There’s always something happening to OpenAI’s board

Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and more. 

To kick things off, Kirsten walked us through a recent court decision that provided a bit of relief for Elon Musk. 

Earlier this week, one of the many lawsuits Musk faces after firing 6,000 Twitter employees after his 2022 takeover was dismissed. The lawsuit, which was filed by Twitter’s former head of people experience and another ex-manager, alleged that X Corp. paid fired Twitter employees less severance than they were contractually promised. 

The result may be good news for Musk, but as the Equity pod noted, it doesn’t eliminate Musk’s legal troubles. Musk is facing at least one other lawsuit from CEO Parag Agrawal and three other former Twitter Inc. executives who are seeking $128 million in severance payments from X Corp. 

Next up, Rebecca broke down Microsoft’s decision to leave its observer seat on OpenAI’s board, after which the AI company will no longer host observers. The legacy tech giant said it has seen enough progress being made at OpenAI and is “confident in its direction,” but we’re not exactly buying that Microsoft would give up such a coveted spot so easily. We suspect that the decision was fueled by ongoing antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech’s influence over emerging AI players. 

After that, Becca talked about Duolingo’s deal to buy Hobbes, a Detroit-based animation and motion design studio. Hobbes is a company that Duolingo has worked with for years on several features, including Duolingo Music, so it’s interesting to see the acquisition happen at this stage. Maybe Hobbes was having money trouble and needed a lifeline? Either way, Duolingo is calling this an acqui-hire deal. While Hobbes isn’t an AI company, we make a prediction that we’ll see similar acquisitions of smaller AI startups as larger companies scoop up the AI startups they’re already working with. 

Continuing without their founders

We’ve been noticing a few stories lately that investigate what happens when a company’s founder or owner dies. Today, Rebecca went over the story of Unseen Capital, whose founder Kayode Owens passed away in 2021 just after raising $30 million. The VC’s mission was to help early-stage healthcare companies started by underrepresented founders. Pharma company Eli Lilly was one of Unseen’s LPs, and in a move to protect its own investment while signaling confidence in Unseen’s mission, has brokered a deal for Seae Ventures to acquire the unmoored VC. It’s a good fit, as Seae Ventures is another diversity-focused VC firm.

Meanwhile, a recent TC story on deep tech funding caught the Equity pod’s attention. The gist: a recent survey of 30 deep tech VCs from eight countries found that very technical CEOs raise larger rounds. The survey also noted that pre-seed and Series A deep tech hardware rounds were bigger in 2023 than in 2022.

While the survey seems to provide a rosy picture for technical CEOs, it does not provide a complete one. For instance, the survey focused on Europe, which got the Equity crew musing about whether those same stats would hold up in North America. 

And it followed rounds up through Series A. The Equity pod wondered if the results changed in Series B rounds and beyond. Plus, we think the rise of deep tech-focused funds may also play a role here too. 

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.