Elon dips from DOGE, and Silicon Valley enters the 'find out' stage

Elon Musk has officially announced he’s stepping down as a U. S. special government employee and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE. The move follows Musk’s cooling relationship with the Trump administration and slumping Tesla sales tied to his political advocacy. Today on Equity, Kirsten, Max and Anthony unpack who else is departing DOGE, and why Silicon Valley’s relationship with politics is entering, as Kirsten put it, the “find out” stage. Listen to the full episode for more of the week’s tech headlines including: GameStop bought $500 million of bitcoin, and the move is giving us 2021 déjà vu Neuralink’s $600 million raise, valuing Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface startup at $9 billion The New York Times and Amazon’s landmark AI licensing deal and what it signals for how editorial content powers generative AI Nvidia’s tale of two earnings, and why the forecast is not as bleak as CEO Jensen Huang makes it seem Equity will be back next week, so don’t miss it! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Anthony Ha?

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

• 0:16Kirsten Korosec?

  There was a lot going on in 2021, to be honest, but maybe you'll remember this, which was the whole GameStop stock craze that was happening when all these people were on Robinhood and like the stock was going bananas. Do you recall this moment?

• 0:31Anthony Ha?

  How could I forget? Not a GameStop shareholder myself, but it was like this moment when it felt like things were very unpredictable.

• 0:39Kirsten Korosec?

  Okay, well, what was old is new again because GameStop has, I'm calling it the GameStop Gambit. There's a whole new GameStop moment happening again, which I'm positive both of you have followed this, but they bought $500 million of Bitcoin.

• 0:54Anthony Ha?

  Well, and it feels like 2021 again, too, just because it's people talking about buying Bitcoin in an excited way because that also feels like a throwback. It was, it was this time when money didn't mean anything, and I guess it doesn't mean anything again.

• 1:07Kirsten Korosec?

  It doesn't, it doesn't.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  GameStop's stock dropped like 11% when they announced that they were doing this. And I can't say I understand exactly why they did this either. It kind of felt like, hey, why not? You know, it's 2025, Bitcoin's back, you know, let's, let's try some stuff out. And, you know, that's, that's one way to run a public company.

• 1:27Kirsten Korosec?

  Speaking of meme coins, we are going to actually talk about Doge later, too, so be prepared. Welcome back, everyone, to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, May 30. I'm Kirsten Korosec, Transportation Editor.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  I'm Max Zeff, Senior Reporter.

• 1:46Anthony Ha?

  I'm Anthony Ha, Weekend Editor.

• 1:48Kirsten Korosec?

  We have a great show today. We're going to kick things off with Deals of the Week involving The New York Times and Amazon. Then we're going to shift to Neuralink's $600 million investment, and then we're going to get into Elon leaving Doge and Nvidia's dual earnings message. So let's kick things off with this New York Times, Amazon deal.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So New York Times has this new content licensing deal with Amazon to train its AI platforms. So this will include kind of New York Times editorial content, cooking content and stuff from The Athletic. Their sports outlet that they acquired a few years back for use across Amazon services. There's a possible integration that, you know, New York Times content could be surfaced through Alexa Plus. Whenever that rolls out, I'm not sure if you guys have it. It's a going thing right now is that no one really has Alexa Plus, even though Amazon says people have Alexa Plus. But I don't, we don't know anyone who has it. But this is kind of a big deal for a lot of reasons. I mean, the New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft claiming that, you know,

• 2:53Speaker 02

  their content was improperly used to train ChatGPT and it surfaced improperly in ChatGPT without proper, you know, compensation. And a big part of that lawsuit was that the New York Times says that OpenAI and Microsoft didn't try to come to us to, you know, strike a deal to kind of pay for this stuff. And, and OpenAI and Microsoft, you know, they say they did, but it's this whole thing. The reality is that New York Times probably feels they weren't being compensated correctly. I'm very curious about the terms of this deal because I think it's an open question of if you're a publisher, what is a fair price to have your content surfaced in ChatGPT or used to train a chatbot? I don't really think we know. I think, you know, it's a lot of guesses right now.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  I'm guessing the New York Times got a pretty good price for this because this is the first company that they've licensed their content to. And this is also the first publisher that Amazon has licensed content from, at least publicly. So this feels like a big deal.

• 3:50Kirsten Korosec?

  You know, you make a really good point in terms of terms of the deal because if some of the terms of this deal, but also OpenAI's previous deals with Washington Post and The Guardian and News Corp, if these terms were public, it would actually kind of put a price on what the value of original content is. And so right now, maybe the folks at OpenAI know this and the ones putting the deals together, but the public isn't aware of it. And so, you know, I guess this is my call out to every journalist to go and try and find out the terms of these deals. Because it actually is sort of important for the OpenAIs and any, any company that is like making these deals,

• 4:35Kirsten Korosec?

  but also on the content side to know what the value of this is.

• 4:39Anthony Ha?

  Well, and I think it's not just about the monetary value, but also a question of sort of how does it actually, what role does it play? And how is it presented in Alexa? Or whatever the chatbot might be? Because I think one of the dangers for any news organization, media organization is that if you just sort of are feeding more content into the machine, but it's sort of undifferentiated and no one knows that the news that they're hearing from Alexa is coming from the New York Times, then like you are really, really, really devaluing the, the content that you're putting out. And so, I mean, Amazon, I think, has said that it will link to, you know, New York Times content when relevant. That seems like a, an idea that has a lot of wiggle room in it.

• 5:24Anthony Ha?

  And sort of a question of like, how, you know, how is it presented? Who's actually going to follow those links? But I do think that that is just an important precedent to say that. I think, I think that in early versions of, you know, in chat GPT, right? Like it becomes a sort of black box that you get information from. And it's just like, hey, here's this news. We're not going to tell you like who reported this, where it comes from, how you can verify it. And so just the disestablishing this precedent of like, hey, we're going to tell you where it comes from is really important and somewhat hopeful.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, especially, you know, with Alexa or these other voice assistants, obviously like there's no links, like, like there's no chance for pushing it out there. I think that there's been a couple of different ideas that have been like floated around, like, you know, terms of some of these deals that have leaked where it's like, in some cases, they pay them like, you know, a publisher $5 million a year to just use their stuff, which one way to do it. I think another way that seems a lot more promising for like the future of publishers on the internet is that you get paid kind of a rate per reference, which is, I think there's been some reporting that some AI labs have been paying out things in that way. Obviously, it's whether that's a fair rate that they're getting is an open question.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  But like, say you get, I don't know, a couple of cents per reference or something. And maybe that is actually a better kind of business model, perhaps, as opposed to. You know, just linking out to places because if people aren't following the links anymore. I mean, that's an open question, but it's really interesting to see these different business models that could be emerging, perhaps, I mean, optimistically, I tend to be optimistic. It seems like it could be a better one potentially if they can actually pay fair wages per reference.

• 7:11Kirsten Korosec?

  But

• 7:12Anthony Ha?

  That's These chatbots are basically going to destroy us, which I don't think, I think there's definitely a scenario where that pays out, but like, that is why, I mean, again, why it's important to figure out, like, I hope these companies are getting a ton of money and are also negotiating a bunch of other things that aren't just about the revenue value, because you want the Washington Post, the New York Times tech crunch to still sort of exist as independent entities and not just content farms for the chatbots.

• 7:36Kirsten Korosec?

  Oh geez, yeah, that's a terrible dystopian idea, so let's not do that.

• 7:42Anthony Ha?

  I concur.

• 7:43Kirsten Korosec?

  Okay, well, shifting to Elon Musk, specifically Neuralink. Neuralink raised $600 million at a $9 billion valuation. Anthony, tell me why this matters. Why should we care? Because, I mean, Neuralink has obviously raised a bunch in the past. This is a big valuation, but looking beyond the numbers.

• 8:07Anthony Ha?

  Well, so there's the technology story, which is just like, wow, like this idea, right? That part of the reason people are fascinated by Neuralink is because it's such an incredible idea that you could basically, you know, use brain implants and people who have various, you know, disabilities or limitations would be able to control technology using their brain signals. And so this is sort of in part validation of that. It's also sort of an Elon Musk story, which I know we'll talk about more later on, but, you know, this is one of his many different companies. I'm sure that part of the discussions around this investment were a question of like, hey, how involved is Elon going to be? Is he like still busy in Washington or is he actually spending time on this company? And so I think it's also an opportunity to just talk a little bit about kind of where Neuralink is now.

• 8:50Anthony Ha?

  I mean, it has been three patients, volunteers, we should say, have gotten the implant so far. There's been a video recently that people have been talking about where you could actually see the patient, you know, using the implant to edit and narrate the video. So it's like, there are like these promising signs, but it's also like super, super early. And I think there's also a question of like, Is this, you know, so it's again $600 million at a $9 billion valuation according to Semaphore. This is not something the company has confirmed yet. Is this because, yes, this is definitely happening? Or is it sort of a bet that this is cool technology plus Elon Musk? Got to go somewhere.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that there's also just a lot more interest in kind of these neural interfaces now that AI has come about. Because people think that, okay, well, this is combining these kind of brain implants with AI. There might be some way to really move us beyond the world where we're just touching our screens and like looking straight into our screens all the time. I will say that there's been some more deals in this space recently. Neuralink competitor, Synchron, which is a lesser known one. They also have like a dozen people who have these implants in their brains. They announced earlier this month they're working with Apple to kind of let their brain interfaces work with Apple devices through some of Apple's accessibility settings.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  And, you know, it'll let you control your iPhone or your iPad just kind of with your thoughts. And I think it's just kind of, there's more activity in this space than we've seen in a long time. Although all of it still feels so far out. Like, I still feel like I'm not going to put a chip in my brain in the next like decade or two, you know?

• 10:30Kirsten Korosec?

  But next decade, you will maybe put, is that what you're saying? Like, not this decade, but next decade, I might be open to putting a chip into my brain.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, anything goes next decade, that's fine.

• 10:40Anthony Ha?

  When 2035 disrupts, someone's going to get the chip implanted on stage.

• 10:45Kirsten Korosec?

  100%. It might even happen earlier. I know that I kicked this whole thing off by saying like, looking beyond the numbers. But I do think it's relevant to mention that the last round that Neuralink had was 43 million. And that was just two, like, less than two years ago. So obviously that is a huge uptick. And I think reflective of, well, potentially reflective of the progress that they've made and that investors are seeing, but also just generally more vibe oriented, excitement and interest in sort of this kind of tech. And then the other thing is, is that I thought that the Apple deal with the Neuralink competitor is interesting because my understanding was it wasn't a company creating its own device, but working with an existing hardware or tech company.

• 11:30Kirsten Korosec?

  That, to me, is going to be an interesting differentiator between companies, which is, do you make your own interactive device? Or do you make it so that it can work with? Existing devices that are out on the market today.

• 11:44Anthony Ha?

  Right, because you would think that if you wanted just this to be accessible to the most people in the most circumstances, the more compatibility it has with a variety of devices, the better it could be. But at the same time, I don't think any of us on the show is an expert on neuroscience, but I would imagine that creating that interface is really tough. And so probably not something that's easy to do with off-the-shelf hardware at the same time.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, on the topic of these neural devices, I think that, like I said, I think they still feel so far away. But there are some kind of neural technologies that are less invasive that feel like they could be a big thing much sooner. Meta showed off with its Orion glasses, like this neural wristband that detects signals that you're sending to your hand, and it will kind of help you control the glasses. And this is a prototype, and they're not going to sell these for a while. But that feels like, oh, I can put it on my wrist. I don't have to inject it in my brain. I'm so much more likely to do that. And, you know, I can take it off. That's great.

• 12:43Anthony Ha?

  Well, yeah, I think there's an important distinction between like, the idea of the brain implant probably sounds more appealing if, again, you've got medical issues, disabilities, where like, this could actually make a huge difference. I suspect for the able-bodied who can type on a keyboard, who can use a screen, something that's a little less invasive is more appealing.

• 13:03Kirsten Korosec?

  Although, do you all remember this? As someone who's followed and covered Tesla for years, there have been people who have taken, like, essentially, there used to be these little cards, they look like little credit cards, that you could put up against the vehicle and then open the vehicle, and then like, essentially taking that code and then implanting it into their arm, so that they could open up their Tesla. So there are people, I'm just saying that there are people out there.

• 13:29Anthony Ha?

  I do remember this.

• 13:31Kirsten Korosec?

  There are. For the audience, Anthony is covering his face with his hands right now as he remembers this. But there are, there are people out.

• 13:38Anthony Ha?

  And the color is draining out of my face.

• 13:40Kirsten Korosec?

  There are people out there who absolutely will embrace implanting something in their body to be an early adopter, if you will, to tech. But we have to move on. After the break, we are going to come back and talk about is Elon leaving Doge or not, and Nvidia earnings.

• 14:01Anthony Ha?

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• 14:38Speaker 02

  So in case you haven't had enough Elon, we're back with more Elon because he's omnipresent. Elon is stepping down as US Special Government Employee and Head of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. That's what he posted on X on Wednesday. And there's been some reporting around this that he's stepping back. He's been doing a lot of interviews with media, but I thought the media was fake, according to him. So this is all very confusing. Kirsten, I'd love if you could help us kind of break down whether Elon is really stepping back from DOGE and what this means.

• 15:12Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, okay. With anything that has to do with Elon Musk is always going to be complicated. But I will say this. First of all, he has always had a very complicated relationship with the press, a very much on his end, love-hate relationship with wanting validation and the mic, but being upset when maybe the coverage isn't exactly what he wants. So to me, it's not surprising, in spite of all this criticism of the press that he's doing interviews right now. Like, this is very much on-brand and tracks with his actions in the past. Whether he is stepping down from DOGE, I think actually he is, but I don't think that it's necessarily something he wanted. So my prediction, which granted, I could be completely wrong here,

• 15:57Kirsten Korosec?

  is that he will 100% try to keep his hand or foot or whatever he can in the White House with that kind of influence. Because in his view, I think he hopes it will pay off. But interestingly enough, I think what he's come to realize is that you're not going to control everything that happens within the White House and the inner circle surrounding President Trump. And you may be the wealthiest.

• 16:26Kirsten Korosec?

  Person in the world, at least on paper, but that doesn't mean you're going to get whatever you want. And so a lot of people have predicted from the very beginning that this was going to be a relationship that would falter. Now, so far, he hasn't gone specifically after Trump, and I don't, I think he'll probably try not to, but he is 100% now shown his disappointment. And also in some bills that will hurt some of his businesses. Specifically Tesla's energy business is at real risk from the quote unquote, you know, some of the, some of the, the big, beautiful bill that's being put out there because some of the government incentives

• 17:07Kirsten Korosec?

  and things that have helped support and propel that business would disappear.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think what you're saying about kind of like he can't control everything in the government and that is frustrating to him. I think that tracks with what we've seen in the last couple of weeks. Like I think in the last couple of weeks, yeah, we saw this, the House passed this big, beautiful bill, so to speak, this big spending bill and, you know, Elon's whole point of being there is that he's supposed to decrease government spending. And then there's also reporting that Elon tried to block Sam Altman's, you know, big AI deal in the Middle East. And we saw, you know, all these big tech executives were in Saudi Arabia and the UAE earlier this month and Elon failed to block that, you know, even with his influence. And I think that we're just seeing that Elon is

• 17:54Speaker 02

  really used to controlling 100% of his companies and coming in and just, you know, gutting the place and really getting into all the nitty gritty of everything. And the US government is more complicated than that in some ways. And it's not a place you can just do that.

• 18:10Kirsten Korosec?

  It's not a startup.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:11Kirsten Korosec?

  And I don't know if you, I don't know if you saw some coverage, actually a tweet that turned into like a posting of a diary of a Silicon Valley advisor who lasted at Doge for 55 days. And he gives his insight onto it. We wrote about it and it was really interesting. But again, it gives this insight into, oh, wow, like, yes, it's messy and it's sort of Of big, you know, in in particular, in this case, it was this person was at the VA. But it all actually also seems to work and wow, there seems to be rules and hmm, maybe maybe this does kind of work. And like, I think there's this mindset around bureaucracy that obviously you don't want to waste money.

• 18:56Kirsten Korosec?

  Obviously, you want things to be efficient, but not necessarily. It doesn't necessarily work to run it like a startup. And I think that that's something that Elon and others came in thinking that they could make it that way. And it's too big and there's too many pieces for you'd be able to flip a switch and to do that. So I think that he did have a lot of disappointment around that. In particular, while the White House does say that this big, beautiful bill does not add to the deficit. Essentially, every economist out there says it does to the tune of $3 trillion. So, you know, that goes against what his aim was.

• 19:36Kirsten Korosec?

  And so, you know, I think he's very much publicly disappointed on that front on an ideological sense. But then also I thought think that he was very much hoping to make some inroads that would support his specific businesses. And actually, the reality is his focus on politics has sort of hurt his businesses more than anything else.

• 19:55Anthony Ha?

  Right, the part of him pulling back is disappointment with what's happened with him in government. And all but also that there's been this tremendous pressure, both publicly and I suspect privately of like, he's doing enormous reputational damage to to all of his companies, but especially the Tesla. There have been all these Tesla protests. And I mean, I think one thing that's sort of paradoxical about this is that I do actually believe that he is disappointed with how a lot of his work in government has turned out. But I think it's also undisputably true that he and his allies have like fundamentally reshaped the federal government. And and maybe not to the extent they want, but like a lot of the federal government has basically been dismantled. But like, even if everyone he's brought into the federal government sort of leaves in the next six months, all the programs kind of go back to where they were like.

• 20:39Anthony Ha?

  These are people who have left the public sector and are probably not coming back. Like, these are, you know, research programs that you can't just stop and start again. So maybe he's like trying to be like, OK, we can just go back to the way things were. But like, I don't think that's actually doable.

• 20:54Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I don't think we're going to go back to the way things were. And I do think, you know, for those who might be sort of questioning whether Elon's really actually leaving, I think it's worth noting that today, we record on Thursday, Steve Davis, who has been a longtime fixer, sort of right hand of Elon, is also reportedly leaving Doge. And when his circle, the people in his orbit, start leaving too, that is an important note because it just, it proves, it provides more evidence that he really is actually stepping back. When he's pulling his people back, that is indicative of what's really happening.

• 21:36Kirsten Korosec?

  But to your point, the damage or the changes have been done, right? So to me, what I'm really going to be focused on is how this, the changes that they made, how does it affect the tech world, particularly around things like how the loan program worked, how innovation-focused grants will work, because a lot of those programs dismantled, and frankly, a lot of startups and up and coming businesses benefited from that. So in the tech world, it does matter. Like, when you take away those systems, bureaucratic as they may be, there may be an eventual effect to even the startup world down the line.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's really interesting that we're seeing Elon pull away from Trump at this time, kind of at a world where the federal government's relationship with Silicon Valley is just getting really tense, is I think the best way that I can describe it. And I think this is a great point to bring up Nvidia, which just had their earnings earlier this week. And Nvidia's relationship with the federal government is very tense right now. I would love if we could kind of, you know, wrap up what happened in earnings. I mean, I think there was kind of two stories from this earnings. And there's the one that Nvidia wanted to tell, and there was... The actual numbers, and I think that both are really interesting. The actual numbers was that Nvidia had an incredible quarter. Nvidia's stock shot up 6% this week.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  In the last quarter, their revenue rose 69%. Their free cash flow soared 75%. Nvidia projected revenue would rise 50% in the next quarter. I mean, they are still on this just like historic run right now, like, and nothing seems to be stopping them. And at the same time, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, goes on Bloomberg TV. He goes on CNBC. He goes on all of like the media outlets that you're supposed to go on as a CEO to get your message across. And he says, "The loss of our China business is killing us. This is hurting American innovation. This is devastating." And it just doesn't really line up with the numbers.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Like, it is not hurting their business as much as they think it's gonna be. Like, they're making tens of billions of dollars. They're making more money than almost anyone is. And it's just really hard to square that with the idea that they are somehow being unfairly treated and can't run their business.

• 23:59Anthony Ha?

  I think it's very funny, like, the very rare instances when these, you know, public companies, especially public tech companies, have an incentive to kind of downplay their business. I think the other context would be like in an antitrust trial. It's something like, "Oh, we're not dominant. We, there are so many competitors, they're doing great." And so it's like interesting here just to think about, oh, like, this is one situation where normally any of the earnings, you want to be like, "These, this is incredible. It's just, everything's great." But because we want to kind of put some pressure on a policy perspective, we're actually gonna pretend that they're not that great.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Right. I think that there's a broader point that Jensen Huang tries to make that I think is debatable, where he says that, you know, like, we need to increase America's influence in AI, in chips. And, and I think that there's been broadly a narrative that, you know, the rise of like DeepSeek and the rise of these Chinese AI companies that we need to lead on AI. We need to have our, America's influence spread throughout the whole world and have the best models. And I think Jensen Huang has tried to kind of massage that argument to say, "This applies to chips too. We need American chips to be fueling the revolution." And I just don't quite understand that in the same way.

• 25:09Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. Do you think that like the tale of two sort of earnings that are happening here in Jensen's comments and specifically with some of these interviews, is he trying to hedge a bit? Meaning he is seeing what the effect will be a year from now and he's just signaling to investors so that it is digested and then there, you know, it will be less of, let's say, a stock drop when this time next year, when the results aren't quite as good and that, you know, it's predictive in nature and we're forecasting this and just be prepared and, you know, just getting all investors on board so that when it isn't as bad, then they see another bump. Like is this, does this feel

• 25:50Kirsten Korosec?

  strategic to you? Or does this feel actually like he is speaking from the heart? This is a like existential thing?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  I think it's tough to say. I think that his comments feel very politically motivated. Like I think that, you know, in these interviews, Jensen Huang, he is like very pro-Trump right now. Like, like Jensen Huang, like he goes to meet with Trump, you know, semi-frequently. He praises Trump's, you know, policies in a lot of ways, but this is like the one thing that he really pushes on and it seems like he's trying to get Trump to really just kind of lighten these chip export restrictions that are somehow hurting Nvidia. I don't exactly see how the China business makes it so that Nvidia can't be successful. The demand in America for Nvidia's chips are so extreme right now that it is really

• 26:37Speaker 02

  just, it's hard to imagine a world where Nvidia's chips aren't a hot commodity, you know, in the next five to 10 years, but it's hard to say.

• 26:46Anthony Ha?

  It does also seem to speak to, I mean, both this and the Elon discussion we were having earlier that like, you know, not everyone, but the large portions of Silicon Valley kind of lined up behind Trump either before the election or sort of leading up to the inauguration. And there was this feeling of like, oh, this is going to be a great time for tech. This is going to be a great time for Silicon Valley. And

• 27:09Anthony Ha?

  There's been, I think, a lot of illustration in the last few months that there are elements of his ideology and agenda that do line up with the sort of Silicon Valley agenda around deregulation, pulling back on things like AI safety. And then there's a lot of things, particularly around tariffs and protectionism, that do not line up at all.

• 27:26Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, exactly. And I think that there is the kind of, we're at the find out stage, or Silicon Valley is at the find out stage of this, which is, we thought that by aligning ourselves, we would have more influence than we do. And now there's an adjustment period. Before we close the show, Max, I'm going to throw it to you because TC Sessions AI event is coming up. It's a pretty awesome lineup. And are you going to be on stage doing any interviews? Because this is just happening next week. For anyone in the audience who's listening in, this is going to be in the Bay Area. Absolutely like something not to miss, if only to see Maxwell on stage.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. So I'm going to be doing some interviews in Berkeley next week at TechCrunch Sessions AI. This should be fun. We're going to have Anthropics co-founder and chief scientist Jared Kaplan there. I'm going to be interviewing him. We're going to have executives from Google DeepMind, from Amazon's AGI Lab. We're going to have executives from OpenAI there. This is definitely going to be like, you know, some pretty heavy hitters at this event. And TechCrunch's journalists are going to be on stage kind of pressing them on questions. I think the thing we really want to find out with this event is just where is AI going in the next six months? And how can you position yourself as a startup, as an investor, as someone who is just existing

• 28:51Speaker 02

  in the world of AI tools to go with the flow in this next six months and kind of not get left behind? So yeah, it should be a fun event.

• 28:59Anthony Ha?

  And what's the date?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  June 5.

• 29:02Kirsten Korosec?

  You got that question right. Hundred percent on the quiz today. All right, well, we are out of time, but Equity will be back next week. Until then, you can find Equity under the handle at EquityPod on X and Threads.

• 29:18Speaker 03

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