Does your CEO have AI psychosis? Aaron Levie thinks most of them do.

The people deciding that AI can replace your job are also the ones least likely to understand what your job truly involves, according to Box founder Aaron Levie, who pointed to this as an example of "AI psychosis.” Indeed, ClickUp recently cut 22% of its workforcefor AI agents, tech layoffs in 2026 are already nearly matching all of 2025, and DuckDuckGo installs are climbing from users who want Google to stop forcing AI into search and just give them links. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into what happens when the AI-pilled and the AI-skeptical are both right at the same time, plus three deals worth knowing about and Waymo's new robotaxi hitting the road. Listen to the full episode to hear: Kirsten's first look at Waymo's new Ojai robotaxi in Phoenix, and the crew's thoughts on the company's path to profitability Cloud data storage giant Snowflake’s $6 billion five-year agreement with AWS Why Stord, the "anti-Amazon" fulfillment startup, just raised $250 million at a $3 billion valuation What OpenRouter's $113 million raise says about the picks-and-shovels layer, and how long that interest lasts How the AI agent wave is actually reshaping hiring, not just headcount Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:18 Waymo's new Ojai robotaxi 06:41 Stord raises $250M to take on Amazon fulfillment 12:46 Snowflake signs $6B deal with AWS 15:39 OpenRouter raises $113M Series B 20:07 The AI divide & anti-AI backlash 27:31 AI psychosis & how AI is reshaping headcount and hiring 37:04 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, May 29th. I'm Kirsten Corrigan, Transportation Editor here at TechCrunch, and I'm joined, as always, by our Weekend Editor, Anthony Ha, and Senior Reporter, Sean O'Kane.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Oh, hi Kirsten. Oh, hi.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  I heard you had a trip this week in something special.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did. And for listeners, Ojai is the new name of a rebranded robotaxi from Waymo, which is this kind of minivan. They branded it Ojai, spelled O-J-A-I. And it's... Have you ever been to Ojai, the town?

• 0:48Speaker 02

  I have not. I went once as a kid.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  You have? Okay, so it's like artsy, known for food, bucolic, you know, Southern California. And this is what they're calling their newest robotaxi. I kind of think it's a little bit of, you know, let's move away from the Zeeker branding and the fact that it's a stripped-down version made in China. It's not no-tech, apparently, but you know, I think they're trying to get away from that. But yeah, I got to go to Phoenix yesterday and yeah, I got a first look, first look and ride.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I mean, this vehicle is supposed to be important for a number of reasons. First off, let's take a step back and just think about the fact that Waymo has built what it's built on a bunch of Jaguar i-Paces, which remains one of the funniest things to have happened over the last decade, in my view, at least in the transportation world. But you know, this is clearly important because it's supposed to drive costs down. It's supposed to be a thing that will get them closer to eventually maybe making a profit. There are a lot of estimates out there, but we don't know numbers as far as how much cheaper this thing is to build and maintain versus an i-Pace. It gives them a bit more control over it. It's not, you know, as much of an integration headache as I think the i-Pace can be. All that's great, and I think that'll bear out as this really hits the road. But I want to know what it was

• 2:02Speaker 01

  like, because like, to me, this thing looks like it should ride better than an i-Pace. It also is kind of like... You know, it it looks a little like the grown up version of the sort of Firefly AV that Google started this all with like 10 or 15 years ago. So tell us, tell us what the ride was like.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, okay, so from the outside, it has a very friendly look to it, which is, um, I realize that I'm putting human qualities on a thing that isn't living, but it is minivan like, but it isn't quite a minivan for a couple of distinct reasons. It's got this sort of pale bluish color that changes depending on the lighting, which is kind of nice and calming, I guess. It's got rounded features. It has super low overhangs. Everything about it makes it feel, you're right, a little bit like a nod to the Firefly. Um, there are a couple of really interesting things. First of all, when it arrives up, um, and you access it, we had to do it kind of a little bit like a demo,

• 3:04Speaker 00

  um, because it wasn't open to the public yet, but you would unlock it from the app. You go up and you press this very large button. Everything is very easy to see, easy to deploy, no tricks really. Um, and the way the doors open is unlike a minivan, if you've ever been in a minivan, you usually have to like take the handle, pull it out and then like a tad detaches almost from the vehicle and then moves out. And this opens like Sean, I think you gave me the, the great descriptor, gondola doors. So it's much safer. There's nothing you're going to get your hands trapped in. It's very much like a big two doors parting for you.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Flat floor, big and spacious, bright blue seat belts, which are kind of fun. Um, a lot of headroom. I mean, this is a vehicle while it doesn't technically carry more people than the Jaguar I-Pace, much more comfortable ride. Um, you can put the windows down. I mean, this is something that feels like, oh, this is, this is meant to be a robotaxi.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  So what's the rollout plan? Is this something that, you know, listeners are going to get to ride anytime soon?

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, well, okay, yes, but if you live, if you live in Phoenix, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, they are starting to introduce it to a select number of riders. This is a classic Waymo playbook. They kind of slow roll things. Then it will be accessible to all the public eventually in those three cities. And then some of the other cities that it is in currently or plans to be in, for instance, like Denver's coming online, they have said publicly that these vehicles will be in those cities. So this is their quote unquote sixth generation.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  This means, and my prediction is eventually when it scales to tens of thousands of these, which they expect it will, we're going to start to see the Jaguar I-Pace be put, you know, into retirement, sent out to pasture, if you will.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  This is a very weird moment for Waymo right now. Like, they've expanded really far. They've got this new vehicle that's starting to hit the road that has a lot of promise in it. But the company itself is also standing down service in a number of cities because of problems with flooding, problems that in the recall notice that they issued, they say even apply to this sixth generation driver. So it's not like the O-HI is sort of like in the clear and going to be able to instantly avoid some of the struggles that Waymo's, you know, found with edge cases. So what a weird moment for Waymo. And it makes me really wonder, especially as we spend the next couple of weeks under the looming SpaceX IPO, how close this thing gets them to break even, you know,

• 5:57Speaker 01

  whether there are more funding rounds in the offing for Waymo before they try to go public, or if they ultimately wind up in a position like SpaceX where, you know, they're going to look to public markets to actually get them over that hump eventually.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  We have to talk about more than Waymo today. On the show today, we are going to talk about deals from Stored, Snowflake, and OpenRouter. Then we're going to get into the AI divide, which sounds like a crazy big topic, but it is relevant, I swear, and also how the workforce is changing as a result of AI.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Let's get started with this Amazon fulfillment competitor called Stord.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Well, they raised $250 million at a $3 billion valuation. And like you said, they're sort of a competitor at Amazon, particularly the fulfillment side of the business. And I think really what my sense of what they're trying to provide an answer to is to kind of provide the service that Amazon does without giving up the control of the customer relationship that you get on Amazon. And I think that's something you just hear over and over again from businesses selling on Amazon is that ultimately, the customer belongs to Amazon, the business belongs to Amazon, and that's not a great position to be in long term. So it seems like increasingly a number of businesses want to look for alternatives.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, the anti-Amazon is actually how they position themselves. And we've seen this a couple of times with companies that are going after AWS, or like either a unit of Amazon or Amazon itself, as sort of like this is the catchall of, you know, I guess getting new customers is calling yourself the anti-Amazon. Do we know if it's worked for them? I mean, clearly it worked for them raising money. But as it worked for them in terms of like on the business side?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I think so. They've been around for a while. When I was reading this story, I was actually surprised to learn that they were founded more than a decade ago. And listen, like there, I think the biggest challenge that facing a company like this is there are, you know, we'll get to it later. There's certainly AI backlash. There's definitely some big tech backlash that a lot of the big tech companies are dealing with. And there is a movement to, you know, sort of quote unquote, slow tech. You know what people don't want to deal with slowly is, you know, the reliance on quick deliveries from Amazon that they've gotten used to over these years. I feel like that's one thing that is going to be very hard to pry from people.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And, you know, as good a service you can build for sellers and as good a fulfillment operation as you can offer, your customers are sort of these small businesses, medium sized businesses. Ultimately, those customers who are, you know, out there and going to expect what they've come to expect from something like Amazon, like if you're, you're going to need that kind of massive infrastructure to be able to match the things that they can do. And they're, and they're pushing that even more aggressively, right? Like they're rolling out more places where they're able to do same day or even same hour delivery. So, you know, it's good to see that there's competition here. I think especially given what we've seen on the marketplace side of Amazon, where there is a tendency to absorb sellers and

• 9:22Speaker 01

  then push them out by, you know, either copying products or allowing in sort of cheaper alternatives from China. Any outside competitive pressure has got to be a good thing.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  I think it's worth noting, sort of a little bit of their backstory. You mentioned, like, they've been at this for a while and they have. They were, they were founded in 2015, I believe, from two Georgia Tech alum. And they really got a foothold during sort of the pandemic era VC boom. They've raised something like $775 million to date. So they, they have some real tailwinds. The interesting thing to me is that there were a lot of companies that did well during that period of early days of pandemic, but then kind of lost a lot of momentum. And these folks seem to have, you know, pushed through that, which I think bodes well for their, for their longevity.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Two other questions that I have in terms of thinking about how they compare to Amazon is that obviously, when we talk about Amazon, the big thing is the sort of, you know, incredible speed on the fulfillment side. But they're also, you know, just a platform for reaching customers, right? And so if you're not going through Amazon, you have some advantages that, that Amazon sort of doesn't control your reach in the same way, but it also means that you have to do a lot more on the marketing side. And I'm curious, and I think we're going to talk about this more later, you know, as sort of web discovery and web search changes, how, how that's going to affect a business like this. And I think also, like, you know, Sean was talking about, you know, the speed that we've gotten used to. And I do wonder, and I'm, I think, an outlier because I live in New York City. I don't necessarily buy as much on e-commerce as maybe some other

• 11:00Speaker 02

  folks do. But it feels to me like there's a point where like, The difference in speed is not as important. Like, how fast does it need to be? Like, if you bought something and it's not same day, but it's next day? I mean, it depends on the product, right? But I can imagine lots of different brands where, yes, maybe they cannot deliver quite as quickly as Amazon, but maybe it's not as big a difference as you might think.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  I think it depends on what you're offering in return. I mean, I can only give you anecdotal evidence. I live in a mid-tier city, so it is, you know, there's hundreds of thousands of people, but it's not dense as New York. And, you know, myself, friends, neighbors, you know, I think that there is an expectation of getting something that they have ordered that same day. I think that if you can offer it where the price is lower, or there's some other incentive, or for the folks who are trying to, you know, break their Amazon habit, which I have, because I feel a little bit like, okay, I could go to the store and get this. I really don't need to, like, order this same-day delivery on Amazon.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  But there's other competition as well, like in terms of hyper, like, ultra-fast delivery. Drone delivery, for instance, is really kind of targeting that. Like, that's like within 15 minutes to a half an hour. I mean, that's like incredibly fast. So I think that there's a couple of companies and different types of services that are, like, nipping at the heels of Amazon. But Amazon has the massive brand recognition. I mean, you know, if I were to ask, you know, folks in my neighborhood, like, well, if you didn't use Amazon, what would you use? Like, they might be like, I don't know, UPS or something? Like, they're not thinking of these startups first.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Since we're talking about Amazon and breaking the Amazon habit, maybe we can move on to our next deal, which is about a company doing the exact opposite of that, and that is Snowflake signing a $6 billion deal with AWS. Does somebody want to explain that?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll take a stab. I mean, $6 billion, we're talking much different. We're back on the AI side of things. This is a company that, you know, is, like so many others, looking for access to chips, looking for access to that processing power. And so, you know, this is their move to sort of shore that up for the next few years as Nvidia stays in high demand. I think one thing that's nice here is that we're seeing That demand waterfall away from Nvidia a bit. Snowflake will be using the Graviton CPU chips that Amazon makes. And they were already a big AWS customer. So it makes some sense for a company like this, but huge deal for Snowflake more than it is for Amazon.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  I don't think Amazon is necessarily like hunting down customers out there for its compute. I think they're probably just standing there waiting for more companies like this to sort of bale into what they have to offer.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  I'm gonna actually like slightly disagree with you on the fact that I think it is a big deal for Amazon. Because sure, like they're printing money, basically AWS, everyone wants their business and more compute. But the CPU piece I think is interesting because CPUs are still hot right now. And we could probably have a whole show about it. We wanted to do a big technical deep dive. And the reason why they're becoming more and more important is because they're seen as like the better chip to handle things like AI agents. And so I think a lot of companies are looking to, you know, get some market share specifically with the CPU. And so I think for Amazon, well, sure, they have a lot of business. This is good news for them for that specific type.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  And then for Snowflake, obviously it should be better for them if they, if this is a cheaper alternative to Nvidia. You know, that's an easy one to understand, I think, in terms of like what it means for them financially.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  I mean, it just further confirms that we should all be in the renting, you know, CPU and GPU business. Where like even Elon Musk has realized that's maybe a better business for SpaceX in the near term than anything other than Starlink.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  I was just gonna mention on the, on the Amazon front, you know, Sean had alluded to the fact that this is, you know, an existing relationship. So I think it's sort of expanding, deepening an existing relationship. And that Snowflake is also, you know, working with some of the other clouds as well. And so this is something where. It is like a big deal for Amazon. It's a big deal for Snowflake. And it also just sort of illustrates the fact that sort of everyone's a customer of everyone else because the demand, or at least the anticipated demand is so high.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. I did want to squeeze in one more deal. And this is bringing things a little bit back down to earth. You know, we're not talking about $6 billion anymore. But this is a company called Open Router and they are an AI gateway startup. And they just raised 113 million in a Series B led by Alphabet's capital G. This is their in-house venture arm. And I'm wondering if either of you saw this deal. I thought it was pretty interesting.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did read about it. I mean, I think probably the most interesting about this thing about this company, at least on a high level, is this idea of sort of being kind of an AI gateway. And the idea that, I mean, I guess in some ways it sort of echoes what we were talking about with Snowflake, working with all these different infrastructure providers. That if you're a customer, that you could essentially switch different, use different models for different use cases. So you're not getting locked in with OpenAI or with Anthropic. But for whatever the need might be, you might be using the most appropriate model.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  We talk a lot about on this show and just in general, I think these days, about picks and shovels companies. To me, this is like the ultimate picks and shovels company. Because it's not just, oh, you know, they're not selling the thing. They're selling the thing that enables the thing. To me, this is like, they are taking advantage of a moment in time. I would be certainly eager to see, you know, what kind of lasting business they could build out of this. But this is a business that is built on the idea that you're sort of hedging for people, your customers, against the uncertainty of like which model is best at what. You got to imagine at some point that will shake out a bit more and something like this is less in demand. And maybe they will be fine with that. Maybe they will, just like the people who were selling picks and shovels, eventually see that the gold rush is drying up and they'll have to move on to something else

• 17:23Speaker 01

  and either like, you know, spend their wealth or develop a new business. But to me, this is like the purest example of something like that that I've seen. That isn't just, oh, we're the data center construction company and they're getting referred to. This is like the purest, the purest example.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  I was gonna make a different point, but I want to ask you a question, which is, do you think that this is gonna mean that, you mentioned how it's gonna shake out? Like, right now, Open Router provides access to more than 400 models. That's a lot. If it shakes out and then there's fewer choices, do they lose their relevancy? Or do you think as you kind of suggest that maybe they're going to pivot to something different? Like, what's their future look like?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I think it really depends on how they want to shape the company, right? Like, to me, as far as I understand it, the biggest value that they're offering is sort of that access and the ability to sort and pick and choose and kind of the way that you interface with the models and what they're best at doing. I could see that becoming, you know, if that breadth of optionality narrows, I could see there being like some value in maybe consulting alongside the access, you know, and helping guide people in some way, maybe through some sort of agentic workflow, maybe not. But I think it's, that's really the decision that needs to be made, right? Is like, you know, but, you know, I shouldn't say this is completely a foregone conclusion.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Like, there's a lot of overlap in what these models can do. And there's also some trouble among some of them to really carve out their own lane. And so if there is still a lot of that overlap over the next couple of years, you can run a pretty great business, helping people sort it out, as long as you're giving the, you know, either doing it or giving the impression that you're doing the work of sorting it out for them.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd be really curious to see like the customer data in terms of how many models the average customer is using. Like, I'm going to assume that they're probably not taking advantage of, you know, the majority of those, each individual customer is probably not taking advantage of the majority of those, like, 400-plus models. I could be totally wrong. I mean, but just instinctively, I would imagine it's probably a much smaller number than that. And, and I'm also curious about how then all the different, you know, model providers feel about it, because if I'm a smaller company, then I probably am, it's probably nice for me to be able to be in that conversation without having that kind of high barrier to entry that you have to sort of just really focus on using this model that's maybe not as well-known as, you know, ChatGPT or Anthropic.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  But if you're a bigger company, you maybe don't like the idea that your model is maybe a little bit commoditized and just sort of like can be kind of used and then not used depending on, you know, the specific need at the time.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  You know, this discussion sort of... Touches a little bit on a sort of a larger theme that I want to talk about, which is the shifting sands of AI and like what's that, what that is meaning. And to me, what's really interesting is this divide that we are seeing anecdotally, right? And on the internet in terms of people and how they're reacting, but also in real numbers and business. So, right now, we have users who are responding by rejecting AI on the customer side, and also companies that are grappling with, like, including media companies, by the way, how do they adjust to this whole change of how AI delivers information to people?

• 20:51Speaker 00

  So Rebecca Bellan just interviewed Matt Thompson of Scrunch, kind of on, and you can have links to this in our show notes, and it's also posted on our website. But it talks about how Google is turning SEO upside down and what companies can do about it. It's really interesting and like, one of the most relevant conversations I've heard in a while. Um, so definitely check it out. But zooming out a bit, I mean, it's really interesting to see this theme of users reacting, changing behavior, changing what they're using, while AI companies continue to push this and be completely AI-pilled, if you will, pushing these products on consumers.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  You know, one of the words that gets overused a lot by journalists, I think, particularly political journalists, we don't say it that much on Equity. But I think is true here is that AI is like incredibly polarizing. Like, there are, and that's like part of what's challenging to talk about, like, because you can feel a little crazy because you're like, I feel like everybody's using it and everybody loves it, but also no one's using it and everybody hates it at the same time. And I think that- You know, there are large contingents for whom both of those things are true. On the user side, one thing that was very striking that came out this week, you know, we talked about Google's announcements about search and how like AI is becoming a bigger part of search, although it's been interesting to see how Google has tried to walk that back a little bit, or at least add some nuance in terms of, hey, like, if you want that

• 22:21Speaker 02

  kind of 10 blue links experience, there are still ways you can get it. It's not going away entirely. But I think a lot of people are not excited about the direction Google is going in. And so you see, for example, that DuckDuckGo said that installs are up 30%, which is like a huge leap. Now, of course, DuckDuckGo is a much, much smaller product than Google. I don't think like Google is in any immediate trouble, but I think that's a sign that there is a very significant audience that does not like the current AI direction.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  I will say, one thing that I keep looking for when I look at all of these leading, you know, AI labs or tech companies that are really pushing AI features and products is, to me, there seems to just be this collapsing towards anthropics approach. We've talked about this a little bit on the show before, but this idea of like, really trying to understand what it is you want to offer people and sticking to that, whereas OpenAI is maybe the most egregious example of like, you know, the quote unquote side quests that they keep going on and trying to do a million things at once, you know, image generation, LLMs, all this, you know, sort of cowork stuff. And, you know, Google is one of the ones that I would say is actually still kind of pushing the other direction.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  They're trying to do a lot of different things, but they don't do themselves any favors by being so vague about it. And what I mean by that is like, when Google goes on stage at I/O and talks about the way that it thinks it's going to change search and all this stuff, so much of what they're talking about, they're talking about shopping or like, you know, stuff that ends in a commercial transaction. I think so much of what we think of Google as collectively, especially people who have been using it for two or three decades. Is as an information retrieval system. And I, you know, I just, I can never, I, I watch Google struggle with that a lot. Where, you know, they get reactive about fears of

• 24:17Speaker 01

  how they may be damaging the information retrieval side of things. And their response is like, yeah, but it'll, you know, that'll still be there. Or, you know, let's focus on the, you know, how it's going to help you book a flight or something like that. It must be very challenging to stress test these systems. But they go out and they release this stuff and it's, you know, they're running into the same problems they've run into for years. Where it's like, you go to the search bar and you ask how many Ps are in the name Sundar Bhatti? And it's like, uh, there are four Ps and, uh, this is how you spell it. Or like, there's one P in Trump. Okay. You got that right. Here's how you spell it. T R P M. You, it's like, you know, there's just so much that they don't seem to know how to communicate well. Uh, about what it is that they want for this stuff. Outside of that commercial bubble.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  And I think it's just a struggle that they're going to keep having until they figure that out.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. One comment on that. We had a great article that just published. Um, about how Google doesn't know how to spell its own name. If you ask it to, you know, how many Ps are in Google, it says two. So to your point, it feels like Google is chasing that thing that it feels like it has to do to keep up. But it's messing with the thing that people, um, attach to the brand the most. And it's not improving it to your point. What I'm wondering is, is we've already seen some like early evidence of people's fingers doing the voting or walking for them by literally going to another service. But I wonder if there are opportunities for other startups out there.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Or culturally speaking is like, and if this anti-AI moment that is happening is an opportunity for startups. Or, um, you know, Other areas of business that we haven't really thought about.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I think, again, it's probably a challenge because, you know, there is such a range of opinions. And so if you if you build something that's sort of tailored for a group that's skeptical to AI, then you're probably going to alienate, you know, other users who are much more evangelistic or gung ho about it. But I think that's just kind of the moment we're living in. I think it'd be very difficult to make a product that would serve all of those things. And you can see in, you know, how DuckDuckGo is promoting itself, that they're very much emphasizing this idea of sort of being anti-AI, which I find very striking, because I think I was, I've mentioned before, I don't belabor this, you know, kind of moving away from Google myself, trying out other search engines. And I would say that like, a year ago, when I started that exploration,

• 26:39Speaker 02

  even these alternative search engines were still trying to experiment with AI features, were, you know, emphasizing AI to some degree, because they also thought they had to do it. And then now I think they're seeing that there is actually a lane to be like, no, we just, we're not interested in that stuff at all. Or in as much as we're doing it, we're very much putting it in a separate sandbox that's not going to affect your core search experience. And I think, I think there are other kinds of startups that, you know, I talked to a founder a few months ago, where, you know, they were, it's a startup that's making like, different kinds of quizzes. And he realized that people were assuming that all these quizzes were made with AI. And so they made a point of like, putting an author for each quiz in order to

• 27:21Speaker 02

  emphasize, no, these are humid authored content, and that's actually increasingly rare. And maybe not everyone cares, but we're building the content for people who do care about that.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I will say also, I think we unfairly sometimes categorize all the tech CEOs as being like, force feeding people AI. And there's at least one tech CEO who has come out and said, you know, I think that there's a little bit of psychosis among other tech CEOs around AI, and possibly pumping it up too much. And I'm talking about Box founder Aaron Levie, who has come to disrupt many times, and is a friend of TechCrunch for sure. And, you know, he made these comments about how CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis, because they're sufficiently, and I'm reading this, distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate

• 28:12Speaker 00

  most value with AI. And I thought that was really interesting. And I'm wondering if there are other CEOs out there who agree with it? And I also wonder, as part of that shift of thinking about what has to happen to generate the most value, if they're also thinking about how their workforce is changing, which is kind of our other topic today, which isn't just about the AI divide, it's also how AI is changing work. And we've seen certainly some of the bad news side of that, and that is a lot of layoffs. But I think also we're seeing big changes in how people work. And

• 28:54Speaker 00

  I'm wondering in the areas that you two cover, if you're seeing that evidence of that, because I don't think it's just in the quote unquote AI startup sector or the big tech companies.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  I mean, first off, I will say, I don't know if other tech CEOs agree with Aaron. I do know that a lot of people are interested in the answer to that question, because that story that Julie wrote for us, Julie Bort wrote for us, is like, by far, one of the most popular stories that we've had on the website like all year. So like, that is a thing that resonated well beyond his initial post. You know, as far as the companies that I covered, a lot of them tend to be working on sort of, you know, if not physical transportation, then stuff adjacent to it. And it's, it seemed much slower there than it is, you know, unsurprisingly on the software side of things. We're starting to see some of that changing. You know, we've talked on the show a little bit about Mind Robotics, which is the spin out from Rivian

• 29:49Speaker 01

  CEO RJ Scaringe. And, you know, there is certainly more AI being applied to physical infrastructure and manufacturing and robotics and self-driving. And well, you know, self-driving may be the one where it is changing the most. But, you know, that's as far as it really goes on my end. I think the software side is where it's really changing things, where you have people whose sort of direct, you know, job is just directly tied to producing code.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Part of the question, I think, when Aaron talks about this, is this question of like, to what extent are these, you know, particularly, I guess, AI, both like AI adoption in companies and then AI-driven layoffs, which I think there's a lot of kind of debate about to what extent that's even true. To what extent are they sort of like top down or sort of bottom up? Because I think a lot of other like transformations in the workforce in the last couple of decades have at least been to some extent bottom up, that like these are tools that people actually like to use, they bring them in, and then at a certain point executives and IT managers sort of accept that and like, okay, great, this is what we're going to do. I think there is some sense that, you know, a lot of the idea of these like AI productivity

• 31:00Speaker 02

  gains seems to be embraced by the executives, or if you're at a start, probably by the VCs who are funding you, who love this dream of like, you know, that you can have just a tiny team and be as effective as a company with a much larger team. And I don't think that that is necessarily impossible, but you, you know, that I think that Aaron's point is essentially that like, if you're not really touching any of the end work, how would you know, right? And, you know, and he's also, again, not somebody who's saying we should just throw out all the AI tools, but he's saying that you actually have to use these tools and understand what they're doing. You can't just sort of, you know, look at a slide that can be like, yes, like incredible efficiency, let's go.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Well, I think there's a lot of real evidence out there that people are using, these companies are using these tools, and it is directly affecting workers in the form of layoffs and also the way that they work. So the two truths are accurate here. This week alone, we've got ClickUp, they laid off 22% of their workforce as part of this broader, quote, "AI strategy." The CEO, Zeb Evans, said that AI agents have created 100 times org, meaning like, you know, they're doing more than than their human workforce is doing, and that the company has reportedly deployed around 3,000 internal agents.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  I think this is like the really big shift is the AI agent shift. We've seen layoffs before. We saw a big wave of layoffs that happened, you know, during the pandemic years. We saw some layoffs that have happened last year, but really, the AI agent and the adoption of it really picked up speed in November, October, November of last year. Since then, I am seeing, at least on my end, in the, in the transportation world, and a little bit even in the energy sector. A real change of how work is being done. And as a result, it's it's leading to layoffs or the types of people they're hiring in automotive. For instance, they were getting GMs, getting rid of a bunch of their IT people.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  But the people they're hiring have AI skills and specifically around like AI agents. So I think we're seeing both.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  I do think it's worth mentioning that sort of the, again, not to say that that's not true, but that at the same time, you're seeing companies that are basically acknowledging that AI is also just incredibly expensive. And so part of the reason doing layoffs is not just that, you know, that they can, that the agents can replace their employees, but they kind of need to offset the costs in in some way. But it also to your point, yeah, I mean, these the layoff obviously is like a very real trend. I think by some counts that we've seen like 150,000 tech industry layoffs this year alone. So, I mean, it is pretty wild.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, and they're making a choice, by the way. Like, yeah, it's more expensive. And maybe, you know, they're making the choice to prioritize that for for reasons that they've explained because like Uber's case is their CTO told me that their their product launches were decreased in half. So there is a real compelling reason for it in spite of the cost and loss of workers.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  We have talked a little bit in the past and it's been, you know, written about that there are trade offs that don't get discussed in these contexts when it comes to this idea of quote unquote empowering workers and making them more productive, which is either it maybe burns them out a lot quicker, you know, especially because they have fewer people around them to sort of like commiserate with and collaborate with. And that is a real risk that I feel like, you know, a company that's laying off 22% of its workforce because it's going to earn 100x productivity needs to think about. And the workers who see that happening at a company like that need to think about. And then the other thing is that, you know, There is, I think, real question about whether or not just any of this is

• 34:58Speaker 01

  sustainable to the, to the idea of like, whether or not you can afford doing this, especially when we really just haven't seen what I think is a true cost of this technology. Like, the, the costs keep fluctuating for a number of different reasons, and we're all just sort of like riding on this wave of investment money, but not real businesses yet. And so that's going to change, and that's certainly going to, you know, be a real big break point for this at some point.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  Well, I do want to mention that as, I'm not going to say traumatic, but for some people traumatic, like the shift is. Certainly chaotic for some workers. This isn't yet to the scale of what we saw during like the dot com bubble bursting. I think that what we're seeing is a lot of opportunity layered also on top of, you know, other job losses as well. And so it is going to be challenging for workforces. I think not only, like, should they use AI tools? Should they use AI agents? If so, how? If so, do we slow hiring? Do we, you know, all of these questions are going to play out over the next year or two.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  To me, what's really fascinating is, is how fast things are happening. And it's almost difficult to predict and be too doom or gloom about it because we're also seeing startups, a lot of startups pop up around this. We're seeing a lot of companies seeking out pretty high paying jobs for folks who have AI skills on the robotics side. So it's not all downside. I mean, I think we're just in this industry of extreme transition right now.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that if, you know, that future kind of plays out the way you were hinting at and other, you know, CEOs and things have hinted at, I think there's going to still going to be different kinds of opportunities. And none of us really know exactly what that's going to look like. I think also the other scenario where it turns out a lot of their bets are wrong. They're going to have to end up rehiring a lot of the people they let go. And so I think there's also opportunity there in its own way. But it's going to take some time to see how that plays out.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Speaking of vets is, I have to mention it because We could have a whole other conversation about AI creeping into things like investment. And Robinhood now lets your AI agents trade stocks for you. So that's just one more place where it is going to be changing, you know, how people interact, how people invest, maybe how they're spending their time on their lunch hour.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Wow, I have so many thoughts on that, but we are out of time. So I'll just say, don't do that. But we're out of time. So Equity will be back next week and you can follow us at EquityPod on X and Threads.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  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.