‘AI communism’, rogue models, and the why Kimi K3 spooked Wall Street

Chinese AI lab Moonshot's open model Kimi went viral this week for reasons that had less to do with the model itself and more to do with how the U. S. AI industry reacted to it. Meanwhile, an unreleased OpenAI model wandered outside its test environment and ended up connected to a real security breach at Hugging Face — a reminder that “China risk” isn't the only kind of AI risk worth worrying about. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into why Kimi K3 set off a fresh round of AI panic, the industry’s response to an OpenAI staffer's “regulatory FUD” post, and what that OpenAI breach means for AI security more broadly. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why EVs are getting killed off across the U. S. even as automakers roll out new models, and how Rivian and Ford, and a wave of new startups are betting on different EV strategies to survive What Sila's $300 million raise says about where battery investment is headed even as EV demand cools Travis Kalanick's comeback with a $1.7 billion raise for his robotics startup, Atoms, and why we’re surprised to see Uber among its investors 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 1:39 Chinese AI model Kimi sparks a Wall Street freakout 10:45 OpenAI model breaks out of a test, Hugging Face breach 15:53 Why EVs are getting killed off in the U. S. 20:35 Tax credits, free markets, and the road ahead for EVs 28:56 Sila raises $300M for battery materials 32:20 Travis Kalanick's Atoms raises $1.7B, with Uber as an investor 36:39 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, your energy technology partner.

• 0:05Kirsten Korosec?

  A Chinese AI model spooked Wall Street this week with players from OpenAI shouting about security risk. Meanwhile, one of OpenAI's own unreleased models broke out of a test and hacked a real company. Also this week, EVs seem to be getting killed off left and right in the US, even as automakers try to sell Americans on new models. We'll get into why, plus a couple of deals this week, including Travis Kalanick raising $1.7 billion for his new robotics company, with Uber even chipping in. Stick around.

• 0:45Kirsten Korosec?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Friday, July 24th. I'm Kirsten Korsak, Transportation Editor here at TechCrunch, and I'm joined, as always, by our Weekend Editor, Anthony Haw, and Senior Reporter, Special Projects, Sean O'Kane. Welcome you two. I'm just wondering, as a little check in, we're midsummer. How's everyone's summer going on? Anything exciting happening over there?

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Well, New York City has had heatwaves. We've had some apocalyptic, you know, air, which I think, you know, a lot of the Northeast has. So I'm just excited that I can go outside today and not, you know, wear a mask or get drenched in sweat.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  I live in North Carolina, so it's sweat all the time.

• 1:28Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, speaking of sweating, some AI labs are sweating this Chinese AI model that came out and got a lot of discussion. Anthony, you covered this over the weekend. Tell me what's going on with Kimi.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Right, so Kimi is an open model from Moonshot AI, which is a Chinese company. And I think folks who have followed kind of the discourse around Chinese AI, this will probably be very, very familiar from the launch of DeepSeek, one of their models about a year and a half ago, where basically Chinese model comes out. On some benchmarks, it does as well, or at least seems competitive with some of the frontier models. And a certain portion of the tech industry kind of loses their mind. I mean, I think some of this got extra scrutiny because one of the people kind of posting about it was it was somebody at OpenAI.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  But in general, I think there was this, it's this recurring question of can Chinese companies basically beat US companies, at least in some aspects, and do it much more cheaply and in a much more open way?

• 2:39Speaker 02

  There are many elements of this that feel like we're seeing repeats of prior freakouts. I think one of my favorites is everybody is like so ready to and so expecting that something is going to arrive and blow everything else away. And I think my favorite example of that this past week was people realize, showing off that, oh, my gosh, Kimi made in 30 minutes, an entire replication of macOS. And it's like, yeah, it made a pretty impressive, like graphical reproduction of like, kind of what macOS looks like, but it didn't, it's not an OS. Like, it's just, and it's like, we keep seeing these things happen over and over again,

• 3:21Speaker 02

  where it's like, everybody's so jumpy in the tech industry that, and I think in particular with some of the Chinese models that come out, that there's like this expectation. And I think this gets to the sort of core of why people reacted the way they reacted last weekend, which also, by the way, go outside, touch grass, it's the weekend. Like, everybody in the industry was like trading barbs on Twitter all weekend, and we should get into that a little bit more. But this jumppiness is really interesting to me because, you know, we're now a week out, and I don't think anybody's feeling like, you know, the end is nigh, like they were a week ago.

• 4:00Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, you know, and I think that you're about to get into sort of the core reasons as to why. And we have a really great story by one of our reporters, Tim Fernholtz, who kind of tries to unpack the psychosis around this here in the United States. And he points to a number of reasons and, you know, kind of concludes, and I don't want to conclude it for him, but, you know, I think that there's one that rises more to the top than others. But there's this question of, well, there's concerns that these Chinese open weight models might have an implicit bias towards China. There's another worry about security risks and guardrails. But there's also a pretty big idea here, which is a protectionism.

• 4:43Kirsten Korosec?

  And who is going to quote unquote, win the race? Is it going to be the US or China? And that seems to be driving, I think, a lot of what the fear is. I don't know, Anthony, if you agree with that summation, but that seems to be what this is, what's behind this.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  No, I completely agree that I think the China aspect always adds this certain level of hysteria. And that's not to say that people shouldn't be concerned about how the US stacks up against China, you know, across different industries, which I think we'll get to later as well. But there's this, you know, that it gets so amped up. I mean, the other thing this reminds me of is the discussion around TikTok a few years ago. And again, it wasn't that I thought that the concerns around TikTok were totally made up, but that the level of how panicked people got, and it seems like as soon as you add the word China to any discussion, that things just kind of immediately ramp up dramatically. And then in this case, it's sort of also linked to this discussion about Open and

• 5:45Speaker 00

  this idea that AI is so powerful and so dangerous that the only way, you know, we can control it is with these proprietary models from these American, you know, frontier companies. And I think obviously, most people saying this, there's like reasons why they want to say that. David Sacks, who, you know, has had different, was the AI czar for the Trump administration, now has a different role in the Trump administration, was definitely sort of like shouting about how, metaphorically shouting, on X, about how, you know, I can't believe people are opposing data centers, we're tying ourselves in knots, there's too much regulation. And so it's a way to sort of argue for, you know, I think the positions that they already

• 6:28Speaker 00

  kind of had around AI and that, oh, my gosh, if China beats us and this, like, that's unthinkable, so you have to do what I kind of want to do anyway.

• 6:37Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, and I think that the point here is, is that it's protecting a very specific kind of, if you were to put across the board bans on Chinese open weight models, and to your point, like, I'm not saying that there aren't real concerns here, but let's just play that out. If we were to do that, it would benefit models created by OpenAI, for instance, and it would force enterprises to use those as opposed to using models like Kimi. So you really have to ask the question, like, are we accelerating and ensuring that Americans win the AI race? Or are we ensuring that certain frontier labs do better than others?

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think to that point, like, we should say, a lot of this discussion really got kicked off by, you know, the head of Strategic Futures at OpenAI, Dean Ball, who, you know, sort of was the first one to come out with this, like, really long post, mentioning some of these concerns, but also being like, you guys tell me, like, part of me thinks the reaction to this was because people disagreed with what Dean wrote. Part of me also thinks that the reaction was partially driven by the fact that he kind of just said the thing out loud, right? Like, he basically said the US should create like regulatory FUD, like fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and like, muck up the ability for these open weight models to compete with

• 8:04Speaker 02

  the US in a way. And it, to me, like, I think that you can read in some of the responses from folks, like, not supposed to say that out loud, Dean. Maybe we agree with you sort of at the highest level, but like, and, but that's the way things operate a lot of the times. It's just we don't really say it out loud, because if you, if you're that explicit about it, you can create some problems in sort of making, making those hurdles durable.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  And I mean, I think that it's part of the reason it got so much attention besides, I mean, there was this sort of long, fairly intense response. And it's also about, but who he is, which is that he had a role in the Trump administration, shaping AI policy, and then just a few months ago, joined OpenAI in this, I guess, sort of like new, new role. And so he kind of straddles those worlds of, you know, one of the biggest AI labs, but also probably still has some ties to the Trump administration and actually making this policy. And, and I mean, there was a lot of different things he talked about. I mean, one thing that I thought was interesting was he said that, you know, I don't think you can, you can sort of just dismiss what Kimi has, you know, what Moonshot has built

• 9:12Speaker 00

  with Kimi by just saying it was distilled from, from American models. But the other thing he said was like, it really focuses on this open angle and saying that I don't think that the Chinese government, I can't believe the Chinese government is allowing these, you know, open weight, allowing it still to be open when it's so powerful. And clearly, this is going to, like, lead to a future of, the phrase he uses, full AI communism. And so the way we have to avoid this future of full AI communism is what you just said of like, let's just have sort of regulatory FUD. And, and he said that you don't even need a good excuse. You just need to make, scare people away from using these models. And, and yeah, like you said, there was a lot of just people being like, oh, wow, he just, he said that part out loud, okay.

• 9:58Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, he said that part out loud in a society in which we.

• 10:05Kirsten Korosec?

  There's some debate over it, but tend to be pro free market. So, you know, I mean, it runs counter to sort of that eat those.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. What's free? Who is free? You know, there, words have meanings and we need to define those words sometimes.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  And we should say that he did sort of then inevitably do another post where he kind of backed away from that and said, hey, hey, no, I'm, I'm not saying this is what the Trump administration should do. I'm just saying this is probably what they will do. And it's like, well, that's not how you framed it. You wrote it as this is what they should do, but, but he clearly, this is not, this, that his position is first of all, not necessarily OpenAI's official position. And it seems like that's not the position that at least he's willing to admit to publicly anymore.

• 10:51Kirsten Korosec?

  Well, and I should say that while he walked it back, there is evidence that the Trump administration is considering it. So, you know, words have power, so maybe think before you rant. I think it's interesting that this is in the broader context of other things that were happening. One of the concerns that was floated with Kimi is security concerns. And at the same time, completely unrelated, but just coincidentally, you know, Hugging Face confirmed that a breach affected internal data sets and credentials. And it seems as if actually OpenAI was inadvertently behind this breach. When one of its models jumped outside of the test it was, it was being conducted in.

• 11:35Kirsten Korosec?

  Which I think is really interesting and a little concerning, I think. Not just for Hugging Face, but for the broader implications for AI models.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Especially because we're on what, OpenAI Code Red version seven or something now, right? Like this is supposed to be an imminently focused company that isn't distracted by side quests. And yet this still happened. Our colleague Lorenzo wrote a really good explainer about how this actually happened too. And it really was just sort of like human error, like big surprise. But it wasn't something that was like wholly unanticipated and, you know, some sort of emergent behavior. You know, due to the way that these models are being developed, it was just like, how did you miss this kind of thing? Which is unfortunate, but you know, here we are.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  It was funny, like reading just about, you know, that it was supposed to be just this kind of benchmark test. And it wasn't even, I think, supposed to be connected to the internet. And then it was able to kind of get around that. And I think it does sort of underline that, again, not that these aren't real concerns. I think, you know, the question of how, you know, these frontier models, what they're going to mean for cybersecurity is a huge and pressing concern. But that, I would argue that the China aspect is not necessarily the biggest part of it. It's just, you know, more broadly, what, what, what is that like future going to look like? How confident are we that these models are going to do what we want them to do? And of course, who is the we in that situation?

• 13:07Speaker 00

  But that there's, you know, there's often this sense of like, well, if we're going to sort of just panic about Chinese companies, maybe we should look in the mirror a little bit first.

• 13:14Kirsten Korosec?

  I think that the bigger, more important question which you get to is that who is the real, or what is the real risk here? And, you know, there can be multiple risks happening at the same time. And, you know, what's coming out of China is certainly one to pay attention to. This is not to say to ignore it. But to your point of like, looking in the mirror, I think that there is a risk. If you just center all of your attention on one potential risk, that you are completely ignoring something that could actually, you know, create a lot of chaos and insecurity in models that we're using.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  I think the biggest thing that we know is a challenge for these models is really, it's that control and knowing their boundaries and setting those boundaries really clearly. And also making sure that you can sort of disable them if, if, if need be. And, you know, I, at the most base level, I understand the concern with that when it comes to China, because there's just so little visibility. Despite the fact that, um, I think it was in Tim's piece, he gets into how pervasive these models are, how relied on they are by academics in the US, how much, you know, students in the US are relying on them to learn about this stuff. Even with all of that, there's just still such a sort of natural state of invisibility.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  When it comes to the internal workings of these companies and also their connection or, or the availability of a connection for the Communist Party, like to access this stuff if it desires. And so like, I understand that base concern, you know. Personally, I would say, I wish we had an administration that had a more coherent way of communicating how it understands those concerns. But that's just not the world we live in right now.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Right. And I think that, I mean, part of the reason why there is this concern is that there are a number of companies that are building on top of these open Chinese models. Um, you know, a few months ago, I wrote about Cursor and they, they sort of had to awkwardly admit that their, uh, that their model was built on top of a previous version of Kimi. And I've certainly heard from, from people, you know, basically claiming that this is a lot more common than, than is sort of let on because you don't necessarily have to admit it. And, you know, again, I don't necessarily think that's a cause for panic, but it is worth asking these questions of like, okay, like what if a huge slice of the startup AI sector is suddenly built on top of these Chinese models?

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Like how, how do we feel about that? How confident are we that they're going to do what we want? And that doesn't mean that we have to do this kind of intense protectionism and banning. But just that I, I think that it's worth understanding those models and, and what, you know, yeah, just those, those, those exact concerns that we were talking about with, with security as well. What moves our world forward? Energy. History has been shaped by it, revolutions won with it, and progress dependent on it. For 190 years, Schneider Electric has been a leading force in this story, creating the technologies that harness energy and transform the competitive landscape. And today, in the dawning era of energy and industrial intelligence, Schneider is helping customers build more efficient, resilient, and sustainable operations across every sector.

• 16:25Speaker 00

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• 16:36Kirsten Korosec?

  So I'm going to make a major lane change and we're going to go and talk about cars. Hey, specifically EVs. And there's been an interesting thing that's been happening and, and I sort of rounded it up and, and published this over the weekend. And it was really about like all of the EV models in the US market that have been either discontinued or completely killed off. And it was prompted by Honda saying, hey, we're going to get rid of our prologue, which was this joint project that it had with, with General Motors. And, you know, this has been happening for a while, but I think it's really interesting because while there are a bunch of models that are being killed off,

• 17:19Kirsten Korosec?

  there are companies like Rivian that are trying to, you know, introduce and sell new models. And so the question that I thought it would be fun to talk about is, you know, why are these two things happening at once? Can they coexist in the same? Why are these models being killed off? And are these new models that are coming out, are they going to be successful?

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Well, let me throw in a third question before we get into it, which is also my sense is that, that we do have to emphasize the US qualifier here. That, that globally, actually EVs are generally kind of on the rise, sales are on the rise. And it's really specifically in the US for a variety of reasons, which you touch on in, in your article, that we're kind of going in, in a different direction. I mean, I think actually we even had another piece, uh, I forget who it was by, but a few months ago, we're basically just, it was describing this kind of K-shaped market for EVs where, you know, rest of the world is kind of going up, in the US it's going down. I mean, is that right? Am I making this up?

• 18:17Kirsten Korosec?

  No, you're right.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  So why?

• 18:20Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, so I, uh, well, it's complicated. And I know that Sean has some thoughts on this too, so I'll, I'll defer to him. But I will say the short answer is it's complicated and it is a mix of ending of certain incentives in the US and some regulatory challenges, but it, there's more to it than that.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say the regulations were the killing blow in a lot of ways, but not in the way that I think, not in the easiest sense of that explanation. Like, I think a lot of people think, okay, that, you know, now all of a sudden these new EVs cost $7,500 more effectively, and so therefore it kills them. But I think in the case of a lot of these, and especially the ones that you rounded up, Kirsten, coming from the, the legacy OEMs.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  This is sort of like the path they were always heading down in some ways. A lot of these vehicles, you know, to really simplify it are more or less like internal combustion engine vehicles that were kind of like tweaked to fit electric drivetrains. And when you do that and you're not developing an EV from the ground up, that is, you're just working with a set of constraints that is going to make it so hard for you to make a good vehicle and a profitable vehicle, or even a vehicle that can get you closer to profit while you work on a purpose-built one. And, you know, I think the real cynical take is we were seeing kind of a masked,

• 19:46Speaker 02

  you know, a better masked new version of compliance cars, which we saw like a decade or so ago, where, you know, these companies were making these things just to comply with the regulations in the US. Nobody wanted to buy them because they weren't compelling whatsoever. And I don't think that was, you know, 100% the case here. But RJ Scaringe, the CEO of Rivian, has kind of made this point when the tax credit went away, that like he was anticipating a bunch of these models were going to disappear because one of the only reasons that the, you know, these major automakers were willing to carry these vehicles in the marketplace was because they themselves were getting regulatory credits to sell and offset the cost of like manufacturing them and everything. So it was like a deeper thing than just the consumer credit.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  And so I think that, you know, all of those things together meant that we were really kind of holding our breath in a way with some of these models than, more so than I think people realized in the moment. And I think that those problems just became too much to bear when it comes to, you know, where the market in the US is now. And we should say like, the US is a major automotive market. I mean, we, it moves 16-ish million vehicles per year here, which is just, you know, it's that and then China. And so, you know, I think it's important to separate how EVs are continuing to do well outside the US versus how they are struggling here in the US. But it's also important to remember that like, the US is a really big market.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  And so to have missed the mark this widely is really, really telling on the strategy for all of these automakers.

• 21:18Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, and, and just to back up for a moment, when you mentioned the 7500, for those who don't follow the EV market really closely, this is the 7500 federal tax credit, which was killed off last fall. And we saw this interesting sort of roller coaster of sales. So a bunch of people sold, a bunch of automakers sold a lot of vehicles as, as folks saw this about to expire. And then we saw a pretty big drop off. And companies that sell in the global markets like Tesla just had like a record quarter of sales, but that's because they're selling into markets where they're seeing growth are in markets outside of the US. So I think that that like, we have to understand that.

• 22:00Kirsten Korosec?

  But for the audience members who are biggest supporters of free markets, you know, there is an argument that maybe it was time for the tax credit to go. Maybe not in the way that it did, right? Which was like, of course, very chaotic rollout. But if we want compelling products that can exist on their own, you know, should that, should that have gone away? I would say potentially yes, but then you have to treat all types of powered vehicles, gas and otherwise, equally, which are not right now. So I, I get that I was offering a controversial question.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  I do think we should point out something, though. Another thing that goes unsaid often in these conversations, which is, you know, I understand the argument that like, you know, the free market should decide and the tax credit was sort of, you know, counterbalancing things in a weird way. And also that, you know, in the early versions of it, it was only really giving a discount to rich people and not to people who could afford vehicles because there were no affordable EVs. I get all of that, but I, we should say, there is just also inherent incentives for automakers and their dealer networks in the US against selling EVs. EVs tend to require less maintenance. They tend to make dealerships less money over time. Automakers have tried to find ways to make that up with like software services and stuff,

• 23:24Speaker 02

  but you can imagine the big automakers aren't very good at that stuff. And so they're not making much money once they sell an EV, you know, selling, you know, driver assistance features or software upgrades or whatever it might be. And so I do think like, if we want to talk free market, we should talk about the fact that like, a lot of these vehicles probably didn't sell because people didn't want them. A lot of them also probably didn't sell because the dealers didn't want to sell them because you were never going to see that customer again in 20,000 miles and 60,000 miles and 100,000 miles. And so like, I just, I just wanted to put that out there.

• 23:57Kirsten Korosec?

  That's why I said, I understand that that is like a very narrow question to ask and a controversial one because it is layered and also it completely ignores the fact that, you know, fossil fuel powered vehicles get a lot of incentives. And so stripping it away from EVs, it's still, you can have multiple truths, though. But Anthony, please weigh in.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  Well, I, I think the other thing that's striking to me and that sort of connects these two different themes that we're talking about is the fact that, you know, not literally the same people, although in some cases they're literally the same people. But, you know, you think about like sort of the Trump administration broadly, that there is this kind of general panic at the idea that the US might fall behind on artificial intelligence and a complete indifference or even like happiness with the fact that like the US could fall behind in EVs. And I think, you know, it's worth asking why. But I also wanted to then kind of turn it back to you, looking ahead. Do we think that this is going to, you know, this period right now where all these programs are shutting down, is it going to sort of just be this kind of flip?

• 25:01Speaker 00

  And that, you know, the US is going to kind of then have a kind of similar pattern to the rest of the world? Or, or is this something that we think is going to continue?

• 25:09Kirsten Korosec?

  I will say we could have an entire show on the very first part of that question. So I'm not going to even go there because we'll be here forever. But I will mention one thing. I do think that there are some interesting and emerging models that are coming out. But I will say that counter to Sean's earlier point about how a lot of these were legacy automakers with the almost like compliance cars. I mean, we've also seen Lucid, which did a completely clean sheet approach. Granted, on the luxury end, higher priced vehicle struggle, and that's a whole other issue. And then finally, I think we're seeing this subsector of the market of new startups coming out.

• 25:47Kirsten Korosec?

  I can think of at least two in the last month with lower cost EVs that are meant to be sort of more than an electric cargo bike, but not quite that big, heavy SUV. And to me, that's a niche market, but an interesting one. And maybe that's where we're going to see a lot of activity with specifically electrification.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that could happen. We also had Slate, which, you know, I've written a lot about, as people who read the website know, that is targeting the low end of the, the market. Although I think it's fair to question how much they really want to target the low end and how much they want people to pay up, which, you know, surprise, surprise, they're a car company. You know, the other thing that I think we haven't really talked about here, and I think is relevant to Anthony's question, is again, the China of it all, right? Like China saw this like massive explosion in new EV companies a decade ago. That thinned out almost immediately when sort of it hit the fan for a lot of them. And then there was this kind of new growth out of that because they were able to accelerate their learnings.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  They were also able to capitalize on a lot of frankly, retiring automotive talent in Europe that wanted to work on something new that went to China. And I'm talking automotive designers, engineers, executives, et cetera. And their automotive market is just, has matured very rapidly. And that's relevant to us here because, you know, in contrast to the AI market, we are seeing a fully protectionist regime when it comes to the automotive market. We, we have absolutely iced out Chinese EVs from coming to the US despite how affordable they are. You know, and, and the fact that we're in an affordability crisis across pretty much every consumer good.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  And that is buying some time for the companies that do want to keep making EVs here, whether they're...

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Complete ground up EV companies like Rivian, or they're like, you know, the OEMs that are trying to chart a new course forward that isn't as EV heavy as it once was. And even there, we're seeing gradations of sort of like how, you know, how they're attacking that, like Ford is kind of starting clean sheet again, and developing a low cost, you know, EV truck that's supposed to start around $30,000 that we'll see next year, and we'll see how that works. I would say of the big automakers, they're probably the ones still most committed to that idea. GM had its earnings call this week and basically didn't talk about EVs at all. They seem completely fine with just selling big trucks and stuff to the US market, and also becoming a defense truck contractor, and that's just the way they're headed.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  And, uh, and so like, my big question when it comes, you know, to answer Anthony's question is like, it's hard to say where things go, unless we know how sturdy that wall against China is, right? And there's been some reporting about like, you know, there's some really interesting stuff happening in like, border towns in Texas, where in Mexico, Chinese EVs are all over the place. And there are people who have the ability, because of their work status, to buy an EV in Mexico, and they kind of cross the border into Texas, because they have to work there, or vice versa. And it's like, you know, there is this leaking happening that, you know, is making it more. And then you add in kind of the influencer-ness of all of this.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Like, a lot of the automotive influencers in the world all get access to the Chinese things. They go, they travel around the world, they show off how cool the cars are, how affordable they are. So there's like a pressure rising when it comes to, hey, why don't we have that? And an administration that just clearly does not want it here, and automakers like Ford that have championed that protectionist approach. And to me, that seems kind of untenable in the long run. I just don't know when that dam breaks.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Well, as Justin did mention, there are some companies that are still trying to, you know, make it work here. And that leads us to our first deal that we wanted to talk about, which was Syla Climate. What is Syla Climate?

• 29:50Kirsten Korosec?

  Syla has been around, actually, for a long time, and they're a battery materials startup. So they are connected to the EV market, but they're also connected to energy storage. And the founder of that company was like the seventh employee of Tesla. So this is someone who's a well-known figure in the industry, um, you know, and, and certainly has been able to raise money. But what I think is so interesting is that counter to the decline in EV sales in the US market currently, Syla has been able to raise 300 million in order to increase capacity for one of its battery materials in its new factory in Washington. And, you know, it isn't a one-to-one correlation, you know,

• 30:31Kirsten Korosec?

  but I do think that it's interesting that they were able to raise so much money in this current environment.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're interesting to me for two reasons. One, Gene, who runs the company, is just genuinely one of the more like, straightforward people I think I've ever interviewed when it comes to this stuff, uh, and, and has a deep understanding of it. And two, they were a company that was very ahead of the curve in a lot of ways on not just battery tech and how diverse it can become, uh, and how many options we can pull from, even if you're just talking in the automotive market, but also ahead of the curve in the sense of like, you know, sort of re-domesticating skills and manufacturing and, and supply chain and stuff. And so they put in a lot of work, like a lot of work. I remember sitting in an office, like a half-built office with them a decade ago, where, you know, they were still doing their first fundraising,

• 31:22Speaker 02

  and, and, and they're still here, and they're still raising, and they're still building, and finding new markets, which is just a really fascinating story, especially for someone so, you know, specific and kind of deep in the supply chain, and not someone that's like, you know, as well-known as a Panasonic or whoever.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, though, I, I was impressed just seeing some of their, their customers, which, like you said, Panasonic, but also Mercedes, whoop, some drone and satellite companies. And so that presumably, a lot of this business is driven by EVs, but also a lot of different things might need batteries.

• 31:53Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that that, we're seeing a lot of companies do this, right? You know, at the, at the very beginning level, at battery materials, which is, you know, Syla, but also even automakers, where they're like, okay, we're dealing with a softening EV demand. What do we do? So we're seeing companies pop up with these sort of energy storage, either marketed towards consumers or to the commercial markets. You know, we've seen a number of large companies do that, including Redwood Materials, which is a battery materials company that has gotten into energy storage, or just serving different customers. So in the example to Syla, they're not just, you know, marketing themselves directly to an EV manufacturer, but to drone manufacturers, to your point earlier.

• 32:37Kirsten Korosec?

  So I think what you're seeing is the companies that do survive this, they are diversifying their customer base, or starting up, or spinning out new businesses.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Well, I do want to talk about one more funding round, um, because, you know, 300 million, that's, that's a good amount of money. But, uh, we're also going to talk about Travis Kalanick's startup, and how it has raised $1.7 billion.

• 33:03Kirsten Korosec?

  Yeah, very exciting stuff. Sean wrote this story, and I'll hand it over to him. But I will say, so this is Adams. Adams recently bought Anthony Levandowski, uh, Travis Kalanick's old buddy, startup called Pronto. And there's a lot to unpack here, but probably won't get to all of it. But the sheer amount of money Warren's talking about.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is a company we're going to be talking about for a while, right? Like, this is, especially because we still don't, uh, really know what they want to do. I would say they've had two cracks at it. I mean, they, quote unquote, came out of stealth in March. Uh, but really, this company is essentially Cloud kitchens. It's the ghost kitchen company that Travis has been working on since he was pushed out of Uber almost a decade ago. And, you know, the idea, as best as I can realize it from the two kind of really long posts he's made about it so far, is that like, it is, you know, Cloud Kitchen showed that they can sort of help automate the movement of something as sensitive as even food. And so now they want to help automate the movement of other things,

• 34:11Speaker 02

  and whether that's mining equipment, like with Pronto, or, you know, they've talked about making a wheelbase of some kind, but not a wheelbase that will be used for robo taxis. You know, beyond that, you just get into gauzy nonsense, frankly. And so like, uh, you know, part of me was somewhat surprised that they were able to raise $1.7 billion, including from Uber. But part of me also wasn't because, you know, uh, there is a part of me that has spent, uh, you know, some of the last 24 hours wondering how much of Andreessen Horowitz's money did they pay just to be able to like, go on the posting spree they've gone on the last 24 hours of like, Travis is back, baby.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  We're backing him this, that, like, it's just, it is, it's genuinely like, the only thing happening on Twitter for like, 24 hours. And it's like, they, you know, you could probably calculate the premium of like, we wanted to be the ones to say it.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  I, I did want to just underline two things that you said. One is that Uber is an investor in this round, so that is kind of reconnect, reconnecting Travis to his old company, which obviously there was a very complicated, uh, departure, and I think a lot of, of bad blood. And you would assume that at this point, if they were going to make an investment, that it would have to be like, something that they really believed in. Although, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I know also there's been a lot of, you know, turnover there. And I, I had the same question as Sean about just, you know, again, it makes me feel old, that, you know, 10 years ago, we talked about Unicorn becoming this sort of elite status for a startup, and that if a company, you know, reached that level, and of course, that was valuation, not even the amount raised,

• 35:51Speaker 00

  that you could be like, okay, this is a real company, they've built a real business, and so I better take this seriously. And now, I mean, that could be the case here, but it could definitely, there's a part of me that just wonders, well, is this Travis Kalanick having a name that people want to invest in, and an idea that they like? And who knows how it's going to turn out? This isn't necessarily a validation of anything, just a sign that there's a lot of excitement right now.

• 36:13Kirsten Korosec?

  I will say that, I say this a lot, that you can have two truths. And I think Travis's name goes a long way. But, and I think it's actually even almost a bigger surprise that Uber is investing in something that attached to Anthony Levandowski, because of long history that we will not get into. But, you know, there was a whole trade secrets theft trial, and a lot, a lot of drama there. I do have a tiny bit of insight into what Adams is doing, and I'm going to actually defend them for a moment, which is, I know, shocking, controversial. But I will say that Pronto, which is, seems to be like the core piece right now, certainly the most public piece, does have real customers. They do have, with big mining companies, and they are expanding.

• 36:58Kirsten Korosec?

  And I received an email, actually, from Anthony that I think was meant for customers, and it sort of explains this. And basically, what they say is Adams is investing heavily in, quote, industrial AI and physical automation, and that Pronto is core strategic priority for Adams. So there, there's maybe a little bit more detail. Not much, a little bit more.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Well, uh, you know, another company that I'm sure we're going to be hearing more from in the future. In the meantime, we are absolutely out of time. So Equity will be back next week. Thank you so much for listening. And of course, we are at EquityPod on X and threads.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  Equity is hosted by TechCrunch senior reporters and produced by Teresa Lowkens-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.