Labubu, the ugly-cute plush toy from Chinese company Pop Mart, is turning into a massive business — and it’s on track to make $1 billion this year, exceeding the sales of Barbie and Hot Wheels.
And while Labubus are physical objects, not digital ones, they epitomize the invasion of an over-the-top online aesthetic into the offline world, described in a recent New Yorker essay as “IRL brain rot.”
On Friday’s episode of the Equity podcast, your hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha try to understand why Labubu has become so popular and what it says about the collapsing divide between the internet and the real world. Are Labubus more than just the latest iteration of ’90s Beanie Babies?
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
- Google’s cringey, celebrity-filled Pixel event
- Self-driving startup nvidia-is-latest-investor-to-back-av-startup-nuro-in-203m-funding-round/">Nuro’s $203 million Series A, with Nvidia joining as an investor
- OpenAI’s attempt to woo the media after a rocky launch for GPT-5
- A fresh $1 billion funding for AI startup Databricks
- Why VCs are excited about robotic startups like FieldAI
As always, Equity will be back for you next week, so don’t miss it!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us o Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity o X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll talk to you next time.
We’re always looking to evolve, and by providing some insight into your perspective and feedback into TechCrunch, you can help us! Fill out this survey to let us know how we’re doing.
