Theresa Loconsolo, Author at TechCrunch

Ben Horowitz’s tight ties with the Las Vegas Police Department — and why it matters

Theresa Loconsolo — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 15:55:20 +0000

Over the last few years, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and famed VC Ben Horowitz has donated at least $7.6 million to fund purchases by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, including new drones from a16z-backed Skydio. Skydio is not the first of a16z’s portfolio companies to benefit from these donations, either. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts […]

Marc Benioff says it’s ‘crazy talk’ that AI will hurt Salesforce, wants a billion AI agents in a year

Julie Bort, Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:10:00 +0000

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says the next big thing for enterprise software, particularly Salesforce, is AI agents — or software bots that will do limited tasks on their own taking those tasks off of human workers. “What if your workforce had no limits? Now, that is a question we could not ask in the last […]

Trump’s election throws tech regulation a curveball

Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, Margaux MacColl, Theresa Loconsolo — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 16:07:23 +0000

President-elect Donald Trump has made a slew of “day one” pledges, including dismantling President Biden’s AI policies. While we’re not sure exactly if Trump will take action the first day he takes office in January, it’s clear that a tech regulation shakeup is on the way. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin […]

Equity Live: Bret Taylor’s $4.5 billion startup and Waymo’s $5.6 billion round

Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:41:29 +0000

The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey and Margaux MacColl took over the Builders Stage to kick off day 2 of Disrupt with no shortage of conference highlights, startups deals and venture news to chew through. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Equity will be back with a special interview episode on […]

Stripe’s biggest acquisition yet, and what’s a16z doing with all of those Nvidia GPUs?

Theresa Loconsolo, Anthony Ha, Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 14:35:56 +0000

It’s no secret that Stripe has doubled down on its crypto offerings, enabling crypto purchases in the EU back in July and announcing a Pay with Crypto feature earlier this month. This week, the fintech giant made its dedication even clearer with its largest deal to date: its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for an […]

The race isn’t over for European AI startups and the upcoming ‘agentic revolution’

Rebecca Bellan, Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:21:10 +0000

The top U.S. tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple have deep enough pockets to spend tens of billions of dollars on AI development and infrastructure. Next in rank are heavy hitters like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, which are spending billions on AI. Then there are a handful of challengers, like Mistral and […]

Inside TC’s Techstars investigation and how AI is accelerating disability tech

Fri, 03 May 2024 14:15:05 +0000

The downturn in venture capital funding has impacted startups, VC firms, and accelerators alike. One company in the final category, Techstars, has been shaking up its operations for some time now, leading to a number of departures. TechCrunch got curious about what happened, so we dove deep into exactly how it all went down. We […]

A new venture capital supergroup is forming

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 01 May 2024 15:22:47 +0000

Startups are not shying away from big projects. That’s my takeaway from news that The Browser Company’s Arc browser is now generally available for Windows users, just as Island raised a massive grip of capital for its enterprise-focused browser tool. It’s very encouraging to see startups going after core pieces of technology and not just […]

Musk’s xAI shows there’s more money on the sidelines for AI startups

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 14:22:12 +0000

We’re off to an AI-heavy start to the week. OpenAI has a new deal with the Financial Times that caught our eye. Sure, it’s another content licensing deal, but there appears to be a bit more in the tie-up than just content flowing one way and money the other. We also dug into the xAI […]

Good news for Rubrik, bad news for TikTok and medium news for early-stage startups

Alex Wilhelm, Mary Ann Azevedo, Theresa Loconsolo — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 14:15:24 +0000

Rubrik’s strong IPO pricing and warm reception by the public markets after its listing add more weight to the perspective that the public markets are not as closed to tech startups as some thought. If Rubrik’s result isn’t enough to break the logjam, well, maybe there’s something else going on. But there was a lot more that […]

The TikTok ban clears key hurdle while Perplexity AI continues to shake up search

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:31:01 +0000

Well, if you are a big TikTok fan and live in the United States, I have some bad news for you: A bill that would force a sale of TikTok or ban it in the United States passed the Senate. And the president is expected to sign it. Given that China has made noise that […]

Salesforce’s silly deal dies, Rubrik’s IPO, and venture capital in space

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 14:20:37 +0000

Equity discusses the latest market news, upcoming earnings, IPOs, and what impact — if any — the recent bitcoin halving had on its value.

Notable Capital’s Hans Tung on the state of VC and the upside to down rounds

Mary Ann Azevedo, Theresa Loconsolo — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 14:30:49 +0000

To some investors, “down round” is a dirty phrase, but not to Notable Capital’s Hans Tung. Hans is a managing partner at Notable Capital, formerly GGV Capital, a venture firm focusing on investments in the U.S., Latin America, Israel, and Europe. Hans, whose portfolio includes the likes of Airbnb, StockX and Slack, sat down with […]

Tesla’s newsy week, and is fintech having a moment?

Alex Wilhelm, Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec, Theresa Loconsolo — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 14:05:09 +0000

It’s been more than a minute since Tesla went public, but the EV company was inescapable on TechCrunch this week. From layoffs to pricing changes and more, it was a week dyed deeply in Tesla colors so we had to chat through the latest. But that was just one element of what we got into […]

Andreessen Horowitz’s $7.2B new funds for a ‘new era’

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:57:54 +0000

What is worth $11 billion and wants to go to Mars to collect rocks? NASA’s mission to Mars to collect rocks that was expected to cost $11 billion and take ages. So, the U.S. space agency is throwing the doors open to get more input, and that means that startups are looking at an opportunity that […]

OpenAI plans new Tokyo office, Tesla lays offs thousands

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 14:25:12 +0000

Today on Equity, Tesla cuts staff, and OpenAI has plans for an office in Tokyo along with a new GPT-4 model for the Japanese language.

Beeper acquired by Automattic, fintech’s decline and YC’s lack of LatAm founders

Alex Wilhelm, Mary Ann Azevedo, Theresa Loconsolo — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:05:09 +0000

When it comes to news items that we love at TechCrunch, IPOs rank pretty darn high. Another great newsy bit that comes along less frequently than we’d like is a startup buying another startup. These deals are often very interesting as they either bring a gob of talent or technology to an already growing company, […]

A $60M venture fund with a twist, and more startup-on-startup acquisitions

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 14:25:13 +0000

Today on Equity we dig into Multiverse's acquisition of Searchlight, Guesty's massive Series F, Monad Labs and Cyera's mega-round.

What we’ve learned from the women behind the AI revolution

Alex Wilhelm, Theresa Loconsolo — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 14:05:07 +0000

The AI boom, love it or find it to be a bit more hype than substance, is here to stay. That means lots of companies raising oodles of dollars, a healthy dose of regulatory concern, academic work, and corporate jockeying. For startups, it means a huge opportunity to bring new technology to bear on a […]

From YC to IPO: Winter 2024 Demo Day, Rubrik and Ibotta

Alex Wilhelm, Mary Ann Azevedo, Rebecca Szkutak, Theresa Loconsolo — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 14:05:53 +0000

What a week, everyone. Two full days of Y Combinator demo day activity kept us busy, but the latest accelerator cohort’s launch was far from the only big story in startup land. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Mary Ann, Becca and Alex gathered to dig into favorites from the hundreds of new YC companies that pitched, […]