Automattic's 33-Hour coup, and can AI labs police themselves?

A week after an Anthropic researcher's doomsday warning rattled the AI world, the company's CEO Dario Amodei has outlined his plan to “pace the frontier” of AI development. The proposal leans on independent safety evaluators and coordination between AI labs in democratic countries, and it's already picked up some industry support, along with some pointed pushback from Nvidia's Jensen Huang. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into whether companies can agree on what slowing down means and who gets to police it. Plus, WordPress parent Automattic's boardroom coup, and a couple of the week's biggest deals. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: The golden parachute deals struck during Matt Mullenweg's 33-hour ouster from Automattic, and why the drama could give him even more control over technology that powers much of the web Whether May Mobility's SPAC can deliver more than $300 million in potential funding, and why becoming a “public robotaxi company” comes with some big caveats DoorDash's $425 million investment in Wonder and the race to automate food from order to delivery Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 00:00 Intro 1:00 Dario Amodei's plan to "pace the frontier" 5:03 Jensen Huang pushes back 9:08 Can market forces alone keep AI safe? 12:30 Third-party evaluators: how would they actually work? 15:27 Automattic's board tries to oust Matt Mullenweg 19:31 Comparing it to OpenAI's "the blip" 22:54 What's at stake in who controls WordPress 24:04 May Mobility's SPAC deal 28:42 Are SPACs back? 29:34 DoorDash invests $425M in Wonder 33:45 Outro 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.

• 0:00Sean O'Kane?

  This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, advancing energy tech.

• 0:05Anthony Ha?

  After a week of concerns over AI safety, Dario Amade says he has a plan to pace the frontier of AI development. We'll get into who's on board and who's pushing back. Also this week, WordPress parent Automattic is in full on boardroom chaos after its board tried to sideline CEO Matt Mullenweg. And we're keeping our eye on a couple of deals of the week, including a SPAC that could make a robo taxi company the first of its kind to go public. Stick around.

• 0:36Kirsten Korosec?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, September 18. I'm Kirsten Korsak, Transportation Editor here at TechCrunch. And I'm joined, as always, by our Weekend Editor, Anthony Ha, and Senior Reporter, Special Projects, Sean O'Kane. And what's up, you guys? What's been happening? Anything crazy happen over the weekend? You know, AI related, maybe? I don't know.

• 1:05Anthony Ha?

  It was, I would say, from a tech news perspective, a pretty exciting weekend. And specifically, the CEO of Anthropic, you know, kind of continuing with this discussion we were having about whether or not AI will destroy us all. I'm not being hyperbolic. That's genuinely what they seem to be debating. He said that, hey, I have this plan to pace the frontier. The language was a little bit reminiscent of what Sam Altman has also been saying. I mean, Sean, what do you think? Are we actually going to pace the frontier?

• 1:35Sean O'Kane?

  I can't get it out of my head that that sounds, for some reason, like something from Point Break. You know, it's just a very California statement. Like, we're going to pace the frontier, bro. Like, I don't know. I will say, I said on this show last week, I didn't think we were headed for a slowdown of any kind, in large part because I don't think these companies are structured in a way where that works. And so I was, this was a pretty immediate flip of what I said a week ago to hear this from Dario at Anthropic and Sam at OpenAI and even Elon Musk to a certain degree. And we can get into that, whether we believe that or not. I will say, I don't think I was completely wrong because even with these sort of loose plans that Dario laid out in a blog post

• 2:19Sean O'Kane?

  and some of the other leaders have talked about. I don't know about you guys. I feel like we're still missing a lot of specifics here. Not only on some of the claims about why these people think there are dangers and risks, but also specifics on what they mean by slowing down. Anthony, I know you read this stuff pretty closely last weekend as it was all popping off. So I'm curious if you're maybe more generous than I am as far as like, understanding what it is they're trying to say here.

• 2:48Anthony Ha?

  No, no, I wouldn't say. I mean, I also have questions. I mean, certainly, what really stood out to me, and we should talk about the specifics of the plan in as much as they are known already, is the fact that so many people in the industry seem to coalesce around this fairly quickly. You know, even before Amade published his blog post, I was seeing other people kind of post some version of this and just in the days leading up to it. My understanding is these are kind of suggestions that have come out of the AI safety community. These are things that have been kind of percolating for a while. They're not just things that he thought of on his own. But yeah, it just seemed like a lot of people were kind of ready to embrace this.

• 3:33Anthony Ha?

  In some ways, it's encouraging to see that there's a consensus, but it also makes me a little skeptical that this would represent sort of genuine major steps towards a slowdown.

• 3:43Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I mean, I would say this. Like, first of all, consensus can be a good thing. Also, it can be the beginnings of forming a cartel. And so, you know, let's be clear of who we're talking about here. We're talking about Frontier AI Labs. And that's specific and important. You did say a minute ago that the details aren't really clear, but we do know that the general idea here is that independent third-party evaluators would come in that would work inside the company like Anthropic or OpenAI and monitor AI safety practices and incidents. But there is a lot of vagueness around that. Like, at what step? Would it be continuous? Things like that. And then there's another proposal to have major AI companies in democratic countries

• 4:28Kirsten Korosec?

  coordinate on safety standards and limits. And then this international coordination piece. So those are the general ideas around this. I'll also add that, like, there's been very considerable pushback from very specific people. And surprisingly, some people I didn't think that would push back on this. So, you know, the obvious ones, I guess, would be Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, who, you know, had some pretty choice words. I don't know what either of you think of that. Pretty interesting beginning of the week, some of his comments and the call he took from President Trump on stage.

• 5:09Sean O'Kane?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, I think Jensen understands that, to a certain extent, he is seen as the adult in the room here. Which is interesting because like, that's a dynamic that I think has changed, right? Like, if you were to ask people a year, almost two years ago now, who was playing that role as these AI companies were really sort of starting to blow up in big ways? I think a lot of people would have pointed to Microsoft and Satya Nadella. And I feel like Microsoft has sort of, for a number of reasons that we don't need to get into right now, lost that kind of grip on being the sort of adult in the room. I think certainly in part because Nadella said he was going to make Google dance. And then that never happened.

• 5:55Sean O'Kane?

  And in fact, the opposite happened, I think, in a lot of ways. And so, you know, Jensen, I think, understands not only that he needs to be sort of pleasing the most amount of people. And so he wants to say sort of the most measured thing. But he also, I think, is like, one of the most useful liaisons between like, this sort of field and this administration. You know, to the point that they had, I don't know what you guys think about this, as far as whether this was really as organic as it was, but to the point that he's getting a call from the president while he's on stage at this very, you know, well-attended and sort of high-profile conference that, you know, allowed him to sort of, allowed the both of them to sort of respond

• 6:40Sean O'Kane?

  to all this mess over the weekend earlier this week.

• 6:44Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I want to mention that because your point about him being the adult in the room and the liaison, he is in a position where he could do that. But in my view, I would say that, which did feel a little staged, went a step too far and really, to me, highlighted the fact that Nvidia greatly benefits from AI, you know, moving forward in an unpaced manner. And, you know, I hate to be cynical about it, but that was sort of my initial reaction to it. But you're correct in that he is in a position in which he is directly, or his company is directly in the middle of everything that is going on

• 7:26Kirsten Korosec?

  on the open wait side and on the more proprietary, like, closed frontier side. And so, you know, he is in a good position to be a leader here. It just felt, you know, like, that moment felt so a little staged. And so I became a little bit more suspicious of the messaging just since, you know, Nvidia will, you know, benefit financially, obviously.

• 7:48Anthony Ha?

  Right, I mean, Nvidia, it's in Nvidia's interests. And also, I think it's just, I think, frankly, you know, sucking up a little bit and getting on the good side of the Trump administration, which, you know, even before that, you know, reporters were starting to ask Trump about it. And he was like, I mean, you know, if companies want to take some safety steps, they can. But we don't, we can't slow down. We can't slow down, China, China, China, China, China. And so I think, like, Trump and Huang's interests are aligned. And also, he's kind of telling him what he wants to hear. I did think some of the things he was specifically focusing on are worth unpacking a little bit. I mean, first, he talked about, again, this idea of we are not going to have a slowdown. Again, I mean, I think it's interesting,

• 8:33Anthony Ha?

  just that phrase slowdown, which has come up a lot. But at the same time, you know, both Altman and Amade, they'll use the slowdown language, but the word they like to use more is pace, right? And so, and these three proposals, like the ones you described, Kirsten, in theory, they could result in things slowing down, but they're not saying that explicitly, right? It's saying, hey, we're putting We're sort of making some like basic safety measures and having some people kind of keep an eye on us. But none of those things are intrinsically saying that things are going slower, have to go slower than they are now, at least as I understand it.

• 9:13Kirsten Korosec?

  So I have a question for Sean because I mean, wouldn't, couldn't you argue in a free market society that A, we have existing regulations in place and also a competitive environment in which there isn't protectionism, that if there is something unsafe that is released by a company, that they would no longer be able to be a viable company and there are legal, you know, regulators in place today that could go after these companies? Or do you reject that idea? Because that is an argument that's being, that's being made in terms of why we don't really need to do the steps that Dario and Sam Altman have sort of talked about.

• 9:55Sean O'Kane?

  I mean, in a vacuum or sort of in a market that is not being distorted by a whole bunch of different external pressures, then yeah, I think there's an element of that. But we have, you know, a federal government at this, at the moment that certainly does not seem eager to enforce regulations broadly speaking, let alone specifically speaking here. To me, it does not seem like there is a ton of consumer choice driving this market in the sense of like, okay, if one of these companies does something really bad, then you, they will see an impact in how many cancellations there are or whatever, because so much, especially now as they have moved into enterprise

• 10:39Sean O'Kane?

  and they're making so much more of their money from, from these selling their services to companies, it's just naturally harder to vote with your dollars there. Like corporations are not going to sort of pack up and move between Codex and Claude Code just because they disagree on principle with like something that OpenAI did in, and then they're also just sort of being floated by so much investment money that it makes it easier for them to absorb any of those losses if they actually do face them. So I think it's a nice idea in theory to a certain extent, but I feel like in practice, it's just, there's none of that really happening. And we wind up in the same situation that I feel like you and I paid so much attention to recently, a few years ago with Boeing,

• 11:22Sean O'Kane?

  where we really got a firsthand experience and a tragic experience with what happens when an industry just allows self-regulation with government monitors of some kind who check in from time to time and don't really get the full picture or have the full understanding of what's going wrong and, and then seeing that break really bad.

• 11:42Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, well, I think that also then brings us back to these specific suggestions. And, and I do think like the second and third about the idea of safety standards, you know, agreed upon by companies within democratic countries. And then sort of agreements between, again, lots of scare quotes, democratic companies and authoritarian companies, by which he means China. Those are vaguer and so, and we can definitely talk about this, but it seemed like the thing that was getting the most traction, the most immediate agreement that there's going to be some version of this is this idea of independent evaluators within these companies. And I guess there's been, there was also some mention about how there is precedent for this within, you know, banking. And I'm curious to what extent, you know, you guys think that is something that could be effective?

• 12:26Anthony Ha?

  Is this going to be, you know, Sean, you mentioned the Boeing example, something where they're still not really going to know what's going on? Or are there steps that have to be taken to make sure that is effective?

• 12:35Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I mean, I would say in, like in the federal government, if I were to turn to automotive and transportation, which I'm obviously very familiar with, there are regulations in place and there are evaluators that can step in. But a lot of what these regulations are based on self-certification. And if a company's self-certify, let's say around like automotive standards, which you could, you know, let's say an AI lab could do the same, then the federal government comes in as a secondary step, but they're not there in the beginning. That's why that whole idea about independent evaluators to me is so interesting. Because at what stage are they proposing this happen? And Rebecca Bellan had a really interesting story this week, which is will they really be independent, first of all?

• 13:21Kirsten Korosec?

  And will this be a continuous process? Will this be at the very beginning? And more importantly, if they're testing on the safety of, let's say, an AI agent, could the AI agent be crafted in a way to pass the test? But that doesn't necessarily make it safe. So these are all like, you know, pretty top level questions. I just don't really see necessarily a, an immediate future in which the federal government is going to like, set up something of third-party evaluators. I could see it happening more in the private market. And I don't know if that really achieves what the end goal is.

• 13:56Sean O'Kane?

  Yeah, I don't know how effective that could be. I think it's worth trying. I will say one signal this week in my mind is there, because everything is culture war these days, there has been an effort to turn the existing independent researchers who have been following the risks of, of this stuff and evaluating when they, when things go wrong into a culture war issue. You know, I think it was the New York Post ran a whole front page with pictures of all of these people from one of the research institutes, calling them sort of like woke AI schools. And it's just like, when that stuff starts kicking up, you're kind of like, okay, I wonder if that's happening because some of these people believe that there could actually be an impact from these people doing their work and they're therefore,

• 14:40Sean O'Kane?

  they're doing culture war about them? Or is it just a reflex at this point? Like, it's kind of hard to tease that out.

• 14:46Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, it's really interesting how AI both does and doesn't fit into sort of the kind of existing culture war, political spectrum stuff in that on some level, there is an element of yes, like you can say that pro kind of AI safety, AI regulation is kind of a liberal issue and, and Trump is much more kind of like, no, none of that and, and, you know, boo, like trying to make AI woke. But it's not entirely that. And, and that there's certainly, I think, a lot of conservatives who have a lot of concerns about AI, about data centers and things like that. And that, you know, conversely, like even Musk, who is obviously a very pro-Trump, right-wing figure himself, like was like on board with this. And so these kinds of culture war things do come up,

• 15:29Anthony Ha?

  but they, they're not quite as predictable as they are on other issues. 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.

• 16:00Sean O'Kane?

  Well, I don't think this is the last we're going to be talking about this. And speaking of wars, there was another pretty big war in Silicon Valley this week,

• 16:09Sean O'Kane?

  which is one of those stories, I always love a story that just spins, you know, faster than the news cycle is already set at. And that was Automattic, the parent company of WordPress. And its board pushing out CEO Matt Mullenweg and then him returning to that post 33 hours later, you know, from a, a sort of enforced paid leave. And there's a lot to unpack here because that, that's only the beginning of what happened with them this week. And it follows a whole bunch of other drama that Automattic has been involved in over the last couple of years, which includes a whole bunch of layoffs, some legal disputes. Some of that may even be related to this. What'd you make of this, Kirsten?

• 16:48Kirsten Korosec?

  So to me, what I'm very interested in is what happened during that 33 hours. I mean, there's a lot of boardroom intrigue that was happening before and after. And Sarah Perez, I should say, has been like all over this story and been first to it and, and has all these great details. So we will include links to all those stories in our show notes. But during that 33 hours in which Matt was no longer, you know, part of the board, some, let's say, shenanigans, some, some golden parachute shenanigans took place in which the people who are no longer on this board, who have now been forced out, both signed each other's, you know, basically their golden parachute agreements.

• 17:32Kirsten Korosec?

  And so they are leaving in a much better financial situation than they were before. And to me, that is just.

• 17:42Kirsten Korosec?

  Wow, does that raise more than just questions, I think, that we can all pretty concretely say that that was abuse of power? And I'm very curious to see what happens and if there's any recourse from now the company to go after those two individuals.

• 18:00Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I mean, that's definitely not a good look, for sure. I mean, for me, the other thing that felt so familiar like about it that gave us such a stage drop, it was like, of course, that it felt like in some ways a repeat of the OpenAI situation a couple of years ago, which I guess that a lot of people now call the blip, when the board tried to push Sam Altman out, you know, he was sort of gone for a little while and then came back and again, everyone who tried, who basically staged the coup ended up being gone. And I'm sure that, you know, I think when we dig into the details, they're not, you know, perfectly parallel situations. I think generally, it feels a little bit less heightened around Automattic because there's, again, not a bunch of people who think they're building like the most important, dangerous technology in the world.

• 18:45Anthony Ha?

  Because I think we're still in the early days of just like, what is going on? What happened? Like, what was the deal? And my hope, and I guess maybe some of the responsibility that falls on us, is like figuring out, like, and finding out what actually happened. I mean, hopefully Sarah or someone else will have more to share in the days to come, because it does seem like, again, a situation where, as much, you know, when you're on the board and you're involved in the company, there's your own money at stake and things as well, but that there was some sort of feeling like this is not the right person to leave the company more. They took dramatic action and it did not work.

• 19:23Kirsten Korosec?

  And they financially helped themselves in that 33-hour window.

• 19:28Anthony Ha?

  Sure.

• 19:28Kirsten Korosec?

  And, you know, so there's...

• 19:30Anthony Ha?

  Yes, nuances and differences.

• 19:32Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I think that that like undercut maybe their argument. The question for both of you is, you know, you compared it to OpenAI. I would say arguably, when Sam Altman returned, he returned more powerful. And is that the same situation that's playing out here over at Automattic? And it seems like in the early steps that, you know, Matt clearly has control again. And will he end up with actually more power than before as a result of what's happened over the last few days?

• 20:04Sean O'Kane?

  Yeah, I think you nailed it. I think the biggest difference between the two, other than the technology they're working on, like Anthony said, is here, this happened so quickly that, you know, it's hard to even say if this would have happened. But because of the speed of this, we did not see what we saw with OpenAI, where there was this like crush of support from the employees and threats to leave, you know, that few-day period of uncertainty really defined that moment a few years ago, whereas this was like a lightning speed run of that. But the biggest similarity is, you know, just like you said, control. I think the thing that's so interesting to me here, compared to the OpenAI situation,

• 20:44Sean O'Kane?

  is this is a company that is adjacent to a nonprofit, that all sort of work together, that create this like, you know, fundamental technology or fundamental platform that so much of the internet works on and runs on. I mean, our own site works on WordPress, right? Like, it's just, it's all over the place. And I think that the question of control is just so much more interesting when you're talking about this situation where you're dealing with a technology that leans more open source, that has that in its DNA. And so if Matt really is sort of consolidating even more control now than he did, because we should say, you know, like, when there was this big fight with WP Engine a little

• 21:26Sean O'Kane?

  over a year ago, I think, where he went after this other company, you know, for sort of behaving in a way that he didn't feel like was proper for sort of how WordPress operates itself, he really made that a pivot point for Automattic employees and said, at the time, you know, at the time when also they were the biggest the company has ever been, here's the door. Here's a really generous severance package if you want to leave, you know, so that they're not just like cutting bait, but like, here's the door and walk out. And so I think in some ways, he's already consolidated a lot of power over this, and this seems like a chance to take that further. And so what does that mean for this technology that is so important to an open web that's

• 22:09Sean O'Kane?

  under threat for a lot of other, by a lot of other technologies at the moment, is kind of a scary question?

• 22:14Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, it's really definitely just made me, I guess this is kind of just an obvious, almost dumb question, but just really made me ask, like, what is going on over there? Like, it feels like this is some, and, you know, maybe a company and a technology and a platform that we kind of take for granted, that I, you know, just thought, like, here is something that's fundamental to sort of the plumbing of the internet, and it works, you know, well, it sort of advances, there's ways to customize, but it doesn't feel like there's that much going on. And suddenly, you know, as of, you know, a year or so ago, like, suddenly they're like involved in these legal battles, it seems like things have like, you know, just the drama has escalated dramatically, you know, and Matt Mullenweg himself, I think,

• 22:58Anthony Ha?

  previous to this, had this very kind of, kind of warm and fuzzy reputation as just like this guy who believed in open source, believed in the open web, and then now he's sort of embroiled in these weird fights that it just always feels kind of like, what's actually going on here? Because it just seems like the level of intensity of the battle seems so disproportionate to like what the stakes seem to be from the outside. And so the whole situation just feels very confusing.

• 23:27Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, okay, so before we move on to deals, I will make this one point, which is that both of you have poked on the edges of what I've been thinking about with this. And it's, I think, a good lesson for founders out there, which is, you know, be aware of who's on your board. But I actually think that because WordPress, Engine, Automattic are essentially the plumbing of a lot of what the internet is, the stakes are actually quite high. Anytime there is a technology that actually has a lot of power, when you think about it, when you really start breaking down how many different websites are using this, then I think sometimes people behave badly and that you get a little bit of drama in the mix.

• 24:11Kirsten Korosec?

  I like to say that open source and all this stuff brings out the best in people, but also there's massive implications over who controls Automattic. So far, it seems like Matt has not only won, but seems to be consolidating power. How many more of these are gonna keep popping up, though? I think is sort of my longer-term question.

• 24:34Anthony Ha?

  Well, should we move on to deals?

• 24:36Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, we should.

• 24:38Anthony Ha?

  All right, so the first one is May Mobility, which is apparently going public via SPAC. I think this is one that is, I think, squarely in both of your coveragers. Who wants to tell me about May Mobility?

• 24:50Kirsten Korosec?

  SPACs are back. Well, Sean wrote the story, but, you know, SPACs are back? Question mark? I mean, here's my two cents, just, and then Sean can get in the details. So there was a time where there was like a million EV SPACs, and over the past few years, we've seen more autonomous vehicle companies and specifically robotics companies going SPAC as a means to, you know, gain capital. Whether May Mobility is ready for being a publicly traded company, I think Sean's in a better position to talk about that.

• 25:22Sean O'Kane?

  How much time do you have, right? Like, I think that was, I think the narrative around the big SPAC boom six years ago, five years ago, was that, you know, certainly in defense of doing a SPAC merger for these companies, a lot of them were sort of framing it as, hey, this is free money, we can't pass it up, it's sort of too good to be true. The cost ended up being that a lot of them weren't ready to be public companies, and that's why a bunch of them failed, like, in the most fundamental way, you know, sort of across them, and for different reasons specifically, but that was like the big thing that really brought them down. So we'll see. I mean, we learned in this announcement this week that May Mobility generated $10 million

• 26:01Sean O'Kane?

  in revenue last year, they burned almost $100 million last year as well. This deal would give them at least $120 million. The number I'm watching is, there is $217 million in a trust that is part of sort of like what got raised by this SPAC in the run-up to the merger. And that is always the question with SPAC mergers, is have you done enough to convince these people who bought in at $10 a share, or whatever the flat fee was when it was just a SPAC, that they should stick around with this company once it's public? Or are all those people gonna redeem, you know, their sort of stake in that trust and buzz off?

• 26:45Sean O'Kane?

  And leave May with significantly less than, you know, the sort of total that they could raise from this, which is like over $300 million? And I think that's a big question. You know, this is gonna take months to close, this is certainly not like right around the corner, but I think that's the thing I'm already kind of keeping an eye on now.

• 27:03Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I think that you're spot on on that, which is we've seen this happen before where, you know, companies on paper, it seems like initially like, oh, they're getting a lot of capital and those lockup terms are very loose. And, you know, a lot of these investors bail right away and it puts them in a weird position. We should say that May Mobility, it seems like is going to be the first robotaxis SPAC, but they're not commercially, really commercially deployed in the same sense that like Waymo is. Are they a first really in the industry then? Because there are other, like I mentioned before, AV companies that are SPAC-ing, right?

• 27:43Sean O'Kane?

  Yeah, I mean, they positioned this in the announcement this week about being, you know, this sort of quote unquote, first US publicly listed company focused on autonomous ride hailing, which is sort of like saying, I'm like, you know, the tallest person in my family. You know, it's just, it's a very narrow set. I understand why they're doing it. Yeah, you know, like, I understand why they're doing it because they're trying to set themselves apart. And, you know, they are operating what is arguably a more unsexy version of autonomous vehicle company than, you know, compared to some others. Their whole thing is essentially like building, you know, building the vehicles and then essentially transferring those over to fleet operators. They want to be very asset light, which is,

• 28:26Sean O'Kane?

  you know, very interesting in its own ways and challenging in its own ways. But I do think, you know, there are many other companies that are public already that are autonomous vehicle companies, especially on the trucking side. And we have, you know, companies like Tesla and Rivian that are working on this technology as part of a portfolio of other technologies. I think, you know, on the one hand, like, yeah, I think they're maybe trying to like, dress it up a little bit. On the other hand, I think it shows that we learned something from the last SPAC boom, which is that they're not going public saying, hey, we're going to make a trillion dollars in year one and we're going to have 5 billion robotaxis in 120 cities. Like, there was actually a relatively reasonable, I kept looking through the investor deck thinking, okay, where's the thing that they're saying

• 29:09Sean O'Kane?

  where they're way out over their skis? And I don't really see that, certainly not in the way that we saw five or six years ago.

• 29:15Anthony Ha?

  I mean, I guess, yeah, for, again, sort of grading them on this curve, it still seems kind of wild to me that a company is like trying to go public when it brought in, you know, 10 million in revenue last year and, you know, lost weight, you know, an order back.

• 29:28Kirsten Korosec?

  There's revenue. There's revenue. We've seen SPACs pre-revenue, just to be clear.

• 29:33Anthony Ha?

  So. What a, yeah, what a wild time that was. And what fun it will be if that comes back. Well, let's move on to one other deal that we wanted to talk about, which is this company, Wonder, which announced, you know, basically a $425 million deal with DoorDash. Wonder is a delivery company, but sort of like really focused on building, not just doing delivery from existing restaurants, but kind of building new kind of restaurant brands that are just focused on delivery, kind of ghost kitchens. Have either of you actually like tried it out? Like, do you, you know, kind of dug into the company at all?

• 30:06Kirsten Korosec?

  I have not used Wonder, but they are popping up quite a bit. And you're right, there, there is just like this idea of a chain of ghost kitchen food halls that are designed for delivery. And, you know, the idea here is that Wonder is taking this like one size fits all approach to fast casual dining. To me, I'm much more familiar with DoorDash. What my take is on this is that DoorDash just seems to be everywhere right now. Like, they're, you know, doing sidewalk delivery bots and they're, you know, experimenting and launching like, out of their labs, R and D labs, autonomous drones. They're partnering up with Wonder and investing money. Like, they're just seem to be really spreading their bets widely right now.

• 30:51Sean O'Kane?

  I will say, I don't have any experience with Wonder. I will say, our producer, Teresa, says the burritos are mid, which is, you know, I guess, isn't that like the best case you can hope for these days with these sort of tech forward food companies? The one thing I'll say here is like, I don't think this is too tinfoil hat, but like, I think this is more, this is another example of how we're seeing a sort of real slowly increased competition between DoorDash and Uber. In the sense of, not only is DoorDash trying to do a lot of the same things that Uber is doing with sort of like autonomous vehicle partners and, you know, this sort of distributed bets model that you just mentioned, but Wonder

• 31:36Sean O'Kane?

  is doing basically what Travis Kalanick has been doing with cloud kitchens. It's like the same idea of like, can we automate the process from like, food order to food creation to food delivery? And Kalanick's new thing, Adams, is being backed by Uber. He has a proximity to that company that he hasn't had in a long time since he was ousted. And so, you know, I'm not saying that's exactly what's going on here, but I think it's, you know, it would be foolish to ignore that that dynamic is at play.

• 32:03Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I mean, it was striking, like, reading just like how much Wonder, at least what they seem to be pitching as part of this deal, is this kind of increasing move towards automation and the idea, oh, like, you could get like food delivered that like no human hands have touched. That's not actually the phrase they're using, but that's essentially the vision that they're selling. And there's a part of me that's definitely like, yeah, who wants that? No, I, I want my food to be made by-

• 32:28Sean O'Kane?

  Also, it's really hard, you know, it's like, people have been trying this, even with the most advanced tech that's out there now. And it's, it's just really, really hard.

• 32:35Anthony Ha?

  Yeah. And I think what I do wonder about is this, like, to what extent are we just seeing this kind of like, like schism or division, segmentation in the, like, food where there, you know, the converse of that is definitely going to some restaurants that are trying to like make all these deliveries while also to like creating like a good in-person experience. And sometimes it does seem like they're really stretched then trying to do both. So in theory, I could imagine that, like, maybe like having things that are focused on what, like, delivery and things that are focused on person kind of makes sense. But I think that would just be, yeah, I mean, a pretty like, rough transit, transformation of that entire business.

• 33:17Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, and part of what is driving sort of these like, kind of weird experiences between like a ghost kitchen experience and then like, the human delivered gig economy stuff, is that there's also been a lot of consolidation. I mean, Wonder might not be a household name, but it owns some household names. I mean, they acquired Grubhub last year for $650 million. They've added to their portfolio of brands, Blue Apron and Taste Made. Like, they're kind of, they're not some small little experiment here. And so, the interesting thing is that the consolidation piece of, of this, of what's happening in

• 33:58Kirsten Korosec?

  the marketplace around food delivery is making it, you know, I'm not really sure where it's headed, but like, when you start folding in ghost kitchens and also sort of like the human driven gig economy stuff, it starts getting pretty interesting.

• 34:11Anthony Ha?

  Well, I'm sure we'll have more to say about consolidation in the industry in the weeks to come. And of course-

• 34:18Kirsten Korosec?

  And burritos.

• 34:19Anthony Ha?

  And burritos. That's true. Actually, if there's one takeaway is that I just think, I agree that, you know, all this fast casual delivery, like, just, why can't the food be better? The food needs to be better. But anyway.

• 34:30Sean O'Kane?

  I'm hungry nonetheless.

• 34:32Anthony Ha?

  Equity will be back next week, of course, and you can follow us at EquityPod on X and threads in the meantime.

• 34:38Rebecca Bellan?

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