Green flags for defense tech and Silicon Valley's longevity obsession

Equity is closing out the week as always with a round up of the week's top startup and venture news. Kirsten, Devin and return guest host Margaux McColl had no shortage of themes to cover: VC karaoke, the SpaceX economy, no moats for AI, OpenAI versus open source. To kick things off, we weighed in on Caroline Ellison's sentencing and deals of the week from Reflect Orbital and Pyka. Of course, we had to dive deep into Y Combinator's Summer 2024 Demo Day cohort from there - including a highlight of a few non-AI and AI startups that got our attention. And on the non-AI point, we noticed another startup getting VC attention: Synex and its portable MRIs to test glucose. Clearly, we had much to discuss on today's episode, so press play and join the conversation! 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 over at Simplecast. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. 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.

• 0:11Kirsten Korosec?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, September 27th. I am Kirsten Korosec and joining me today is TechCrunch Senior Editor, Devin Coldaway. Devin, I have a really important question for you.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 0:29Kirsten Korosec?

  Is it okay to use as your Slack profile photo, a shirtless photo of yourself? Good or bad?

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Only if you are a dog or some other furry animal.

• 0:45Kirsten Korosec?

  Okay, so fur is fine.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, fur is fine.

• 0:48Kirsten Korosec?

  Okay, well, it's an important and interesting detail in this Cloud Kitchen scoop that we wrote about, and I will, you know, not reveal all the details, but big surprise, Travis Kalanick is involved. And in this case, Cloud Kitchen's co-founder used a dating profile style shirtless photo of himself for his Slack profile photo at the workplace. So.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  This is a very healthy working environment.

• 1:12Kirsten Korosec?

  It is a healthy working environment, and you might have heard someone just say, "What?" And that is TechCrunch Senior Reporter, Margot McCall. Welcome back to the show, Margot.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 1:20Kirsten Korosec?

  Besides responding like everyone should with "what," what else have you been working on this week?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Lot of defense tech. The second we wrap recording this, I'm gonna have to call an Uber to Shield AI's office in DC. I'm gonna go interview the founder.

• 1:35Kirsten Korosec?

  Nice. Well, looking forward to that. Well, as we do every Friday, we are rounding up the week's startup and venture headlines. Today, you can look forward to Reflect Orbital, can't wait to talk about that, autonomous electric plane startup Pika, as well as AI's dominance over everything, including YC Demo Day, and Silicon Valley's longevity obsession, which I cannot wait to talk about. But before all that, I do think that we should just very briefly mention that Caroline Ellison, from the whole FTX fraud drama, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to steal $8 billion worth of customers' funds.

• 2:18Kirsten Korosec?

  She was cooperative, so she gets the two years. Fair or unfair? Should she have gotten more or less? Curious.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  I was kind of emotional reading the judge's comments. The judge like showered her in praise.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, he literally said, yeah, I've seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years. I've never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison. And basically said that she was like incredibly honest from the start and cooperated so much. I don't know. She's still. Maybe I'm too sympathetic to her.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  But isn't she a con? Isn't the whole thing that she is a con woman? Wouldn't you like fundamentally mistrust? Someone who like was working on a multi-year scheme to steal billions of dollars from random, from innocent people? Well, not all of them, but you know, like a lot of people.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  That's a great point. I don't know, though. She definitely like came clean right away. Seeing her cry, like seeing the descriptions of her crying.

• 3:12Kirsten Korosec?

  Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  She's the total package. It's the total con package. I think the judge, the judge got con.

• 3:22Kirsten Korosec?

  She got you. And here's one other thing before we move on to actual deals. I was fascinated by like how much some of the coverage focused on like all the volunteer work she's doing right now. And I kind of thought like, okay, is it possible she has just got like caught up into this whirlwind and a fraud? And then here we are. But do we need to have like this list of 17 things that she's doing, like working with like rescue dogs or whatever she's doing? That doesn't totally undo, you know, the whole fraud stuff.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  It doesn't undo it at all. It's obvious. It's just a pure, it's baby kissing. It's 100% baby kissing. I think the judge bought it hook, line and sinker.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  I mean, I think though, especially compared to SPF who showed no remorse.

• 4:05Kirsten Korosec?

  True.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  He was like, I'm just a little guy. Like, what can I, what are you talking about? I'm just, I'm just a guy.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  He's just a guy.

• 4:12Kirsten Korosec?

  So you said hook, line and sinker, taking something and just accepting it. And I have to then now pivot to our first deal. Because I feel like that's maybe what Sequoia did in this case, because it's a very interesting company called Reflect Orbital. And the basic idea here is that they're developing satellites that would deploy large mirrors to, quote, "precisely reflect sunlight onto specific points on the ground." Aria, one of our reporters here, had a great description. She wrote, "Imagine a future where the sun can be turned on and off like a flashlight." And they found a backer, Sequoia. Margo, I think you might have insights into...

• 4:52Speaker 02

  I don't have thoughts on to whether it works, because...

• 4:55Speaker 01

  It doesn't. 100% of it. But please go on, yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  But I did profile Sean Maguire, who is the lead partner at Sequoia on that. And he's super interesting. He has a PhD in physics from Caltech, and he has a history of these very long-shot bets. He originally was at Google Ventures, and he invested in this company called SpinLaunch that basically was creating, it's still around, like a slingshot to send things into space. Every investor I interviewed about Sean Maguire in his time at TV was like, "That was his biggest mistake. He bought into this company that had a really crazy premise." So I think Sean really likes these companies that seem like really long shots. He's very academic. He really likes talking through physics problems and talking about

• 5:42Speaker 02

  that side of it. He also was very close with Elon Musk. If you read the story we had, and he saw their demo video on a flight with SpaceX's CFO, he pushed Sequoia into SpaceX. He's pushed Sequoia into a lot of long-shot, like, hard-tech bets. So it's an interesting move for Sequoia, but it's also a move very in line with Sean Maguire's investing history.

• 6:04Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, maybe he's just like, you know, some folks, like, the way they loosen up after the workday, they're like, are really into karaoke, or...

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 6:14Kirsten Korosec?

  Whatever. Like, this is Sean's karaoke, which is just like investing in some, like, completely wild idea that's fun. And maybe that's what this is.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  It's also business for SpaceX.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Like, if you think about it that way.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  So if, worst case, SpaceX gets a bunch of contracts out of this, he's still helping Sequoia's portfolio company. So it's one angle to think about.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  I want to, like, the reason it's so much business for SpaceX is because they would have to send up thousands of these things to produce even, like, one patch of anything like sunlight. It's an interesting idea, and it could be useful in some sort of specific ways. But what they're talking about is using it to extend the day for solar farms? And it's like, uh... You would have, you literally would need like a thousand of these satellites to produce anything like regular sunlight for like half an hour. They, they can only do it around like sunset and sunrise. And one of them will produce moonlight level light, maybe in a tiny area. I don't know. The idea that they're going with, that they're like, oh, it's going to be better

• 7:18Speaker 01

  to reflect sunlight from a $200 million satellite array onto a solar farm. When solar prices are dropping through the floor, you could just build more solar farms. Half of the country could be a solar farm. I don't know. It's such a bonkers business proposal. You know, I like the idea of giant mirrors in space is one that's been around for a long time and making a reality would be pretty dope, but I don't think it's a business. It's, I think it's a huge money pit.

• 7:45Kirsten Korosec?

  Hmm. Money pit. Well, you wrote this week about Pika. What they're working on is electric autonomous planes. And this is an area that has been very fringe for a really long time. I've been following it loosely because I really enjoy writing about autonomous vehicle technology. And there's a little crossover with planes. They just raised a $40 million round, Devin. And I'm wondering, because you wrote about it, have they made progress? And where are they finding their backers? This isn't just a traditional VC backed company, right?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Well, they do have VC backers. Y Combinator is a backer. They, the round is from Obvious Ventures, Piva Capital, Prelude, Metaplan. It's a pretty standard VC round. They started, interestingly, in crop dusting, which was what attracted me at first. I was like, you have to be a serious person if you're taking on crop dusting. Like anybody who comes to me with a pitch saying like, we're going to revolutionize passenger jets with electric. I'm like, hmm, come back in 20 years when you have a, a working passenger jet. But somebody's like, we're making an electric crop duster that does, that does crop dusting autonomously. I'm like, wow, that, that's a serious proposition. You must actually have a thing. And they did. That was a couple of years ago. And then they made a bigger and better one that can carry cargo. And they've been using

• 9:03Speaker 01

  that one. I think Brazil was a customer. They haven't made many, you know, there's Like 10 of these things total, but they were telling me that the big breakthrough was basically when the people saw in Ukraine, how important basically any kind of autonomous infrastructure or autonomy in general. Nobody really knows where it's going to be applicable. Like, do you want an autonomous tank? Probably not, but do you want an autonomous supply chain? Yes, you do, because it reduces risk. It's safer for everybody involved. And I don't know, it's if it's electric, it's actually a huge carbon reduction. There's a lot of, a lot of exhaust going out there.

• 9:39Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, there's, there's an upside, but I guess what I was referring to isn't necessarily like VC money, but where they're finding potential customers, which is interesting to me. And Margo, that's where I think you have a lot to say about this because it is kind of turning into this dual use, which is this military use or defense use that Devon sort of talked about. And this is just to me, another case of a company that is really finding traction with the government as a customer.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, dual use is super interesting. It's something that to me is a big green flag with defense tech startups, just because there's such a long timeframe to actually land a government contract. It takes such a long time and it's really hard. You're competing against some of the best capitalized companies in the world. You have a lot of companies that are going after like smaller R and D contracts, which I'd be curious if that's what they're going for. Those are easier to get. The problem though, is that those don't necessarily lead to programs of record, meaning giant contracts where you get a ton of money and make a ton of money back for your VCs. I'd be curious, especially at the end of the piece, they talked about how they're still going after that commercial market.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  So in my mind, I'm like, okay, are they using these contracts to get funding in the interim? Until it's feasible in a regulatory sense or?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is kind of the plan because the military market and the defense market is, is actually, it's less regulated. They're like, hey, if, if we want it, we can use it. We don't need to put it past civilian regulatory agencies because it's operating in our, in a battlefield or whatever. But if you want to do a passenger jet, which they would like to do, and the CEO is like, yeah, that's our like goal is to eventually do a passenger plane. But that is a extremely highly regulated industry. It's also very, I mean, in some ways it can be lucrative. It's a very large industry. I think they want to be on both sides. They don't want to just be the air force's drone provider. They got into this for, you know, civilian consumer type purposes and they still want to do that. But like they said, it was maybe an existential decision whether or not to go dual use.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Cause if they didn't, they might've gotten, you know, to the next phase of their startup life in five years, but now they maybe they can do it in two years because they have money and research partners.

• 11:53Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Something really interesting was I was talking to an exec at a drone company last week and he talked about how he had been at companies that were originally targeting consumer like customers and they had recruited their employees based on that premise and then pivoted into selling to, you know, the DOD. And it had led to like extreme cultural dissonance and people were really upset that they had joined this company to sell to consumers and now we're selling to the military and that he had experienced multiple companies where that had been the case. So I wonder if there's a story there.

• 12:25Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, well, I feel like that's a great story in general, like a trend piece of that's happening because we're seeing so much dual use happening. And in many ways, as Devin suggested, like it helps them scale faster and live, you know, and survive and to be able to actually get their product out there. I will be next week at Up Summit and there's going to be a lot of defense tech and a lot of aerospace and aviation stuff. So I'll report back and see if maybe this is going on with other startups, which I suspect. After the break, we're going to talk about how AI is absolutely everywhere, including YC Demo Day and Silicon Valley's obsession with longevity.

• 13:07Kirsten Korosec?

  I really want to talk about how AI is absolutely everywhere, which is possibly a theme that we could have every week, but specifically I want to kick things off with YC Demo Day. And I should mention to all the Equity listeners out there that while you are tuning in on Friday, we're actually recording on Thursday, which is in the middle of Demo Day. So there's a little caveat for you. It is very evident to me that AI has not peaked yet. I don't think. I'm wondering if Margo or Devin, you can highlight any startups that are non-AI that were of interest so far in YC Demo Day.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  I always am interested in the space and robotics stuff coming out of YC because they're usually long shots. They are very, very early. I love covering the stuff when it comes out of NASA too, like Lumen Orbit, doing like data centers in space. That's a very forward-thinking thing. It sounds kind of silly. You're like, why would you want a data center in space? Obviously you need power, you need water, you know, all this kind of stuff. There are actually a lot of interesting advantages to keeping your data in space. If there's going to be space-based services, data services and handling, if you're going to be running AI in space, all this kind of stuff, you need more data infrastructure in space. And anybody who is taking on that challenge, especially at a very early stage and with a fresh perspective, is worth keeping an eye on.

• 14:29Kirsten Korosec?

  And what about you, Margo? Any non-AI before we jump into the whole AI?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  I was also interested in the robotics and space companies. There's one, Spacium Inc. It's a network of in-space refueling stations. I'm just interested because I like kind of following what I call like the SpaceX economy and how SpaceX has led to this whole economy of startups that are just kind of meant to serve companies that are using SpaceX launches to launch their own products. So that seems like one of them and I'm interested to see where they go.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, they've been working on this on space refueling stuff for a while. I remember we had Orbit Fab on stage a long time ago and it's, it's really developing. Like they were, Orbit Fab was coming at it early and now there's people coming out of the woodwork saying like, hey, this is going to be really important. And they're like, uh, yeah, that's what we were saying six years ago.

• 15:16Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, those are two really interesting ones and sort of fall into that kind of deep tech category. AI companies definitely dominated the day or have so far at YC Demo Day. And there's a number of them, like Passage is helping companies get good through customs. There is these automated or AI voice agents from this startup called Hamming AI. And all this goes to show to me, just another example of like, AI is just so on the brain. For me, at least on my end, I'm immediately skeptical every single time I get an AI pitch, which I get many of them. Devin, you probably get even more.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 15:51Kirsten Korosec?

  Because the immediate question I ask is, is this some company just slapping this name on here in order to raise funds? Or is there something really actually at the root of that? And it got me thinking, we were talking about this the other day about, you know, Anthropic floating this like $40 billion valuation, which is absurd to me. And you said something, I think it was you, Devin, maybe it was you, Margot, that AI doesn't have a mode.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  It was some, someone at Google originally who said it about Google and about OpenAI. But yeah.

• 16:24Kirsten Korosec?

  Okay, to the point of, like, you see these insane valuations, typically or logically, you would think that you would see that type of valuation on a company that does have a mode, right? That stands alone or can justify that in some way. And I just don't seem to think we're seeing that. And I'm wondering if either of you have insights as to why? Is it just that we're like, just right in the midst of this hype cycle that seems to be going on forever? And so people are a little nutty? Or is there something else driving it?

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I, I think that there's a lot of hype over the, the basic technology, which I think does have a lot of promise. And because OpenAI and then Anthropic and a couple others that are making the first foundation models, there was a reasonable assumption that companies like those would be needed. To commercialize and operate those models. But what we're seeing is not that it's getting more and more difficult and that ChatGPT and Claude are, you know, outpacing the competition, you know, by a long distance, but it's actually the opposite. And it seems like the smaller models, the open source models, it looks like there's not really any reason

• 17:38Speaker 01

  to choose, you know, ChatGPT API or Claude API over something like rolling your own, you know, using Llama or AI two just released a Mole Mo this week, which is like a multimodal thing. Does better visual understanding than a lot of these much larger, more expensive models. Where the value is, is not, as far as I can tell now, is not in building these foundational models, but in productizing them and commercializing them somehow. So I don't know that the value is going to be in OpenAI. It may be in companies that rely on OpenAI for its API or whatever. And that could trickle down in a survey, you know, OpenAI is now a service provider and everybody uses their API

• 18:20Speaker 01

  or something, but it's not really as clear cut of a value proposition as it was at the beginning, where it was like, OpenAI is the one that makes and provides AI to everybody.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  I'm curious why Devon, like what are the bigger models distinctly better at than the smaller models? If OpenAI had to go all in on this big model and advertising, what makes it so much different than these small models that work well? Like, what are those things that it works better at?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  It's really not clear. I mean, benchmarks and testing are very, very, very difficult here. So, and to be clear, like GPT four O or four V or whatever are like pretty much the best, but they're the best by like 5% as far as we know how to test them. And when they come up with some big new version like O1, which just came out and is like, oh, it's 10 times better at, you know, answering complex questions. It's like, okay, well, then the open source community replicated that in literally like 24 hours. They were like, oh, so you're just doing this like chain of reasoning thing, which it's not a trivial thing to do and it increases the cost of the operations and stuff, but. It's not really clear what they are fundamentally better at. I don't think that

• 19:28Speaker 01

  they are fundamentally better at anything. They just have, you know, better source of data and more money and compute time.

• 19:35Kirsten Korosec?

  That's crazy. That's so interesting.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And they also, they are not trying to operate ethically in a lot of places. I know that Anthropic is to a certain extent, but OpenAI has trained on a lot of data that has made it very high quality in some ways because it has ingested like, you know, the entire English speaking literature world, you know, whether or not it's copyrighted or not. That may not be how things play out in the future.

• 19:59Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, it'll be really interesting to see as we follow this. It's very reminiscent to me and I always come back to this because it's my baby area, my baby beat, but autonomous vehicle technology had the same thing and you just saw so many investors pouring into it. And what was really interesting is while there were some, let's say, companies that were proving like technically they're better, what the big thing that was missing was the business model part, which kind of sort of seems like the same thing happening here. And as a result, you saw all these investors pouring tons of money in and now we've gone through this complete consolidation cycle and like two thirds of the companies that existed that were, you know, in 2016, 2017, just don't anymore because they could just

• 20:42Kirsten Korosec?

  never figure out the business model. It wasn't that they were necessarily completely overhyping their technical prowess, although in some cases it was, but it was, you know, absolutely that they were like focused on this thing that they said was going to happen tomorrow and it didn't. It took a lot longer. They completely churned through so much cash and at the end of the day it had no business model. So to me, this feels like a little bit of deja vu. I mean, obviously there's some differences here, but I'll be curious. It feels very much a little bit of a race to the bottom right now, but investors seem interested. So we have lots to write about, which is cool. I do want to switch gears a little bit because I know this is something that is like near and dear to Margot's heart,

• 21:25Kirsten Korosec?

  which is Silicon Valley's longevity obsession. There was this recent story of Cynix founder. What is happening here? Please walk me through this.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love this story. So it's a company called Synix Medical. It was founded by Ben Nashman when he was like a teenager. They're basically trying to create a non-invasive way to test glucose. It's a mini MRI. Right now, it's the size of a toaster. Hopefully, if the company fulfills its promises, it will be the size of your palm. It uses MRI to take a 3D image of your finger, finds the best place to test, and then it sends out radio pulses that excite the molecules and then filters out for certain molecules. It's going to start with glucose, and that is how he is pitching it to investors. But part of the reason that I chose the story was that the founder, Ben, is very much part

• 22:15Speaker 02

  of this Silicon Valley longevity community. And the real goal, which he's open about, you know, for this device long term, is that it will be able to test amino acids and lactates and ketones and will basically be like a blood test that you can take at any time. There's a lot of challenges to this. Not to make any of this sound easy, it's very hard. He still has to get FDA approval. It's too big right now. There's no guarantee he'll be able to make it that small. And then even if he gets all that, it just might be still way too expensive, which is also part of why I was interested in this, because he basically was talking about, you know, hopefully they're able to get insurance to cover it. Hopefully, it can be something accessible to the 38 million Americans with

• 22:59Speaker 02

  diabetes. But in the back of my head, I'm like, okay, well, let's say he never gets it there. Let's say it stays super expensive forever. I wonder if he still has a big enough market in the very wealthy individuals in Silicon Valley that will pay infinite money for anything that promises them more information with their body or, you know, to live forever.

• 23:18Kirsten Korosec?

  I have a one-word answer for you. Yes. Yes, there is enough people out there because longevity is a thing. Looking like you're younger is a huge business. Actually extending your lifespan in ways in which you like are healthy and active and things like that is a huge opportunity as well. So I don't see, I don't see a real downside on it. Of course, I have to turn everything back into some sort of like transportation or automotive analogy, but I, it, this very much feels like

• 23:49Kirsten Korosec?

  Back when Tesla was first starting, they're like, we're going to start with the luxury vehicle. And then eventually we're going to make, you know, we're going to get to scale and we're going to lower costs. We're going to become more efficient and then we're going to have this vehicle for the everyday person. And while those costs have gone down, it's still like, you know, not a cheap vehicle. So it is actually an aspirational or was for a while aspirational product. So I kind of wonder if that is going to be the same thing here, which is very much for the luxury, like higher profile, wealthier set. And eventually it could get cheaper enough that it's not available to, let's say, lower middle class, middle class, but the aspirational upper middle class, not quite, you know, one percenters, but the ones who aspire to.

• 24:33Kirsten Korosec?

  I could see them being actually some of the biggest buyers of this.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  For sure. And it was funny talking to Ben because I asked him, I was like, what other longevity stuff do you do? And he kind of was like struggling to think of stuff. So I started listing things that I know people do. And I was like, oh, well, like, have you had a Pranuvo scan? And he was like, oh, of course. And I'm like, okay, that's something that costs several thousand dollars that did not show up in his mind the immediate list of kind of weird longevity stuff he's done. And yeah, most Americans would love a Pranuvo scan, which by the way, is a full body MRI. And it is not financially feasible, but for this subsection of Silicon Valley, it is a drop in the bucket.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  So does it work? How come there's no published, you know, papers on this?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  On the like cynics medical thing?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, I mean, the basic idea of when I read the, the pitch that it's like, oh, we selectively excite the protons and glucose molecules. I'm like, what? They're targeting into specific types of protons? Protons are all the same. Like I'm getting this weird vibe of not that this is, you know, a crank situation, but that it is not yet working. Does, is there any, any evidence at all that it works?

• 25:42Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. I think what you're trying to say, Devin, is that you have questions and a lot of them.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's, it's one of those things where it's like, it's promising, it's promising, it's promising. But like, does it work? Does it even work in principle?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  I believe it works in principle. I read a few like academic papers talking about MRIs can. Sense it's actually not MRI. It's called, oh, I have to look it up, but it's more specific than MRI. And I read a few academic papers. I am by no means obviously a specialist in MRI technology, but there are academic papers on it out there. It is just obscenely expensive and done in a giant MRI. I asked him, I was like, why hasn't someone done this yet? And he was like, because there is just no guarantee that you will ever get the cost down and that it will ever be portable. There's just no guarantee. So no one, no one has tried it.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  I would love to look at those papers. This is interesting to me, but the, the thing that kind of, the only thing that really weirded me out is that, you know, this guy was looking into longevity stuff when he was 16. You know, like trying to get himself on an experimental drug to like increase his lifespan. Like my guy, your lifespan is as long as it's ever going to be right now. Like go to a party. It's the kind of thing where like, he's already joined the pathological obsession with youth, but he is a youth.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  That is the, it's one of those things where I'm like, I get this, this interesting vibe from the whole thing where I'm like, why is this so, why am I getting this weird vibe?

• 27:03Speaker 02

  No, a hundred percent.

• 27:04Kirsten Korosec?

  You would almost expect traditionally that someone would start caring about longevity when they start becoming more aware of their mortality, which usually isn't when you're 16. Usually when you're 16, everything you do is like not in all thinking about the chance that you could die. It's mostly about taking huge risks, right? So maybe we would expect someone to be like dedicating their life to this in their 60s and 70s, not when they're 16. But, you know, I don't know. I guess he just wanted to get a jump on it.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Well, it's funny that you say that because part of the reason I took this was that he was a Thiel fellow. And my favorite like pet hobby of mine is counting the number of Thiel fellow companies that have to do with like editing genes and like genetic editing. And it's been like at least one in every cohort for like the last four years. So it's very much Peter Thiel's into this and Peter Thiel seeks out and funds and introduces very young people who are working on kind of out there longevity stuff to important backers. And it is not a coincidence.

• 28:07Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, I guess we'll end with that PSA that if you are 16 and not touching grass, instead, you should potentially go pitch some sort of longevity or gene editing startup idea to Peter Thiel.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Well, hey, and I'll say, you know, it doesn't have to be of some big horrible thing like, you know, obviously, he's a smart guy. And if the worst thing that comes out of this is that Peter Thiel funded some basic research into portable MRI machines, like, that's rad. Like, go for it. Okay, that could be a very good outcome. It doesn't have to be longevity. It doesn't even have to be continuous glucose monitoring. It could just be like some interesting research and someone tricked him into doing it. That would be great.

• 28:44Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, we'll have to keep track of this one. We are out of time, but we will be back next week. Until then, you can find Equity under the handle at EquityPod on X and threads. Bye for now.

• 28:57Kirsten Korosec?

  Equity is produced by Teresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our illustrator, and we'd like to give a big thanks to our audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch Audio Products. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.