Show Notes
It's officially the Ternus era at Apple.
Tim Cook stepped down as CEO this week, handing the company to former hardware chief John Ternus, whose first memo promised a “huge launch next week” — timing that puts Apple's next iPhone event on his desk before he's even settled in. Cook isn't going far, though: he's staying on as executive chairman, focused on the kind of policy relationships that recently turned something as small as a map label into a very public balancing act. All of which raises an obvious question: what does the Ternus era look like, and how much rope will shareholders give him to figure it out? On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec and Sean O'Kane unpack what Ternus is walking into, why he may actually be better positioned to make progress on software than hardware in this new AI era, and more of the week's news.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Why Nvidia keeps making moves that look less like a chipmaker and more like a company trying to own the entire AI stack, from its Hugging Face acquisition to its investment in MediaTek and deeper compute deals
A chaotic week for robotaxis: Tesla's Cybercab event, Waymo's expansion into new cities, Zoox's first paid rides, and what happens when these companies start competing head-to-head
What Andreessen Horowitz's new $1.1 billion “Machine Age” fund signals about where early-stage AI hardware bets are headed
Why the $285 million acquisition of GoPro marks the end of an era for one of Silicon Valley's original consumer tech darlings
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
1:12 Tim Cook steps down & John Ternus takes over as CEO
13:33 Nvidia's spreading its AI bets
21:58 A big week for robotaxis: Tesla, Waymo, Zoox & Uber
29:09 a16z's $1.1B "machine age" fund and $8.5B growth fund
32:39 GoPro's $285M acquisition and pivot to AI/defense
36:34 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Equity
It seems like every big AI player is building a personal agent. Meta has Muse, OpenAI launched Dots, and a startup called Instinct recently raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. But Eugenia Kuyda thinks the next generation of AI assistants needs to do more than book your restaurant reservations and find you hidden money in your Gmail.
Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt.
The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane took over the Builders Stage Tuesday morning to tackle a growing challenge for the AI industry: what happens when AI agents go off-script, and who’s responsible for keeping them in check?
Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access to their inboxes, files, and credit cards — if they can get websites to let them in.
Tristan Walker and Brynn Putnam both built and sold major consumer companies. Now, they’re building products designed to bring people together.