Silicon Valley's impact on the election and an acquisition making our HeadSpin
To kick off this week's news roundup, Kirsten walked us through Elon Musk’s recent declaration of his intent to move both SpaceX and X’s headquarters out of California to Texas. Whether or not he’ll see those plans through remains to be seen, but of course, the Equity crew had thoughts.
We then got into the deals of the week.
First up, we talked about Sequoia Capital’s emailing LPs in funds raised between 2009 and 2011 with an offer to buy up to $861 million worth of shares in Stripe. The move is notable for two reasons. For one, it’s evidence that LPs are increasingly antsy for liquidity in this dry IPO market. (2024 thus far has delivered just four venture-backed tech IPOs — Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik — in March and April.) The Equity team also discussed how Sequoia’s gesture reflects that the firm is confident not only of Stripe’s future, but in its ability to eventually exit in a way that will reward investors handsomely.
Next up, Rebecca Bellan led a discussion as to how Andrej Karpathy, former head of AI at Tesla and researcher at OpenAI, is launching Eureka Labs, an “AI native” education platform. We had a lively discussion on Karpathy’s new initiative and when and how AI is appropriate in the classroom.
We closed out the deals segment with Mary Ann’s scoop on PartnerOne’s acquisition of HeadSpin, a company whose founder was sentenced to prison for fraud earlier this year. Employees were upset that they got nothing for their options as part of the buyout, which Marina Temkin this week reported was valued at a mere $28 million.
The group then got into an in-depth conversation about Silicon Valley’s involvement in the election this year. Former President Donald Trump this week picked Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, as he runs to reclaim the office he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Vance, who’s best known for his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” spent years as a venture capitalist before leaving the industry when elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022. We also talked about Andreessen Horowitz’s controversial vocal support of Trump and the startup-related reasons why its leaders are backing the Republican nominee.
We wrapped up Equity with a look at Latin America’s startup scene and how it rebounded in funding in the second quarter, boosted by late-stage funding in the fintech sector.
It was a great episode, so give it a listen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
