Musk v. OpenAI, and how can startups compete with Apple Intelligence?
Welcome back to Friday Equity! In today’s episode Equity podcast, Mary Ann, Haje and Becca dug into three very different but all super interesting deals of the week. Haje wanted to discuss Raspberry Pi’s debut on the public market, and we all agreed that what this profitable company has managed to build – a tiny affordable computer that fits into the palm of your hand – is very neat. Mary Ann then wanted to talk about InScope, a fintech which just raised a $4.3 million seed round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to automate financial reporting. Becca got to riff on Meowtel, a niche – and also profitable – startup focused on cat-sitting that has raised just $1 million in venture capital over its nine-year life. The trio then talked about all the Apple news (largely AI-focused) that came out of WWDC and its potential impact on the startup world. They then turned their attention to Elon Musk’s reaction to Apple’s announcement that it would be integrating ChatGPT into its iOS. While he clearly wasn’t happy about it, we discussed what his true motives for threatening to pull Apple devices from his companies might be. That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Monday with more tech and startup news. Talk soon!