Elon Musk and Sam Altman are basically in a rap battle

Tensions are running high in the AI world this week after Elon Musk made a staggering $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI, a move that would mark one of the largest tech acquisitions in history – if it actually happens. Sam Altman shut the notion down fast, even going so far as to fire back with a post suggesting he’d buy X for a tenth of the price. But Musk’s bid itself does raise questions about potential roadblocks ahead for OpenAI. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff and Anthony Ha are breaking down the offer, the response, and what it means for the AI company’s future, plus other headlines from the week. Listen to the full episode to hear about: What you missed from the Paris AI Action Summit: who’s backing global AI opportunity and who’s calling it a missed opportunity. BNPL startup Tabby’s massive raise and $3.3 billion valuation, as well as its IPO ambitions in a turbulent fintech market. Archer Aviation’s $300 million boost, and why its eVTOL development is leaning into defense. Equity will be back with a new interview on Wednesday, 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.

• 0:16Kirsten Korosec?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, February 14th. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. I'm Kirsten Korosec, Transportation Editor at TechCrunch.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  I'm Max Zep, Senior Reporter at TechCrunch.

• 0:34Anthony Ha?

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

• 0:37Kirsten Korosec?

  All right, we're all here. Max, I thought of you the other day because it was AI-related, of course. And I saw that the Reuters AI case has been settled. Have you been following that case at all?

• 0:49Speaker 02

  First off, I'm really devastated to hear that my name is just associated with AI chatbots now. But yes, I did hear about it. So we haven't written about this, but Thomson Reuters won an AI copyright lawsuit against a legal AI startup. And this is a big deal in some ways because it's one of the first AI copyright lawsuits where, you know, an AI system was basically found guilty for, you know, using someone else's copyrighted material. But it doesn't use generative AI systems, which is a key distinction. So it doesn't necessarily have huge implications for the New York Times case, that OpenAI's case against New York Times, you know, Meta's case with book authors.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  So we'll still have to see how those play out, but it's kind of a slight distinction there, but an important one between, you know, simple AI systems and these large language models.

• 1:44Anthony Ha?

  Max, my understanding from reading about the case was that it's not generative AI, but it does involve sort of the definition of fair use that a lot of the generative AI companies are using. So it's not, so they're not exactly the same thing, but this might set some precedent.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  I think that's what everyone's kind of wondering and that's what legal scholars are kind of batting back and forth right now. The key thing about the generative AI versus AI with fair use is that, you know, the generative AI companies are claiming that LLMs transform like this, you know, training data that they uptake into something new, whereas these more traditional AI systems kind of just spit them back out. So I think that that's really kind of the argument that we're going to see in the next couple court cases. But, I mean, it remains to be seen. This is definitely a win in the right direction for copyright holders, though.

• 2:35Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, the good news is for all of our listeners that we're going to talk about AI several more times in the show. But first, let's do a rundown of the show today. We have deals of the week from buy now, pay later startup Tabby and Archer Aviation's recent $300 million raise. And then we're going to get into our two themes, which will cover Elon's bid to buy OpenAI and the Paris AI Action Summit. See, I promised AI was back in the show. First up, Anthony, talk to me about Tabby. Really interesting buy now, pay later company.

• 3:10Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, that's right. Tabby raised $160 million at a $3.3 billion valuation. It's one of those companies where I see the headline and I feel embarrassed because I'm like, how have I never heard of this company before? But as you said, Kirsten, it's a buy now, pay later company headquartered in Saudi Arabia and I think is sort of an indication of the potential that, you know, I guess is now being realized, but also that investors see for buy now, pay later in the Middle East. It's, I guess, part of the argument for why it's particularly promising in regions in sort of the developing world is that there's not necessarily the same level of credit card penetration. And so basically

• 3:53Anthony Ha?

  the different form of credit, right? And a different way to sort of make these kinds of purchases. Whereas, I mean, I think there's a lot of excitement about buy now, pay later in the US, but also I think some of the companies have had a rockier road. So yeah, I mean, I think it's just kind of exciting to see the opportunities that are kind of popping up in the Middle East.

• 4:12Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, fintech is so interesting in terms of a marketplace in places like South America, Africa, and other places where there isn't necessarily the same banking system set up. So It just seems like the buy now, pay later idea and the marketplace is so much stronger in areas like the Middle East. You know, this is one of those moments where we want to tap our senior reporter, Mary Ann, over here because she is like the fintech master. But I'm wondering if you're seeing any promise or activity in the buy now, pay later market in North America?

• 4:51Kirsten Korosec?

  Or if this deal is indicative of more strength in sort of the Middle East and in other emerging markets?

• 5:01Anthony Ha?

  I mean, it seems like on just like a high level, my sense of it is that there's certainly a lot of activity. There are companies that are that are raising, that are seeing some success, but also have maybe kind of overextended themselves a little bit in North America. And so I'm always a little hesitant to get too authoritative about, you know, exactly how things are playing out.

• 5:20Kirsten Korosec?

  Make a declaration, Anthony. Come on, you can do it.

• 5:22Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, so I don't know that it's comparative, but certainly like it makes sense to me that maybe some of the challenges that companies are facing in the US, just because the US is so weird on so in so many ways right now, that there might be a slightly smoother path in other regions.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Anthony, I mean, I'm always skeptical of companies that want to take your money and give you a little bit of free money in the short term. But I'm curious kind of what you're seeing more broadly. You know, Mary Ann just did a great interview with Shiel Monat, a VC in the fintech space. And I'm curious kind of what you're seeing for, you know, Klarna, Deal and Stripe and these bigger fintech players in terms of, you know, IPOs or valuation raises in the next year.

• 6:07Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm doing my best to put on my Mary Ann hat right now. And the sense I get is sort of of like cautious optimism that, again, that there's hope for more fundraises, potentially even going public. But there's definitely like issues, right? And I thought the interview with Shiel was great. Obviously, Shiel, I think it has a little bit of an interest in getting people excited about fintech. And I think one sign of just sort of the uncertainty is you are seeing these companies also trying to figure out where. The other opportunities are, I mean, with Stripe, which is a slightly different company. But, you know, because it's so ubiquitous as a payments company online, they have to figure out what the next big thing is. And so they're moving into crypto. And, you know, I don't know that that's necessarily a bad move,

• 6:51Anthony Ha?

  but it's, I think, you see them kind of hitting what I think is maybe like a plateau with their existing business models. And then be like, okay, well, in order to justify the valuation of the next raise, or to justify a great valuation going public, or a great market cap going public, we have to figure out more than that. And I should mention, by the way, that, you know, we've been talking about Tabby as a buy now, pay later company, which it started out as, I think it still is primarily, but it has been moving into other fintech services as well.

• 7:16Kirsten Korosec?

  That is interesting and is like the perfect segue, even though these two companies have literally nothing to do with each other, except for this commonality of finding new products or new areas in order to raise money and also get customers. And I'm talking about Archer Aviation. This is a company that is developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. And if one of our former colleagues was here, Devin, who's no longer at TechCrunch, would say it's helicopter, but it's not. And this is a company that just raised $300 million round from BlackRock and Wellington. But the reason for raising that money is pretty interesting

• 7:57Kirsten Korosec?

  and really gets down to that dual use trend that we're hearing so much about.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  So Kirsten, I'm just really curious, you know, as someone who's not super familiar in the space, I will say that this does look like a helicopter, but also I'm not familiar with the dual use kind of thing here. I mean, wasn't this company, you know, making like consumer facing vehicles before? Like, what's going on here?

• 8:23Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. So first of all, EV toll market, which is the acronym for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, is an emerging market. All of these companies are still in the process of getting their type one certification from the FAA. So there's a lot to be said about this. So, you know, this is not necessarily companies that are giving rides to anyone. But Archer did start as, and it's, it's original core mission was electric aviation startup.

• 8:53Kirsten Korosec?

  To develop air taxis. So imagine these vertiports on top of buildings and you know, you're flying in between and this sort of like cutting out traffic and that was the original vision. But what's happened here is they've been building out some defense applications. And this piece, this, this 300 million is very much connected to that. So the latest round of funding is going to go towards this project with Andrell and support scaling production at Archer's Georgia factory. And a big piece of it is doing this hybrid, so non-electric, all-electric VTOL for defense purposes. So you're seeing what's

• 9:33Kirsten Korosec?

  happening, I think, actually, all around the D tech space, but specifically in future of flight and autonomous vehicles, turning to the DOD for opportunities as another revenue stream because a lot of, in a lot of cases, they're pretty far off from commercialization.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  And I mean, I think we've been talking a lot, like every week about, you know, tech companies turning to defense for new sources of revenue. And, and I keep asking the same question, but I think it's a good one that's worth digging into. It's like, is this because of the Trump administration coming in, wanting to ramp up some sort of defense spending? Or is this just a broader trend that's going on in the EV space right now?

• 10:16Kirsten Korosec?

  I think it's a broader trend that is now being augmented or accelerated because of the Trump administration and quite frankly, a lot of Silicon Valley players that have a much larger platform and connections to the Trump administration who were already sort of on this road. So I think we're seeing it in particular in areas where there is no present day revenue stream.

• 10:45Kirsten Korosec?

  And there is absolutely a guaranteed need for more capital in order to get that tech to commercialization. And the two areas that I am, you know, most embedded in is going to be in future of flight and also autonomous vehicles. But you're seeing in space as well, which I'm, I'm not as deeply informed about, but certainly our coverage shows that. So we'll see, you know, for instance, Archers rivals in the space like Joby Aviation and Beta Technologies also have military contracts to test their aircraft for surveillance, logistics and reconnaissance missions. And this is stuff that's been happening long before, you know, Trump was reelected.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Do you think that defense has become just less of a taboo in Silicon Valley in recent years?

• 11:30Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. And by the way, I just saw like, I see Anthony nodding along like, yeah, in all the years I've been covering tech, Anthony, and I want to hear your take just, just generally speaking, because you've been covering tech as long as I have. To me, the last two years is so wildly different from where people's comfort level is. Like, would you agree with that?

• 11:53Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a little bit of a challenge to talk about because I think it's this overlapping Venn diagram of things where it's related to Trump, of course, and sort of this rightward swing in Silicon Valley. But it's also just been, I think, a number of founders, maybe are Trump adjacent or Trump curious, but just in general have sort of kind of come out and said, hey, like, I think that defense is a valid area for, you know, startups to be building in. You know, I think Palantir, which again is sort of defense, but not a traditional defense company, I think was like sort of paving the way. But then Anduril and, and it seems like now there's just a whole bunch of founders kind of following in those footsteps.

• 12:31Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. And I would also say that it's a reflection of our modern world, which is there wasn't that long ago that, you know, defense felt more like guns and ammunition. And that, that is so, so different now. It's software. It's cybersecurity. It's certainly AI. And there's all sorts of other deep tech that we're seeing. Here's a funny story just to reflect how much it's changed. I remember probably nine years ago, I was at this. Kind of what I would describe as like the Kitty Hawk of self-driving vehicles event, and it was a little bit of a hobbyist event. And people were out at Thunderhill Racing in California, trying to get vehicles around the track autonomously.

• 13:16Kirsten Korosec?

  And it was a bunch of hobbyists, but also kind of big companies were there. It was really interesting. And I met this guy and he was kind of wandering around and I was like, oh, what are you doing? And he's like, yeah, I'm with Incutel. And I'm like, oh, interesting. And so Incutel, of course, is the venture arm of the CIA. And I'm like, oh, you finding anything interesting? And he's like, yeah, but you know, not everyone really wants to talk to me right now. And that is sharply different than what is happening today, where people are absolutely interested in talking to Incutel and the Department of Defense. And it just reflects, I think, our changing world, but absolutely accelerated by the Trump administration.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think that, you know, this ties into something we're going to talk about later on the show with just kind of changing values in the AI space, which I'm excited to dig into later.

• 14:08Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah. And when we get back from the break, we are going to dig into that OpenAI Elon tussle. I don't know, can we call it a tussle? And also an update on what happened at the Paris AI Action Summit.

• 14:25Anthony Ha?

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• 15:01Kirsten Korosec?

  It feels very like aggressive what's happening with Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Max, please catch us up on the latest.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know, maybe like people have been comparing it to like Kendrick and Drake. It's like beef, like I wouldn't quite call that like a tussle. It's kind of like a, like a diss track, like, you know, rap battle, sort of, I would say. So basically Elon Musk just offered nearly a hundred billion dollars to buy OpenAI's nonprofit governing entity. He is planning to make this kind of offer, it's funded partially by XAI and he's got some outside investors. Do they have a hundred billion dollars? I think that's kind of remains to be seen.

• 15:45Kirsten Korosec?

  Sure, why not? Why not?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, whatever, you know, we're gonna build a $500 billion data center in Arizona to, you know, power OpenAI's, you know, AI. Let's also just throw out a hundred billion dollar bids to buy it. Who knows where this money is coming from? Does it exist? Sure. So, you know, you know, here's why it matters. Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI. He's also suing them, saying that they're falling back on their mission. And the reason he did this, which Kyle Wiggers and I wrote an in-depth article about, the reason he, he gave this offer was basically to, you know, mess up OpenAI's for-profit conversion. OpenAI is trying to basically spin out its for-profit arm into its own company. That's not under the control of this nonprofit.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  This is gonna allow it to one day go public. This is kind of a crucial thing for someone raising as much money as OpenAI. And by Elon Musk offering a hundred billion dollars for the nonprofit, he's kind of set a market price in a certain way for what this is worth. And now OpenAI is going to have to pay the nonprofit a certain amount of money, basically to buy its for-profit assets, the controlling shares back from it. And it just made it way more expensive. So, so it basically is gonna open the door to, you know, all of these legal challenges in the future. But really, this is just like a complicated legal setup for the next stage of the battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  And Anthony, I'm curious, kind of you've covered these guys for a long time. I mean, does this feel like par for the course or does it feel like they're ramping up right now?

• 17:22Anthony Ha?

  I mean, it seems like an escalation and interesting to see the kind of back and forth between them because again, I'm sorry that like it just feels like we just say Trump and AI over and over again in this episode, but like, you know, there was also this New York Times story about how Matthew, I think alluded to the Stargate project. Is that what it's called?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:40Anthony Ha?

  And, you know, that he's in some ways kind of reportedly done an end run around Musk to kind of get federal support for this data center project. And so it seems like they're just competing on a lot of different fronts right now. And, and OpenAI is kind of like the core of that disagreement. I mean, you know, again, if we tried to give the full backstory, that would be just be an episode on its own. But like, you know, one of the things that is relevant is the fact that XAI, I think is pretty transparently was founded just because Musk was not happy about the direction of OpenAI and was like, I'm going to start my own competitor to, to OpenAI. And if it's okay to sort of answer a question with a question mask, I think one of the things I wanted to ask you was, and that I've been trying to get an answer from other people about is, it makes sense for Musk to do this

• 18:24Anthony Ha?

  as sort of to throw a wrench in the for-profit conversion process, but he also has made a takeover offer, which, you know, again, who knows about exactly the, the funding of it, but is there a significant chance that this ends with Musk in control of OpenAI again?

• 18:41Speaker 02

  I mean, everyone I've talked to basically has said that that's not going to happen. I mean, Sam Altman publicly rejected the offer immediately and kind of took it as a chance to dunk on Elon. OpenAI's board chair basically went on stage with the Wall Street Journal and said, we're not for sale. So I don't think that it's very likely that this happens. I think it was honestly more so kind of this legal, legal footwork that Elon is kind of known for to really just mess with their conversion. That said, the last takeover bid that he submitted was for Twitter. And we all know how that ended up. If you've been on X, you can see that it is very Elon centric now. But Kirsten, I wanted

• 19:21Speaker 02

  to ask you just, I mean, you've covered a lot of the kind of Tesla governance battles over the years. And, I mean, Elon is so good at these kinds of legal Battles and just tripping people up. And do you feel like he has gotten better at it over the years? Or is he just

• 19:40Kirsten Korosec?

  Oh, yes, 100%.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Team of lawyers?

• 19:42Kirsten Korosec?

  No, he doesn't necessarily have a super team of lawyers. I mean, one of his main lawyers, Alex Spiro, has been very successful. But I would say that, first of all, I have to say, absolutely love the fact, total nerd alert, that like Sam Altman's response was just to move the decimal point and offer 9.74 billion for Twitter, which reminder Elon bought Twitter. I think it was for about $44 billion. So anyway, that made me, made me laugh. Elon's playbook in general and what people need to understand, and I think that people are understanding it more than ever now, is that I have never encountered, in all my years of reporting, and I've interviewed Elon in group press conference settings and

• 20:23Kirsten Korosec?

  at least once or maybe twice, just one on one, someone who enjoys risk more than anyone I've ever encountered. I mean, he just doesn't, he's just not risk averse. Trump is actually quite similar. And the, I think it was either Dan Primack on Axios or Mike Allen, but kind of talked about maximalist masculinity as like this trademark that has worked very well, which is just going the place where no one would normally go and kind of trying to see if they can call people's bluff. He has been very successful on that in terms of governance of Tesla and also other deals. Whether he has any, and also Twitter, but he had some inroads and already an existing

• 21:08Kirsten Korosec?

  platform or, you know, audience on Twitter and quite a bit of sway. I don't really see that with OpenAI. He would have to get quite a few people with power and backers that have invested in OpenAI to come to him for that deal to happen. So I don't really see it as probable at all. But I would say that with other companies, he's been quite successful with these sort of very open forums of declaring that he will indeed buy something.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think this context here is that, you know, the thing Elon is really says he's mad about is that OpenAI has fallen back on its promise to open source, you know, all of its code and just be a free and transparent AI nonprofit, which is what it was founded to do. But of course, it's come a long way since then. And I feel like these lofty missions at tech companies, it's a story we've just heard over again. It's just at Google, you know, at Facebook. It's like, yes, it starts out with this bunch of kids who want to do something great for the world. And then boom, now you're offered $100 billion for your company and just things change.

• 22:15Kirsten Korosec?

  It changes. It changes. And speaking of changes, by the way, next theme I want to kind of get into is we had some folks on the ground in Paris at the AI Action Summit, and it used to be focused all about safety. Now it's all about action and opportunity. It seemed like a pretty big shift. I don't know, like Max, have you been, have you followed this summit in in previous years? And is this like a sudden dramatic change or has this been kind of like creeping towards this for a while?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I talked to some people who were at the summit. I think that the gist is that this was supposed to be called the AI Safety Summit. And then they changed the name to the AI Action Summit to be less negative, you know? And and I think that that's just really representative of the content of it. You know, J D Vance said on stage there that he didn't want to talk about AI safety. You want to talk about AI opportunity. And Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said, you know, we're back in the race. And that's not exactly what you think you would hear at an AI safety summit. I mean, Anthony, you covered the kind of vetoing of SB 1047, this AI safety bill. And I mean, it seems like we're just seeing a broader trend where these AI safety movements are just really dying down right now.

• 23:30Anthony Ha?

  I think that certainly you're getting a lot of different voices now. I think maybe who are a little bit louder and there's an understandable. I don't know if I agree with it, but certainly understandable pushback of like, like you said, so much of the conversation was about like, oh, like AI is exciting, but it's this really dangerous technology and sort of how do we control it? How do we put guardrails around it? And I think for, yeah, it seems like a whole variety of reasons, the, the conversation has moved on a little bit from that. I mean, we'll see whether or not that turns out well for, for society. And I mean, I think the other thing that was really striking to me was, you know, over the weekend before the summit itself, it just seemed like everyone was sort of putting out their own statements ahead of it. And I mean, it was interesting to go through them, but it was also a little bit of a head

• 24:11Anthony Ha?

  scratcher for me because so many of the statements were so general and so broad that I really couldn't figure out like, okay, who, who wants what, right? Like, what are the different camps here? And I'm curious, you know, Max, for you, again, answering a question with a question, but do you have a sense of like, are there schisms within the people at the summit or the different countries, the different companies at the, at the summit in terms of like different directions that they want AI to move in? Or are people largely on the same page?

• 24:42Speaker 02

  There's a large crowd of people who still want to push for this, you know, focus on the existential risks that large AI systems pose. I think there are always going to be that group of people. Anthropic CEO said that this whole large global summit was just a missed opportunity because we could have talked about safety with some global leaders here, but we didn't. Instead, we talked about how great every country's AI is. But, I mean, I think generally right now, this is the direction that things are going. Like, I think that, you know, OpenAI, which started out as this, once again, this AI safety focused lab, you know, they just announced yesterday that they are now going to start embracing quote unquote intellectual freedom

• 25:24Speaker 02

  in their AI models, which means basically that they're going to answer controversial questions in their AI chatbots and they're going to represent both viewpoints, uh, kind of this view from nowhere. And I think that just six months ago, that would have been a really unpopular decision because it would have been seen as you're going to, you know, give air to all these conspiracy theories and you're going to kind of provide information about potentially dangerous things. But now there's just this free speech kind of pivot, this deregulation pivot that we're just seeing around the world right now, but specifically when it comes to AI.

• 26:00Kirsten Korosec?

  I'm very curious to see how this plays out because it will either continue to push the needle, or I guess the bar, to a place where we never thought we would be, you know, two years ago, or something dramatic will happen that will freak enough people out that they'll sort of abruptly stop the, let's say, not anti-safety talk, but like downplaying the safety piece. So we'll see. Everything's moving so quickly. It's really shocking. I will say this. One of our reporters, Ramon Delay, was there and he had some great sort of boots-on-the-ground insight and gossip that I want to share. But also, he had some

• 26:44Kirsten Korosec?

  really good insights that he posted on LinkedIn, and I think he'll be writing a longer story about it, so keep an eye out for that. But he did say that Sam Altman was at the dinner on Monday evening with these dozens of global tech leaders and CEOs, and that's when Musk made the offer to acquire OpenAI, and he left dinner early, so I guess he saw that. Also, JD Vance apparently left dinner as the Vice Prime Minister of China was about to speak, and some people were kind of wondering if that was highlighting some tensions. I think all of this, and then what we're actually seeing play out on the public stage, is really indicative of how quickly things are moving and how specific group think is splitting.

• 27:28Kirsten Korosec?

  The ones like Anthropic CEO who are really quite concerned about safety and the ones who are saying that this will basically hurt us and the sort of American dynamism movement. Yeah.

• 27:40Anthony Ha?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, I think on the safety front, one thing that I always keep coming back to is also to remind people that I think safety itself is something that encompasses a pretty broad spectrum. And I think there are people, you know, frankly, like me, who I think I'm a lot more freaked out at the short-term risk of AI and what that means for like the labor market and things like that versus like Skynet, which, you know, I think is also worth being scared about, but maybe is not as immediate a concern. But I guess also to be fair to the side that is More like let's just the American dynamism side that like let's really pursue this with with fewer guardrails. The argument on that side that I imagine, you know, there's also obviously a bit of a fire that's been lit under them that I think you guys talked about

• 28:22Anthony Ha?

  last week or maybe the week before around deep seek and just this sense of like AI is happening as part of this broader geopolitical stage and like, yeah, it might be great if we try to, you know, keep AI super safe in the United States. But like if then China sort of wins this battle, quote unquote, if you care about sort of, again, a lot of square quotes here, but about like American values and like safety and things like that, you know, China sort of dominating and AI is not going to be a great outcome either. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I did want to at least sort of say, I think that is part of the argument here. It's not just about profit, although I think profit is a big part of it.

• 28:59Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, it's not just money and opportunity, but it's do we want to cede control to China? And is that less safe than say, you know, going full ahead without guardrails on AI development? I'm sure that we'll be back next week to talk about more on the AI front, but other things too. So thanks again to Max and Anthony for joining. We will be back next week. Until then, you can find Equity under the handle at EquityPod on X and threads.

• 29:34Rebecca Bellan?

  Equity is produced by Teresa Loconso 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.