# AI Pivot and Market Volatility in Tech Sector

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-16

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
In this year, we are 10,000 Electrofahrzeuge for Amazon Lieferungen in Guns Europa eingesets.
For Lieferungen wie Fußball for younger kicker.
10,000 electrofahrzeuge, and it's an email.
Basierend of geplant fahrzeugen unserer Lieferpartner in the EU and Gross Breton is end of 2006 and 20.
DKCFO Daniel Kampfer and Professor Silke Finken diskutieren we managed mindset an control to verlier.
In the new folder for Next Level Banking.
Introducing Newbird AI, a fully integrated GPU as a service and AI native cloud solutions provider.
On Wednesday.
Now, the rebranded AI company also announced a $50 million investment from an undisclosed institutional investor in the form of a convertible financing facility.
I gotta say, it's objectively pretty funny that Allbirds is becoming an AI company.
Not because it's unusual for companies to pivot, they do that all the time, but because of how extreme this pivot is.
I mean, the maker of the shoes once craved by the Silicon Valley Tech Set is now going to be a provider of GPUs.
It's somewhat absurd and risky, but you can see how the business came to this decision.
After the asset and brand sale, All Birds can keep the public company's shell.
It's been traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol bird, and then reuse it to invest in the hot AI sector.
The company saying that the financing and the asset sale are still subject to stockholder approval, with a meeting planned to take place on May 18th.
The company cites advancements in AI for the cuts.
While these changes are necessary to realize Snap's long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers.
The memo made public via an SEC filing reads.
It continues, we have already witnessed small squads leveraging AI tools to drive meaningful progress across several important initiatives, including Snapchat Plus, enhanced ad platform performance, and efficiency improvements in our Snap Life infrastructure.
Spiegel also wrote that the company is closing more than 300 open roles.
Snap had about 5,261 full-time employees as of December 2025.
The company saying the cuts will allow it to reduce its annualized cost base by more than $500 million by the second half of this year, helping to establish a clearer path to net income profitability.
Employees based in the good old USFA will receive four months of severance, healthcare coverage, equity vesting, and transition support.
OpenAI's $852 billion valuation is facing some skepticism from some of its own investors as the company scrambles to reorient itself around enterprise customers and you know, fend off Anthropic, according to the Financial Times.
Anthropic's annualized revenue jumped from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $30 billion by the end of March, driven largely by demand for its coding tools.
You see, one investor who's backed both companies told the Financial Times that justifying OpenAI's round required assuming an IPO valuation of 1.2 trillion dollars or more, making Anthropic's current $380 billion valuation look like a relative bargain.
The secondary market tells a similar story right now, where demand for anthropic shares has grown nearly insatiable, while open AI shares are trading at a discount.
Now, Sam Altman's been here before.
During his tenure leading Y Combinator, aggressive valuation inflation left some portfolio companies financially stranded, while others proved to be worth every penny and then some.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Fryer pushed back, telling the Financial Times that the company's $122 billion dollar raise, the largest private fundraising in history, was evidence of continued investor confidence.
Well, not everyone's persuaded.
Jay Doss, president of investment firm Sapphire Ventures, who's got no stake in either company, told the Financial Times he saw OpenAI as the netscape of AI, a reference to the once dominant browser that was overtaken by Microsoft and eventually absorbed by AOL.
Let's kick it off to producer Dennis for the latest in startup business news all in about one minute.
Imran, thank you.
And we begin with Pillar.
This platform helps commodity-driven businesses like those in metals, food, and airline companies manage financial risk.
They announced on Tuesday a $20 million seed round.
Pillar, founded in 2023, automates hedging processes businesses.
Hedging is when a company places a trade that can offset or cancel out losses from other priced trades.
Geopolitics has not been kind to the commodities market, which has seen much volatility in the past year.
The company's co-founder and CEO said the company uses AI to ingest and parse data from client contracts, cash flows, inventories, ERP software, spreadsheets, and even WhatsApp messages to continuously analyze exposure across commodities, FX, and freight.
It can then build and manage a hedge portfolio for its clients and adjust positions automatically based on market conditions, volatility, and the client's risk tolerance.
We'll see you here tomorrow, same tech time, same crunch channel.
And until then, find us at TechRunch.com.
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