On today’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Devin Coldewey kicked off our Deals of the Week rundown with Piramidal, a startup that offers a foundational model for analyzing brain scan data that just raised $6 million. The premise behind the company is fascinating — its technology aims to help complement the work of nurses and doctors in neural ICUs by helping identify signs of things like an epileptic episode or a stroke.
Mary Ann Azevedo led the conversation around Comun, a neobank that offers immigrants in the U.S. financial services and banking products, with a focus on Latino immigrants. The fintech just raised $21.5 million in a round led by Redpoint Ventures, not that long after closing its seed round. It’s seeing fast growth — as well as a higher valuation.
Rebecca Bellan dug into a scoop she had about Fluid Truck and recent drama there. The startup, which was founded to disrupt the commercial vehicle rental industry, has apparently ousted its sibling co-founders — CEO James Eberhard and chief legal counsel Jenifer Snyder — in what sources describe as a hostile takeover.
We then moved into the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, and whether or not tech executives can, and should, be held responsible for what happens on their platforms. And lastly, we dug into what’s going on at Inflection after Microsoft poached its co-founders. That move has drawn attention from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and U.K., who are now investigating whether Microsoft was anticompetitive. The Equity crew discussed the practice of big tech companies using acqui-hires to get around antitrust regulation.
Honestly, we had so much to chat about, we could’ve gone on for a whole other episode. Get in on the fun, and give it a listen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every 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.