A Neko Health investor on the $700M bet to scan your whole body

This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump called “morally binding.” Trump also signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as “super intelligence,” and meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products, even as the biggest money in AI still appears to be coming from the enterprise.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into this week’s AI moves, the ugly economics of consumer AI, plus the shifting IPO market and a handful of startup deals.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  What Oura pulling its IPO, plus Anthropic’s leaked S-1 and OpenAI going back to private funding, says about how picky public markets have gotten  Quartermaster’s $140M raise to bring real-time sensors to an industry that AI basically hasn’t touched yet: maritime shipping  Why Atomic, a supply-chain startup from ex-Tesla vets, is already running 90% of DoorDash’s purchasing  How Startup Battlefield finalist Charter Space raised $5M to bring insurance to satellites  Speaking of Startup Battlefield, join us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where Equity will kick things off with a live show on the Builders Stage at 9 a.m. Get 25% off your tickets with code Equity25.    Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s Neko Health raised $700 million to build a business around scanning your body, but it’s not the only company centering its roadmap around a new kind of preventative healthcare. Midjourney is building its own body scanner, while Function Health has also raised significant capital to build out its preventative-health platform. Why are investors betting so big on this category?    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis talks with Farooq Abbasi, founder and general partner of Preface Ventures and an investor in Neko Health, about how Neko compares with other consumer-health startups. They discuss what has to happen for body scanning to become part of the broader healthcare system.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Farooq invested in Neko after trying the company's scan himself  What Neko's $500 scan actually includes, and how the company keeps the price down  Why Farooq thinks low primary-care utilization is one of the biggest problems in U.S. healthcare  Why some consumer-health startups may be overfunded, in Farooq's view  How better health data could open the door to a new generation of AI-powered healthcare  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Chapters: 00:00 — Can Tech Reinvent Preventative Healthcare?01:44 — Why Spotify’s Founder Built Neko Health06:22 — Why Healthcare Is So Hard to Fix08:23 — Inside a $500 Neko Health Scan12:35 — Can Preventative Healthcare Scale?14:20 — The Risks of VC-Backed Healthcare17:28 — How AI Is Changing Medicine22:55 — Is AI in Healthcare Worth the Risk? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When AI leaders at OpenAI and Anthropic started talking about “pacing the frontier,” maybe someone should have asked: what pace? It’s turned into model drop week for both companies as Anthropic rolled out Opus 5.5, followed by OpenAI’s GPT-6 model updates just 90 minutes later. But the company that stole the spotlight this week was Meta, whose personal AI agent Muse is reportedly outpacing ChatGPT’s early numbers and is headed for smart glasses and a tiny Tamagotchi-style device next.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into Meta’s consumer AI strategy and what it means for the startups trying to build on top of this technology, from where the money is flowing to which AI products might actually become part of people's daily lives. They also get into a16z's new school for aspiring founders and two very different AI and hardware deals.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  How a16z's Horowitz Andreessen Academy plans to pave a new path for aspiring founders, and why the Equity crew sees echoes of the Thiel Fellowship and Silicon Valley's long-running anti-college streak  Why Oura's $2.2 billion IPO looks more like a payday for existing shareholders than a major fundraising event for the company  Ema’s $77 million raise to sell teams of AI agents that automate HR, IT, and finance workflows, with Google and Microsoft among its early enterprise customers  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As concern over AI safety and rogue agents continue to make headlines, it’s no surprise that cybersecurity stocks are rising, or that investors are pouring massive amounts of capital into startups trying to build the next generation of security for an AI-native world. We’re even seeing companies like Instinct and Simile bring in nine-figure checks and valuations that wouldn't have made sense a few years ago.    With a front row seat to it all is Shardul Shah, a partner at Index Ventures who’s spent nearly two decades investing in cybersecurity and enterprise software — including six consecutive rounds in cloud security startup Wiz, which Google acquired for $32 billion earlier this year in one of its largest acquisitions ever.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Shah joins Rebecca Bellan to break down why he thinks periodic, human-in-the-loop security can’t keep up anymore, and why Index continues investing in AI-native security companies at stages that once required much more proof.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Shah thinks cyber insurance should be most companies’ first move in managing AI-era risk  What happens when a single attacker can deploy a 10,000-agent ransomware swarm, and why that could force cybersecurity to become more machine-to-machine  How Wiz’s founders paved the way for a new generation of startups, including Frame and Enigma  Shah’s take on “pacing the frontier,” and why he thinks even a slowdown in model capability wouldn’t cool off cybersecurity investment  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  02:02 Why AI is creating a new cybersecurity category  05:16 The cyber insurance layer most companies overlook  09:15 Why Index is betting on AI-native security platforms  12:40 Will Wiz become a talent factory for new startups?  14:46 What actually makes a founder worth betting on  16:11 The hard part of knowing when to double down  18:53 Why Shardul says he’s not a visionary investor  21:16 How AI could reshape the entire security stack  24:18 What makes an AI security startup defensible  25:14 Why he doesn’t want to find “the next Wiz”  26:48 Why investors are writing huge checks so early  29:39 What happens to AI valuations if the frontier gets paced  31:01 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

“Why do I have to beg my grandparents to put on their hearing aids, but no one has ever needed to ask me to put on my glasses?”    That’s the question that drove Matthew de Jonge to spend six years building Fortell, an AI hearing aid startup that recently raised $163 million from the likes of Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias. The buzzy startup aims to build hearing aids that understand the sounds around you in real time, figure out what’s important and turn down the rest — instead of turning everything up at the same time, as most hearing aids do.     On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by de Jonge to break down what it takes to disrupt a decades-old industry where five companies make 97% of the products, insurance won’t cover the cost, and innovation has been slow to arrive.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  How de Jonge went from mechanical engineering and a hedge fund career to building handheld ultrasound machines at Butterfly Network, and why that experience gave him the confidence to take on hearing aids next.  The AI architecture behind Fortell's approach, including a custom chip built by a former Google TPU designer.  Why the five companies that dominate the hearing aid industry have been so slow to innovate, and how that shaped Fortell's pitch to investors.  De Jonge's take on Apple's AirPods as both a hearing aid alternative and an at-home hearing test, and why he sees them as complementary rather than a threat.  The regulatory hurdles around remote hearing aid fittings, and how state-level telemedicine laws are shaping Fortell's path to scale.  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  1:14 Why Matt built Fortell   5:16 The problem with hearing aids: everything's just... loud   7:36 How Fortell's AI separates important sound from noise   12:12 The funding pitch that won over Founders Fund and Thrive   16:31 Hearing aids vs. AI wearables (Meta, Apple, Legato)   20:34 Pricing, insurance, and the hearing aid "cartel"   23:25 Scaling up: new clinics and remote fitting  26:57 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Anthropic researcher resigned this week, warning in a post on X that the company is “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. The company's own alignment lead even co-signed the message rather than walking it back. It's the kind of doomer warning the AI industry has flirted with before, but the timing, with Anthropic reportedly preparing for an IPO, makes it land differently.    On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the latest AI safety warning and what it says about the industry's race toward increasingly capable models. Plus, Apple's first big event under new CEO John Ternus and more of the week's headlines.    Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Apple leaned hard into AI at its hardware event, and how always-on features baked into the Watch and AirPods may matter more than the splashy new foldable iPhone  How Stokes Space's $1 billion raise reflects a launch market that's suddenly wide open now that SpaceX is winding down its Falcon rockets  Why investors poured $2 billion into coding startup Cognition at a $48 billion valuation, and what it says about how much room VCs think is left in AI coding  What a $50 million seed round for floating nuclear reactors says about the scramble to power AI data centers  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  3:28 Anthropic researcher's resignation warning  9:33 What's actually being done about AI risk?  15:56 Apple's AI-first hardware event  19:56 The case against a standalone AI wearable  21:53 Always-on listening: watch, AirPods, and privacy tradeoffs  26:43 The foldable iPhone's odds  27:16 Stoke Space raises $1B for a reusable rocket  31:17 Cognition raises $2B, betting on room for more AI coding players  34:13 BlueCore Energy's floating nuclear reactors  37:38 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI companies have been talking about superintelligent AI like it's inevitable, but recent safety incidents like OpenAI's Hugging Face breach are demonstrating the potential dangers of deploying AI systems that are more capable than humans. So what happens when we can't reliably control what these systems do?  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan is joined by Connor Leahy, an AI researcher, entrepreneur, and now the U.S. Executive Director of nonprofit ControlAI, which is pushing for a far more radical approach to AI safety: stopping companies from developing superintelligence altogether. Leahy explains why he thinks the risks have become too great to manage through alignment and containment alone, and how what sounded far-fetched six months ago is now being backed by a wave of new legislation.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  His take on the Sanders-Casar “Ban Superintelligence Act,” the parallel legislation in the U.K. that Control AI advised on, and why he thinks the U.S. bill may go further than necessary.  How he views frontier AI labs less as companies simply chasing returns and more as political actors, and what that means for the trillions of dollars being poured into data center buildouts.  Why Leahy thinks the real point of no return is when AI can build better AI, creating a potentially runaway cycle of self-improvement  The case for international “trust but verify” agreements, and why Leahy thinks it isn't actually in China's interest to build superintelligence.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's officially the Ternus era at Apple.   Tim Cook stepped down as CEO this week, handing the company to former hardware chief John Ternus, whose first memo promised a “huge launch next week” — timing that puts Apple's next iPhone event on his desk before he's even settled in. Cook isn't going far, though: he's staying on as executive chairman, focused on the kind of policy relationships that recently turned something as small as a map label into a very public balancing act. All of which raises an obvious question: what does the Ternus era look like, and how much rope will shareholders give him to figure it out?  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec and Sean O'Kane unpack what Ternus is walking into, why he may actually be better positioned to make progress on software than hardware in this new AI era, and more of the week's news.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Nvidia keeps making moves that look less like a chipmaker and more like a company trying to own the entire AI stack, from its Hugging Face acquisition to its investment in MediaTek and deeper compute deals  A chaotic week for robotaxis: Tesla's Cybercab event, Waymo's expansion into new cities, Zoox's first paid rides, and what happens when these companies start competing head-to-head  What Andreessen Horowitz's new $1.1 billion “Machine Age” fund signals about where early-stage AI hardware bets are headed  Why the $285 million acquisition of GoPro marks the end of an era for one of Silicon Valley's original consumer tech darlings  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  1:12 Tim Cook steps down & John Ternus takes over as CEO  13:33 Nvidia's spreading its AI bets  21:58 A big week for robotaxis: Tesla, Waymo, Zoox & Uber  29:09 a16z's $1.1B "machine age" fund and $8.5B growth fund  32:39 GoPro's $285M acquisition and pivot to AI/defense  36:34 Outro  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The internet has a trust problem, and it’s not just because social media feeds are filling up with AI slop. AI-generated text and images are now making their way into job applications, product reviews, and even insurance claims, leaving platforms and users alike scrambling to figure out what’s real.  A handful of startups have cropped up in the past couple of years to become the “trust layer” the internet needs — including Pangram. The startup recently snapped up $9 million for its AI detection system and landed a partnership with Substack, which is now using Pangram’s tech to show readers which of their favorite authors use AI to write their newsletters. Pangram also recently dropped a new AI image detection tool.  On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Pangram co-founder and CEO Max Spero joins Rebecca Bellan to dig into the promise of AI detection tools and where to draw the line between AI assisted and AI generated.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about:  Why Spero thinks the internet could be “dangerously close” to the dead internet theory becoming reality within a few years.  Why figuring out how much AI went into something is harder — and potentially more useful — than simply labeling it AI or human.  The stakes of getting AI detection wrong, especially when false positives involve sensitive images.  Why Spero thinks the “bottom tier” of writing jobs may be gone for good, while genuinely good human writing could become more valuable.  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  1:15 Building Pangram: from binary detector to gauging AI assistance  2:06 Why job applications, reviews, and Amazon are drowning in slop  5:39 How Pangram actually spots AI writing  9:26 Where people draw the line on AI-assisted vs. AI-generated  12:50 The false positive problem, and "America has a Pangram problem"  14:30 Detecting fake images, now that AI photos are scarily good  19:13 Competing with GPTZero, Winston, and building "core infrastructure"  21:43 Will good writing jobs actually come back?  23:36 Outro   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices