In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo and Becca Szkutak kick off the show dissecting a bill which aims to regulate AI at the model level. Naturally, some VCs and founders as well as students and professors are in an uproar about it. But we have to ask, is regulation in the name of safety such a bad thing? Short answer: It depends.

Then the trio got into the deals of the week, including OpenAI’s potential new investment in webcam maker Opal. We also discussed some major changes at the executive level within OpenAI and what that could mean about what’s going on internally. Becca then wanted to talk about a new startup called why?!, which was founded by ex-Clubhouse employees and aims to be a networking, messaging and dating app all in one. And Kirsten wanted to drill down on electric vehicle maker Lucid’s new $1.5 billion capital infusion from the Saudi wealth fund.

We then shifted gears to talk about just how many new unicorns were born in the U.S. this year so far and the surprising diversity of sectors they were in. And lastly, we dug into a couple of notable M&A deals in the fintech space, including one this week in which Payoneer scooped up a five-year-old Singaporean startup called Skuad for $61 million in cash as well as Stripe’s latest buy.

We had a blast this episode, so 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.

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

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