Inside TC’s Techstars investigation and how AI is accelerating disability tech

The Equity crew had a lot to parse this week. We had notes on wallet-as-a-service’ startup Ansa's latest fundraise, and how Alex initially misunderstood its business model. Then Kirsten talked us through a simply massive deal in the self-driving space, while Alex wanted to riff on Beehiiv and its own funding round. $33 million is no small Series B in 2024! From there, we had a few minutes to discuss Anna Heim's recent reporting on disability tech and how AI is taking and industry and accelerating it. Even better, there appear to be a mix of business models approached by the startups we discussed. That means that there could be many avenues to making tech that works better for more folks into real, and large businesses. To close out, Dominic-Madori Davis joined us to chat about her reporting on Techstars. The company has been shaking up its operations for some time now, leading to certain departures from its ranks. TechCrunch's deep-dive into how it all went down is well worth your time.