AI field trips and why we should stop setting self-driving cars on fire

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Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This morning, we have an interesting mix of stories that bring technology, politics and AI together in unique ways that’s well worth diving deep into.

• Stocks: It’s another big week with HubSpot, Instacart, Monday.com, Cisco and more reporting quarterly results. We should learn a lot about the state of software and hardware sales as last year ended, and what some critical tech names foresee for the rest of 2024.
• Crypto: Prices are up in the crypto world compared to last week. Coinbase reports its quarterly results this week as well, and that should give us a feel for how optimistic the leading North American crypto company is feeling.
• Waymo: Some folks set fire to a Waymo car in San Francisco, which is so dumb that I would pull my hair out if I had any.
• Bugcrowd: A $102 million round? You love to see it. Mega-rounds have become less common in recent quarters, so when bug-bounty-focused Bugcrowd raised nine figures, we had to talk about it.
• AI field trips: No matter where you are founded, you are going to need to keep tabs on the AI work going on in Silicon Valley.

We’ll be back on Wednesday morning at the latest!