The other side of AI hype

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Hello, and welcome to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This is our Friday show, in which TechCrunch reporters sit down to talk through the key news of the week. This time around, Mary Ann Azevedo and Alex Wilhelm chewed through funding rounds and the trends prevalent today in Startup Land. Enjoy! (And in case you missed it, we recently interviewed Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee about how unicorns have evolved over the past decade.)

• Pomelo: $40 million more for Latin American fintech? It’s the perfect story for Mary Ann. Even better, we got growth data from the company to noodle on. It turns out you can indeed raise up rounds in 2024!
• Tandem: Alex chose Tandem’s seed round for his deal of the week, even if he doesn’t want to use the service itself. In short, couples of all types have different money management needs, which could make Tandem a potential hit.
• Briq: Mary Ann has been covering this company for some time, so we felt its recent extension round was well worth getting into.
• AI and the enterprise: AI is going to change everything; AI is going to make your job irrelevant; AI is going to eat your lunch. So we hear. The enterprise, however, is singing a slightly different tune.
• Valuations and their potential recovery: Sadly, it doesn’t seem too likely that we are about to see a massive rebound in startup valuations this year. The good news? It doesn’t seem too likely that we are about to see massive price erosion, either.