Foundry is shutting down in slow motion

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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.

We had a power trio on the show today! Mary Ann dropped some hot takes, Karyne jumped back in the saddle, and Alex tagged along for the ride. The tech news cycle is up and running at full speed, so we had a mountain of topics to get through. Here’s the rundown:

Deals of the Week: Rasa’s $30 million Series C to build a conversational genAI product had our tongues wagging. Karyne wanted to talk about the latest round at the intersection of AI and crypto, while Alex riffed on Hippo Harvest’s $21 million fundraise for indoor robot farming. Venture capital’s year of transition: After OpenView called it quits and Countdown Capital returned funds to LPs, it’s become clear that venture is evolving. Now, with Foundry saying it is not going to raise another fund after its current $500 million vehicle, we’re wondering about the direction venture capital is going to take here on out. YC’s new call for startups: Startup accelerator Y Combinator has a new request for startup list. Given the weight that YC carries in Startup Land, we had to dig into what it’s proposing. We’re a little skeptical of the near-term impact of spatial computing, but the other updates made good sense.