The Musk v. Altman trial came to a close this week, and the final arguments kept circling back to one question: can we trust the people in charge of AI? All of this is playing out as SpaceX charges toward what could be one of the largest IPOs in American history, with a whole generation of founders already spinning out of the Musk empire.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane break down the trial’s closing stretch and what the growing Elon Musk founder ecosystem looks like on the ground, and the other deals that caught our eye this week.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:16 Claude learns how to blackmail (Anthropic’s AI safety report)
03:20 Anduril’s $5B Series H
08:43 Mind Robotics and why investors can’t say no to RJ Scaringe
15:03 Vapi’s $50M Series B and the AI customer service moment
20:25 The Elon Musk founder machine: Tesla and SpaceX alumni
30:12 The startups stepping up to build data centers in space
32:50 The OpenAI trial wraps: Who trusts Sam Altman?
38:11 Outro
