your perspective because I remember, I'm so old that I remember when Google Glasses was here. But they showed off something different, yet the same. And a lot of similarities between the two. This is the Android XR prototype. What was the impression on the ground? And, and how is this different from what we saw, you know, a decade ago with Google Glasses?

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is very similar to Google Glass conceptually. So I think there, Google does need to be made fun of a little bit for it. But this is different from Google Glass largely with, because of generative AI. I mean, honestly, a lot of the features that you could do with Google Glass, like it, Google Glass had your Gmail, like it could show you directions, it could play music and whatever. Like, this is that, basically. But generative AI is supposed to just make it work a lot better. I would say Google's approach to this is also very different. Instead of kind of building Google Glass all themselves, they're partnering with Samsung and X Reel on some of the kind of the hardware parts of it.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  They're also partnering with Warby Parker and Gentle Monsters, which is a little bit of a lesser known, but very creative kind of eyewear company.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  I think that the idea here is that Google is just going to make the Android platform. They are just going to make the AI part of this and they're going to let an array of partners who are very good at this other stuff, figure out the rest of these smart glasses. And honestly, that is such a better idea than what happened with Google Glass. But the reception was great. I mean, people were really excited about this. There was a two and a half hour wait to try these out at Google I/O for like, literally like days. So this, I think, was definitely like one of the hottest kind of releases. And especially in light of OpenAI's announcement that they're working on an AI device. I think there's so much more pressure on all these companies to create a device that will kind of push them into this next generation.

• 24:02Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, hardware is definitely starting to now pop its little head up because there, there has been enough, let's say, evolution or improvements on the AI side of things. Before you leave us, anything else jump out to you at the event? Like I saw the VO3 that seemed pretty interesting. There was a few others. I'm talking about that image to video tool that seemed pretty interesting. But anything else that you left the event thinking, hmm, that was different?

• 24:31Speaker 02

  What I really left this event feeling was like Google was, the VO3 stuff is incredible. You know, I mean, the, the kind of AI video stuff is, it's wild, but it also just kind of seems like still we're a little bit far from that. I think the thing that really struck me was just how much Google is trying to become like OpenAI right now. Like, Google is trying to do everything it can to compete with this startup. And I think they understand that, that they are on the clock if they can't figure all this stuff out. You know, I mean, I mean Sundar Pichai almost felt like he was less of an important speaker at this event than Demis Hassabis, DeepMind CEO. And then, you know, Sergey Brin is back and all he works on is Gemini.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  I mean, this is just like, I think it was completely about AI. We didn't hear anything about Google Assistant. We didn't hear anything about Android. We didn't hear anything even about how Google search is getting better outside of AI. I mean, this is the whole ballgame now. And, and I think that was really kind of stark at this event.

• 25:31Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, thank you for going there and bringing this all to us and all of your many stories, by the way, too. Max is going to leave us and we're going to go back to the other normal show, but we will see you for a full show next week, right?

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yep, I'll be back.

• 25:51Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, the Google I/O stuff was super interesting, but I have some very dramatic stuff to talk to you about, Anthony, now that you're back. It's about Luminar. I don't know if you remember this company, but it was a very buzzy LIDAR startup and it went through the typical SPAC cycle circa 2021. It had raised probably around $250 million prior to going public via SPAC. They had some wins with companies like Volvo, but suddenly everything is kind of falling apart, really kind of the past year, but this past two weeks has been crazy. Luminar's board appears to have replaced its CEO and founder, Austin

• 26:36Kirsten Korosec?

  Russell, then a bunch of layoffs. It's third, as far as I can tell, third layoffs that have happened in the year. And then suddenly locking up with Yorkville Advisors Global to potentially raise up to $200 million. So I don't know if you've been following this, but I assume you have at least some questions for me.

• 26:58Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, totally. I mean, I think Luminar is one of those companies that I do remember reading about in the past, but you know, haven't thought about them in many years. And I guess one of the things I'm always wondering in situations like this is that often, right, the way it can look when you, if you follow the headlines, it can be like, things are great, great, great, great, great. And then suddenly it's all falling apart. Like, I have to imagine that there were probably some problems that were happening under the surface that maybe we didn't know about until now.

• 27:27Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, this is the problem, I think, in general with, you know, not to like disparage like the tech press or startups or anything like that, but I think that there's a lot of curiosity and interest when something is new or has the potential to take off because of interest in a certain sector. So we see that happening with AI now. We saw that in 2017 with the autonomous vehicle industry and Luminar came around, actually had existed few years prior to that, but Austin Russell was a Thiel fellow. He had dropped out of Stanford. He had started this company. He was like known as this sort of tech phenom

• 28:08Kirsten Korosec?

  who was very interested to set up a lab in his garage as a kid. It's a very interesting story. And then he launched the company publicly at least in 2017, right at the peak of AV industry hype cycle. So there was all this interest in, oh, my gosh, LiDAR is seen as the sensor that is required for AVs. And this kid is this, you know, super smart guy. And like, there was all these stories around him. He was on the cover of Forbes magazine. He was, we've seen this type of thing happen with numerous other people. Then the company had to face the realities of the hard problems, which is taking hard tech, deep tech, without

• 28:51Kirsten Korosec?

  any contracts, without any production, and like getting scale, testing, getting scale, locking in customers, all the things that are actually really difficult to do. And in an economic environment that changed. The bottom dropped out with the AV industry hype cycle, went through its, you know, a valley of disillusionment, and here we are. So they've had some struggles in the background for sure. I think almost every LiDAR company I know has. And, and that's when you see sort of the tech press and also investors

• 29:27Kirsten Korosec?

  Kind of peel away. They're not so interested in that, the hard stuff, the hard boring stuff.

• 29:32Anthony Ha?

  Right. And I think also like when you become a company that's been around for a while, you're doing hard tech, probably got a huge team is like, you can't just get a friendly investor, write you a check for a few million dollars and that's enough to kind of like keep the lights on. Like you need significant capital. I think just hearing that story and hearing about that cycle with AV, with LightR, I mean, obviously at the same time, there's also this whole like VC cycle where suddenly like it just became harder to raise, way harder to raise VC money for anything that wasn't AI is like, it's like a reminder of like how many kind of visions of the future we've seen as reporters who've been around for years, like, and like how many of them don't necessarily work out. And that doesn't mean that we should always just dismiss them, but like, there's always

• 30:15Anthony Ha?

  somebody who's trying to convince you like, this is inevitable, this is gonna be the thing. And then a lot of the times it doesn't happen. And we kind of forget about that. And obviously, I'm like bringing that up partly because I'm like thinking about AI and I just feel like there's this narrative that Gen AI is so inevitable. Google Glass 2.0 is going to be the inevitable manifestation or OpenAI like wearables is going to be inevitable manifestation. And I'm not totally convinced yet.

• 30:38Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I think that one of the reasons why we talked about having Luminar as a theme is because it acts as a metaphor of what we've seen cyclically happening in tech. Specifically for this company, it'll be really interesting to see how they get out of this. And quite honestly, there are so many questions around what is going on with the board's relationship with Austin Russell, who like I said, was replaced. We don't know if it was, you know, like a board coup and an ousting. There is one mention that is related to an ethics inquiry, but we have zero details on that. So this seems like a company, unfortunately,

• 31:18Kirsten Korosec?

  that is grappling with capital issues, but also a lot of internal drama. So even if they have a great product, and even if they had great timing, what could upend them is this other side stuff? And that's another classic example of we've seen this before in the tech world.

• 31:37Anthony Ha?

  Yeah.

• 31:38Kirsten Korosec?

  On that note, though, I think we were all out of time, but Equity will be back next week with all three of us together again. Until then, you can find Equity under the handle at EquityPod on X and threads.

• 31:54Rebecca Bellan?

  Equity is produced by Teresa Loconsolo with editing by Kel. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch's audience development team. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.