AI hardware has taken on a new shape with Friend’s $99 necklace — a pendant that gives you an AI friend to talk to and … that’s about it. Friend’s pitch is that its wearable can help combat loneliness, but other AI hardware products that have come to market lately — like Humane’s Ai Pin and Rabbit’s r1 — have fallen short of expectations. Even OpenAI, the leader in the space, has come out later than expected with its hyper realistic AI assistant, and only today to a small “alpha group” of users, making it difficult to assess the product’s capabilities.
However, one AI buddy that seems to hit the mark, at least from a user design standpoint, is Heeyo and its chatbot and learning platform for kids. Rebecca Bellan covered Heeyo’s launch exclusively for TechCrunch.
That’s not all we talked about on today’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast.
On the other side of the AI coin is deepfakes and hallucinations. The team touched on this topic, noting how Meta’s AI assistant hallucinated when it said that there was no assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Rebecca asked Devin Coldewey if he thought AI companies should take greater care to block users from asking questions about sensitive topics until they could solve for hallucinations, and if they should block users from making deepfakes about certain A-list people, particularly during an election year. His answer? Yes, but it’s probably not as easy as it sounds.
Kirsten Korosec led the discussion around FranShares, a Chicago-based startup that lets people invest in franchise businesses starting with as little as $500 with a goal of providing passive income and portfolio diversification. Apparently, a lot of Gen Z and millennials are investing in franchises through this platform, which just raised a $4.2 million seed round led by Chicago Ventures with participation from The Pitch Fund and Litquidity Ventures. Kirsten asked Rebecca if she, as a millennial, would invest in a franchise, and her answer may surprise you.
Kirsten and Rebecca also talked about Kennet of London, a 25-year-old growth equity investor that just raised $287 million for its largest fund to date, and it’s a growth fund. Kennet’s approach is interesting because they focus on B2B SaaS companies that are founder owned and bootstrapped, and thus potentially more capital efficient.
Finally, the team discussed VC movings and shakings. Specifically, Alex Cook, a former partner at Tiger Global who oversaw some of its largest fintech investments and India deals, has left the firm after nearly seven years. Cook is the latest VC to leave a firm before the fund closed and he could see a return on investment. There must be something in the water.
We had a lot of fun this episode, so give it a listen!
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.