If you’ve been following Anthropic, you’ll know it’s been a busy year for the AI startup. Back in March, the company announced that it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Since then, it’s launched a blog for its Claude models and, according to Bloomberg reporting, partnered with Apple to power a new “vibe-coding” software platform.
Instead of our usual Friday news rundown, today’s episode of Equity brings you a conversation from this week’s TechCrunch Sessions: AI event in Berkeley. Our friend and co-host Max Zeff sat down with Jared Kaplan, co-founder and chief science officer at Anthropic.
Listen to the full conversation to hear more about:
- Who has direct access to Claude’s AI models, Windsurf’s response, and how it all ties into Anthropic’s broader goals around openness, safety, and sustainability.
- The company’s pivot away from chatbots and toward agentic AI systems that can perform real tasks.
- How internal tools like Claude Code are shaping the future of AI-powered development.
- What it means to build AI that enterprises can actually trust, and how that affects the way humans interact with software, work, and each other.
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.
Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network’s flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University.
Maxwell Zeff is a senior reporter at TechCrunch specializing in AI. Previously with Gizmodo, Bloomberg, and MSNBC, Zeff has covered the rise of AI and the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. He is based in San Francisco. When not reporting, he can be found hiking, biking, and exploring the Bay Area’s food scene.
