Acquisitions are heating up, and Mercury eyes the fintech crown
Finally, some good news! This week, we were pleasantly surprised to see that FTX’s fraud victims would be getting some money back – even if it’s not as much as they might have hoped.
That wasn’t all, though: Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec, and Alex Wilhelm had plenty else to talk about this week on Equity.
We discussed why investors are drawn to Amae Health, which is building an in-person approach to mental healthcare in an increasingly digital space. We were also curious about Lucid Bots, a North Carolina startup that started out building drones to clean windows in tall buildings and has now become a robotics company.
Kirsten helped us understand what was behind Motional’s decision to delay its commercial robotaxi plans amid its restructuring, and the wider context around that.
We then dug into digital banking startup Mercury’s plans to branch out into software, and how it now fits into the increasingly crowded spend management landscape. There were also three M&A deals to go over this week (here, here and here), and we celebrated how refreshing that was considering M&A activity has been lighter than expected. (Spoiler: AI was involved in at least two of them).
Last but certainly not least, we close out the show with an announcement: After seven amazing years, Alex’s time with the podcast, and TechCrunch, is coming to a close. We’re excited to see what he does next, but we are sure going to miss him dearly. Thank you for everything, Alex!
This is not, however, the end of Equity. We’ll be back bright and early Monday morning with your tech and startup news, along with another round of Pitch Deck Teardown. Talk soon!
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.
