Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Devin Coldewey, Margaux MacColl, and Anthony Ha round up this week's startup and venture news, highlighting the $400 million Lightmatter raised and the importance of high-speed networking in fast-growing data centers. It starts with sex. Changes in the industry today, as well as in the coming years, will make this impressive round a little more understandable.
This week's sale continues with Paladin's Drone Play for first responders and law enforcement, and Abel, which aims to reduce the substantial backlog of paperwork that police officers encounter in their daily duties. Margaux said Abel founder Daniel Francis (who pretended to be fired to get the Twitter job from Musk) brings a chaotic energy that could shake things up.
Digging deeper, Anthony unravels the complex back and forth that is the WordPress vs. WP Engine debate. And we wonder why the obligations to the “open source community” and the obligations to the “open source community” are not completely clear. What does it mean for the open source ecosystem that one person (in this case, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg) still appears to wield so much influence? And what does it mean for the open source ecosystem? Can the same be said about Llama and other “open” AI solutions?
Finally, the staff discusses PitchBook's “disappointing” results, which show that despite being founded by founders and invested by investors, it hasn't generated huge returns. As it turns out, they weren't just there to change the world. What is causing this lack of liquidity? Is it the macroeconomic situation, the sector being invested in, a change in the VC's strategy… or something else? At least defensive and AI is doing well and Europe seems to be doing well too, so perhaps this is a US-specific thing? Please check back in a month.
Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo and posted every Wednesday and Friday.
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