The California AI bill is back, and it lost its teeth

California’s most controversial AI safety bill of 2024 might be dead, but its author isn't backing down. State Senator Scott Weiner is back with SB 53, a new AI bill that strips away the most debated parts of last year’s failed legislation while keeping key whistleblower protections and a public cloud computing initiative called CalCompute. With the AI industry and even the federal government shifting away from AI safety regulation in favor of innovation, will the bill gain any traction? Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff and Anthony Ha are unpacking the latest moves in AI regulation along with the week’s top stories in tech and startups. Listen to the full episode to hear about: What Kirsten is hoping to see on the ground at SXSW this year CoreWeave’s IPO, and why the founders’ latest moves are raising eyebrows. As Kirsten put it: there's nothing more fun than diving into an S-1 Ramp’s impressive growth, and how the fintech more than doubled its annualized revenue to $700M Alexis Ohanian and Kevin Rose’s team-up, and if the pair can really bring back Digg Which founders are raising in 2025, and why deep tech has some investors feeling optimistic Equity will be back next week, so stay tuned! 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.

• 0:17Kirsten Korosec?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, March 7th. I'm Kirsten Korosec, Transportation Editor at TechCrunch.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  I'm Max Zeff, Senior Reporter at TechCrunch.

• 0:30Anthony Ha?

  And I'm Anthony Ha, Weekend Editor at TechCrunch.

• 0:33Kirsten Korosec?

  So Anthony, this weekend, are you going to be watching all the things happening at South By? Because you know I'm going to be there.

• 0:41Anthony Ha?

  I will be watching whatever you're doing, Kirsten. In general, it does seem like South By has kind of re-entered the kind of startup and tech conversation. I mean, when I was first starting out as a reporter many, many, many, many years ago, it was like the place to be. Felt like it kind of fell off and was kind of, yeah, just not as exciting. And it seems like in the last few years, it's come back. Is that what you've seen?

• 1:02Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I mean, I've been going there for years now. I'm moderating a panel. Another one of our reporters, Rebecca Bellan, is going to be moderating too. COVID really kind of killed the vibes there. And then, of course, don't forget, two years ago was the Silicon Valley Bank sort of eruption that happened during South By, which every year, there's like something crazy that happens in the tech world that it all filters through to South By. This year, I think it's going to be two things. AI, competition with another conference, HumanX, which is happening around the same time, and robotaxis, because robotaxis are in Austin officially. So it's going to be interesting to see like what people are talking about.

• 1:46Kirsten Korosec?

  But AI, I think, is going to be like the big, big thing.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Do you guys remember there ever being another conference that happens at the same time as South By Southwest? Like, I feel like HumanX is really coming for the king's crown here.

• 1:57Anthony Ha?

  I can't think of anything.

• 1:59Kirsten Korosec?

  No, I can't. But I mean, the thing that South by has going for it is it's not just a tech conference. It's really culture and that includes tech now. And I've talked to a few people who are actually going to both.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:13Kirsten Korosec?

  What I'm really curious about is there's this moment usually that happens midweek. When all the tech people leave and like all the music people like enter in and the vibes just completely change. So we'll see if that happens earlier than normal. Well, let's get into the show today. We have deals of the week from thin tech startup ramp. And Core Weave's IPO, cannot wait to talk about that. Then we'll get into AI regulations and finally break down funding between female and male led startups.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  And today we're kicking off the show by talking about the early news aggregator DIG, which is being revived with a fresh vision by its original founder, Kevin Rose, who has now reacquired the platform with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who's joined as co-owner. So DIG has backing from True Ventures where Rose is a GP and Ohanian's venture firm 776. And this is really kind of a blast from the past for people who are on the internet in kind of its earlier days. Kirsten and Anthony.

• 3:13Kirsten Korosec?

  I'm sorry, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to get at?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Do you guys know anything about those earlier?

• 3:17Kirsten Korosec?

  That was like the least. You just showed your hand, my friend. That was the the worst nod to Anthony and I's age bracket. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 3:28Anthony Ha?

  Absolutely brutal.

• 3:29Kirsten Korosec?

  Yes, it was.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  I was just reaching out to our subject matter experts on this.

• 3:32Kirsten Korosec?

  Ah, okay, okay. Thank you. Yeah, actually, I proudly used DIG at one time in my life and I'm very happy to be a part of the internet 1.0 era. Anthony, did you ever use DIG?

• 3:45Anthony Ha?

  I used it to find news and in particular, I think in the early days of tech blogging, you know, there were people who, you know, you would talk to who would be like, oh, I can help you like get your story up on DIG and it'll do well. And like DIG was actually one of the big traffic sources. So yeah, this definitely took me back and it also took me back to just like a much more idealized and nostalgic view of like. What the internet could be and this idea of like, oh, like the idea that we could share news online. Isn't that a great idea? Isn't that nice? Isn't that going to make the world a better place? And so I felt happy just in the sense of like, hey, something that comes from a happier time seems to be returning. I have to say that nothing in the announcement necessarily made me think that like, wow,

• 4:29Anthony Ha?

  this is, this is going to be an essential part of the sort of new internet landscape. But, you know, maybe it doesn't need to be. And also like Reddit is like something that seems also like a huge throwback. And yet it is, you know, arguably still the internet's homepage.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, Rose and O'Handian talked a lot about AI, unsurprisingly, in their kind of relaunch of the platform here that they're doing. And they say they're going to have a heavy emphasis on AI moderation, which they say will really help them kind of combat misinformation on the platform. It was once a competitor to Reddit. I wonder if we'll see them kind of use some of the same strategies to kind of license content on the platform. I mean, I don't know. What do you guys think about the focus on AI here?

• 5:10Kirsten Korosec?

  Two things. One, our editor in chief, Connie Loizos, on the Strictly VC Download Podcast interviewed Kevin Rose. And it's pretty interesting. You should definitely check it out and we'll link to it in the show notes. But yeah, the rivalry, there used to be a pretty big rivalry between Alexis and Kevin. And they actually later sort of, I guess, became more friendly. Kevin Rose reached out to him when he was thinking about reacquiring Digg. And apparently, you know, the quote in the story was like, there was all these ideas left on the table. So we'll see after all this experience and history and evolution with the internet, what does Digg 2.0 look like? I'm super curious to see where it goes from here.

• 5:54Anthony Ha?

  Absolutely. Well, we probably should move on to our next deal, which is Ramp. Mary Ann has a great story about this on TechCrunch, but Ramp is a six-year-old fintech startup. I think their sort of core products are these, you know, corporate credit cards, which can then be used to improve transparency and control over your corporate spending. At least that's the promise. And Mary Ann found a source who said that the company has crossed $700 million in annualized Revenue as of January.

• 6:20Kirsten Korosec?

  Can I just jump in and just say like, that's crazy because they have nearly like its valuation is nearly doubled. It's revenue is just like skyrocketing. To me, it's kind of surprising on the uptake on this. It's just been on my mind since I read the story.

• 6:37Anthony Ha?

  I was also surprised, you know, one thing that's worth emphasizing is that annualized revenue is often a little bit more of a cherry pick number. Right. You pick your best month and then you just multiply it by 12. I mean, maybe it's slightly more complicated, but essentially that's what you do. So like, I know that we've talked a little bit about Brex is expecting 500 million in revenue this year, but like, that's for the full year. That's not like annualized revenue. So we'll see. I mean, of course, maybe they'll actually do better. Like maybe they're just going to keep growing from January, they being ramp and they're going to even make more than they expect. But you know, there's just some asterisk, take it with a grain of salt. And I think one thing that definitely raised my eyebrows a little bit was that it seemed like the big message from them again is we're just using AI in everything. And it's like improving our efficiency across the board.

• 7:19Anthony Ha?

  It's not that I think that's impossible or that AI is not going to improve companies' bottom lines, but it also feels just sort of hand wavy. Like, what does that mean in this context? They pointed to, for example, that they use mid journey to, and I think not to actually produce their Super Bowl ad, but to sort of like, just like ideate, come up with a bunch of different versions of it that they could make before they actually shot it because they shot it in just 10 days. But yeah, I think like a very impressive numbers, but you know, not necessarily a lot of transparency into like how they're getting there. I mean, are you guys familiar with ramp? Are you excited about its growth?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you live in the Bay area, you can't help but not see ramps billboards all over the place. So it's interesting, but not surprising that they're doing so well right now. One kind of interesting note from Mary Ann's story that she wrote on this was that there's companies still not profitable. They say by choice because it's reinvesting its money in R and D. They say one half of every dollar goes into their R and D, which is just interesting. I think we're kind of seeing in the broader fintech space, just things are really heating up again in a way that I didn't quite see coming this year. But yeah, I'm curious, you know, we're seeing some of these players look towards an IPO, but maybe that has to do with the broader IPO market as well.

• 8:29Kirsten Korosec?

  Oh, well, I'm so glad that you brought up IPO because now, and our producer knows this is like one of my favorite subjects. There's nothing more fun than diving into an S1 with, you know, a cup of hot cocoa and a fire. But CoreWeave has filed its S1 and this company is absolutely fascinating to me. We've had just some initial stories on this and I expect even more to come. But I'll give you like the very quick download because I want to hear what you both are thinking about this. This company is hoping to raise three and a half to four billion at a $32 billion valuation. They're what they described as an AI focused cloud service provider.

• 9:11Kirsten Korosec?

  So if you think about that, that is really focused on the GPU infrastructure and providing this infrastructure to AI developers. And that's what makes them so hot right now. They're backed by Nvidia, Microsoft is a major client. They have everything going for them, but there's so much like interesting background for them. Like, I don't know if you guys knew this, but they actually started out as a crypto mining company.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Classic. They got this big store of GPUs and they're like, okay, what do we do with this? Oh, AI, perfect.

• 9:45Kirsten Korosec?

  No, exactly. So they have a lot going for them in some ways, like they have huge growth. They have this very enviable client and backer list. Their founders really come from like a hedge fund finance engineering background, not so much a tech background. And I think that they saw this as an opportunity when, if you remember, sort of the crypto crash happened and then they sort of pivoted and used these GPUs as really leverage. But they're also losing a lot of money, even though they've had insane revenue growth. Their debt right now is like 7.9 billion and they have to service that debt, which also is pretty steep cost. It's about 941 million in 2024 alone.

• 10:27Kirsten Korosec?

  But the thing that got me is that they have pitched this as a benefit, as sort of like collateral. These GPUs are collateral and so that the debt isn't a big deal.

• 10:40Anthony Ha?

  I mean, I think that's sort of a classic for-profit company thing to be like, yeah, that's great. It's just awesome. And then it's fine until it isn't. I would say the other striking thing to me in the numbers was that the three co-founders have they've sold nearly $488 million in shares through past tender offers. And my sense from having, you know, written about and talked to VCs is that it is normal for founders to take some money off the table before, you know, you go public, you get acquired, just because then you're not like, oh, my God, something has to happen immediately, or I'm just like, I'm not making enough money. I'm like desperate to sell the company. Instead, I can take a little bit more of a long view. But like, again, I mean, I, you know, not knowing a lot of the details around like taxes and how much they've actually like, how much

• 11:22Anthony Ha?

  of that $488 million is sitting in their bank account? That seems like a lot of money. And like that they're going to be really, really well off, no matter how well this company does in its IPO. And that, to me, is a little bit of a pink flag.

• 11:35Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. I mean, there is nothing wrong with people cashing out and actually you're seeing that a lot these days. Paper money, turning it into real money is a real thing. I mean, I would note that these aren't your typical startup founders in that they came from a hedge fund background. I'll speculate here and say that they likely already had quite a lot of personal funds as hedge fund managers. So, you know, how much is life-changing money? But to your point, it's still a lot. But we are seeing this actually happen quite a bit with companies that have remained private longer than expected. And sort of this secondary shares thing is quite the trend.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. One interesting thing I'll kind of note about CoreWeave specifically here, they have a very high revenue concentration. Their biggest customer is Microsoft, and it accounts for over 60% of their revenue, which is a big shift. I mean, Microsoft, it's a very nice company to have as your biggest customer. They need a lot of GPUs to run OpenAI's workloads and run their own kind of AI models. But there's been some reports recently that Microsoft withdrew some of their CoreWeave agreements over delivery issues. The Financial Times reported that on Thursday morning. So I think that There's a little bit of concern here that, you know, maybe Microsoft is pulling back. That said, you know, Corey was also doing some interesting things to go straight to developers here. They just acquired the startup Weights and Biases.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  They kind of build tools for AI developers. So they're kind of trying to, you know, connect their powerhouse of GPUs directly to developers instead of maybe having to go through someone like a Microsoft or something. That's how I read it, at least.

• 13:16Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how they diversify their client base and how much that affects their business. I also wonder how dedicated they are to the business itself, which sounds like a little bit of an unfair question, but based on their background and right now, like, they seem very opportunistic in a smart way. Like GPUs are so valuable, how do we change and pivot? Here we are leveraging this. But what happens if GPUs lose that value? And also, they don't diversify their client list and things get a little bit harder? Do they stick around? Do they put in new executive leadership?

• 13:59Kirsten Korosec?

  I know this is like looking way down the line, but I do kind of wonder what their commitment is to sort of core weave over the long haul, based on their background and also how they originally pivoted.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, this was a company that originally rode the crypto wave, and now they're kind of riding the AI wave. And how long does the AI wave go? And that's an open question. We have to move on. After the break, we'll kind of continue talking about the AI wave we're in, but specifically from the policy kind of angle, some new interesting AI regulation efforts that are going on in the state and federal level.

• 14:42Anthony Ha?

  Every company today is looking for an edge. Better insights, faster decisions, greater resilience. But as AI drives new growth, it also creates new demands on energy and infrastructure. Schneider Electric is connecting energy, automation, and digital technologies to help organizations make smarter decisions and operate more efficiently. Because the future won't be shaped by AI alone. It will be shaped by energy and industrial intelligence. Schneider Electric, advancing energy tech.

• 15:09Anthony Ha?

  Every company today is looking for an edge. Better insights, faster decisions, greater resilience. But as AI drives new growth, it also creates new demands on energy and infrastructure. Schneider Electric is connecting energy, automation, and digital technologies to help organizations make smarter decisions and operate more efficiently. Because the future won't be shaped by AI alone, it will be shaped by energy and industrial intelligence. Schneider Electric, advancing energy tech.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  We're back and we are talking about California AI regulation, my favorite topic. So you might remember last year, there was a very controversial bill called SB 1047. It basically tried to codify some of these fears around AI systems into California state law. It was very controversial, it was ultimately vetoed, but now the author is back with a new AI bill. It kind of takes the best parts. It's called SB 53, and it tries to protect people at these big tech companies that are creating advanced AI models. And it gives them a channel to report to the attorney general if they find some concerns with AI systems getting too advanced. Kirsten, what do you make of this?

• 16:19Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, you know, so I was looking at sort of the language around there. So it sounds like this new bill is going to create like a public cloud computing cluster called Cal Compute, which is going to give researchers and startups the necessary computing resources to develop AI, the sort of like the benefits to the public. And there's a couple of other things in here. Is this like a Goldilocks AI bill attempt to sort of make everyone happy, but not actually have any real teeth to it? I mean, what is your take on what does it accomplish? And is the attempt here to just not be controversial, but put something on the books?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the author of this is Senator Scott Weiner. He represents San Francisco and some other areas in Northern California, but I think he really needs a win here. Their big goal of this was to not be controversial. Some people I've talked to in the policy space say that SB 53 kind of seems a little bit unnecessary in some ways, because there's already whistleblower protections for people who work at big companies, which is What this does. And then, yeah, the Cal Compute Cluster, which is let's make government-funded GPUs for researchers. I feel like that's something everyone can agree on is a good idea. But I think that they wanted to codify some of this kind of AI safety language into law.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  And that is really the thing they're trying to kind of sneak in here in a way that is very inoffensive to Silicon Valley. But Anthony, you covered some of the controversy around the last bill from Senator Weiner.

• 17:45Anthony Ha?

  I did, yeah. I mean, mostly just because when it was on the weekend and I was, I remember actually like frantically running back to the apartment when I saw that the bill had been vetoed. One of the things that I struggled with the whole time that was happening was to really wrap my head around. You know, there were other bills that were AI regulation that were being passed without too much controversy. And this was the one that really drew all the criticism, SB 1047. I guess what I'm wondering now is what are the teeth that 1047 had that pissed people off that's being taken out now?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, the real kind of controversial part of SB 1047 was that it said that any AI model that's over a certain size basically has to get approved by this regulatory body. People felt like it was setting the AI space up for regulatory capture. Like it was going to make certain AI models that are okay by the government and then other AI models that are not okay and aren't allowed to run. People felt like it was that open source models wouldn't meet those requirements that the bill outlawed. So I think that this bill has none of that. It's really just protects whistleblowers and creates this new computing cluster. But it does have that same AI safety core. And at the federal level, we're kind of seeing a very different approach to AI safety here.

• 18:58Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I wanted to ask about that because since you pay so much attention to what's going on in California, if this is a framework at all or a guide to either other states or even at the federal level, and it doesn't seem like that. But what is your take on how what is happening in California might be informing what happens at the federal level?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Sure. So, you know, Vice President JD Vance recently said at a Paris AI, you know, policy summit that he doesn't want to talk about AI safety. He wants to talk. About AI innovation, which I think kind of sums up the whole federal kind of landscape around AI policy very well. The Biden administration was very focused on AI safety and protecting from these kind of potentially catastrophic harms from AI systems. Trump is really interested in, you know, build, build, build. The Trump administration, you know, just announced some recent things that are particularly concerning for AI safety people. They fired a number of employees at the National Science Foundation who had been handpicked for their expertise in AI. A lot of people think that's going to threaten the agency's ability to sustain AI research.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  I mean, more broadly, we're just seeing kind of with Elon Musk's Doge, they're kind of doing a lot of cutting right now and kind of scaling back the government, which is, I think, the opposite of what a lot of AI safety people had wanted in this space.

• 20:17Kirsten Korosec?

  I'm wondering if this is catching on globally. You know, I've noticed that Britain's competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, they recently said that Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI doesn't qualify for an investigation. That felt very interesting and different than what I expected. And I'm wondering if on a global basis, every country is pivoting away from the safety concerns, still in the background, but the front and center is all about opportunity.

• 20:49Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I mean, this seems to be a pretty contested area right now in that, like, from what I read about, like, for example, like, the reception to Vance's speech at the AI, I forget even what it was called, AI Opportunity Summit or something like that, that, like, you know, people were not like, yeah, great, like, this is, they were like, this guy. Which I, I mean, maybe also has more to do with just the general feelings about the Trump administration. But that, like, it's not like, you know, the Trump administration is sort of laying out this vision of let's just deregulate all of it. And every government in the world is saying this is great. I think there are definitely factions there, again, because there's also this sort of like looming specter of competition with China. And like, oh, if we constrain it, like, is China just going to sort of take over the whole industry? But I think you're also seeing a lot of pushback.

• 21:32Anthony Ha?

  I mean, you mentioned the UK, and I think one of the other things we've seen is, you know, there's some proposed changes to copyright in the UK around, basically, like, you have to opt out in order for your content to not be used to train AI models. And you've seen really intense pushback against that. I mean, I don't know how that's going to turn out, but like, this is not something that's going over well with the artistic community.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:54Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, what I'm most curious about, to your point, Anthony, is if people who didn't necessarily receive Vice President Vance's speech, which was the Paris AI Action Summit.

• 22:08Anthony Ha?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 22:09Kirsten Korosec?

  Close to opportunity, if they'll maintain their spine on this, or if they will start to get a little bit worried and go, oh, we don't want to lose out on the opportunity either. So I'm curious to see if there's any staying power on that. Well, I know what I want to talk about is our next theme, and that's startup funding, specifically the gap between male-founded and female-founded companies, and who is getting the money from VCs, and how that has evolved, and if it's at parity yet.

• 22:41Anthony Ha?

  It is not at parity. I'm just gonna jump back there.

• 22:43Kirsten Korosec?

  Okay, thank you. All right, that's it for the show. Okay, we're done. Not at parity. That's a wrap.

• 22:49Anthony Ha?

  But so there were some statistics that came out of Europe specifically, where overall VC funding fell in Europe by 11% in 2024, while female-founded startups saw a 12% decline. And I think sort of the theme that I took from these stats is not so much that, hey, things are great for female founders, but just, well, things are kind of bad all over, and they could be, it's not getting better, but it's not necessarily getting noticeably worse. So in this case, it's like, yes, funding for female-led startups has gone down, but it also seems to be mostly reflecting a larger trend in funding in general. There's also this interesting tidbit about how 33% of all the VC raised by female founders in Europe

• 23:30Anthony Ha?

  went to deep tech startups, which puts them significantly ahead of how much male-led company money is going to deep tech.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  It feels like the tech world is so hot right now in some ways. Like, I think we hear about these AI startups raising crazy amounts of money at insane valuations. So I think it's might be somewhat surprising to see that VC funding fell by a decent amount in 2024 in Europe. I'm curious what you guys kind of make of that. I wonder if this kind of is related to the previous conversation we were having about why Europe might be having a less kind of intense regulatory regime right now around AI. I wonder if they're trying to kind of bolster their startup scene in that way.

• 24:10Anthony Ha?

  Well, I would note that you did see similar trend lines in the US in 2024 that the overall numbers were down. And so, yeah, there may be some Europe specific stuff in there. But I think that dichotomy is because I think we're in this like haves and have not era of startup funding right now, that there's a handful of companies that are super hot and they're raising a ton of money at really high valuations. And then if you're not one of those companies, it's even tougher than it normally is.

• 24:34Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. And on that point, just to take attention away from Europe and look at what's happening in the US, you're absolutely right. And as it relates to female founders, you know, we did see a stabilization of VC funding for female founders after really dropping sharply in 2021, which was at a high. We still are not at parity to your point earlier. US companies founded or co-founded by women are still receiving a smaller share of total deals. And to your point, now there's like a ton of people fighting over a kind of a smaller pie for these while huge amounts of money are going to, you know, the OpenAI's of the world. So it'll be really interesting

• 25:15Kirsten Korosec?

  to see if that evens out at all. And I kind of have to wonder if any companies going to IPO sort of like creates some breathing room because then retail investors can get involved in the IPO market and these big companies are no longer going to VCs for money. And it's sort of like clears out a little bit of room. But that's just kind of a guess. I'm kind of curious to see. I keep waiting for the year of the big IPOs and I feel like I've been waiting for a long time. So we'll see how that shakes out.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  I mean, if any year was going to be the year, it certainly feels like this could be the one. I feel like this is just waiting for, you know, someone to tip the scales here. And it really could free up a lot of that capital that you're talking about and maybe get people interested in accelerating the funding scene here.

• 26:01Anthony Ha?

  Although I would say so the more pessimistic take would be that I think often when there's periods of retrenchment and you know, the dollars are not flowing as freely is I think when people generally are a little bit more conservative. Most of our listeners have heard of just sort of the pattern matching that goes on with VC investments and just like, all right, I know what a successful founder looks like. He's a guy. He went to like, you know, the Harvard or Stanford like business school. And in periods where there's a lot of investment, I think it's still not great, but there's more opportunity to quote unquote, take chances. I don't necessarily think it's actually taking a chance, but to like do someone who doesn't match that profile. But there's belt tightening. It's like, okay, no, we're just gonna, we're gonna invest in like the kinds of guys like we've invested in before. And even if they fail, like fewer people will yell at us for taking that chance.

• 26:43Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, yeah, here we are where anytime there's uncertainty, investors look for sure bets or what they know. When you have a situation where a lot of VCs are men and who went to Harvard or who have the pedigree from Stanford, you go with what you know. And so I don't think that that's terribly surprising. We'll see what happens in this year. And on that note, we're about out of time. As always, Equity will be back next week. Until then, you can find Equity under the handle at EquityPod on X and Threads. And thanks to Anthony and Max for joining for another episode.

• 27:25Rebecca Bellan?

  Equity is produced by Teresa Locan Solo 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.