# Defense Pivots, TV Media Shifts, and Hardware Exits

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-05-16

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
Here for you.
The numbers are in, and they're staggering.
YouTube viewers watch 2 billion hours of shorts on TVs each month.
I'm Imran Shaikh, and welcome to your weekend crunch.
Want to make some money?
Alright, just start building data centers.
Or build batteries to power data centers.
Or just pivot to defense.
Now, this isn't financial advice crunch, of course, but it's definitely what seems to be winning over public markets and private investors lately.
You see, Ford's nascent energy storage business, a fraction in size to Tesla's and won't be ready until next year, helped its stock jump more than it has in years.
Redwood Materials raised $425 million from blue-chip companies like Google and NVIDIA by pivoting to data center energy storage.
Cerebris just pulled off one of the hottest IPOs of 2026.
Investment in defense startups continues to pour in as well, with Anderl raising another $5 billion just this week.
It seems that any company with a remote chance at nabbing government contracts is trying to do just that.
Which brings us to GoPro.
The action camera company survived a lot over the years.
You see, for a while, during the 2010s, the term GoPro killer was almost as common as Tesla killer or iPhone killer, with people claiming everything from a TomTom action camera to Google's clips, remember that, would dethrone the California company that invented the category.
Well, survival does not necessarily mean success, though, and GoPro has struggled of late.
Sales are down, losses are up, and its stock price essentially flatlined at about $1 two years ago.
So, surprise!
Last month, GoPro announced the plan to explore defense and aerospace market opportunities.
Now look, it makes a certain amount of sense for a company that combines top-tier image quality with enough durability to withstand a motorcycle crash or a fall from space.
And the pivot was enough to nearly double the company's stock price for a few days.
But that, too, has fallen back to earth.
It seems the pivot to defense idea is not as bulletproof, forgive the pun, as GoPro's cameras after all.
So you can probably guess where this is going.
On Thursday, GoPro announced it hired investment bank Houlihan Loki to help evaluate a potential sale and other strategic alternatives.
Now, the company's board of directors said it recently received several unsolicited inbound strategic inquiries from parties across various sectors, including defense, consumer, and financial, which is a lot of words to effectively say, uh-oh.
Of course, it's not the first time GoPro has considered a sale.
Founder and CEO Nick Woodman was briefly on the table back in 2018.
But things are certainly now more dire for the company.
You see, not only are its financials deteriorating, the company announced last month that it's laying off a quarter of its workforce, which has already shrunk to a little more than 600 workers after once employing as many as 1,500.
GoPro was a tech darling 15 years ago, but like so many of us, it now finds itself navigating a more volatile world.
It's no surprise that a massively ballooning Pentagon budget looks like a viable path through the churn.
Short-form video is a format that's built for mobile.
These vertically-oriented videos are designed to fit the shape of, well, a smartphone.
But according to YouTube, this kind of content has become quite popular on the big screen.
It seems counterintuitive, right?
But the data's hard to argue against.
You see, YouTube viewers watch over 2 billion hours of YouTube Shorts, the platform's clips that run up to 3 minutes, on TVs each month.
The living room is YouTube's fastest-growing screen, and the Shorts experience is further helping connect viewers with the world's most active creator community from the comfort of their couch.
said Kurt Wilms, YouTube's Senior Director of Product Management for YouTube on TV, continuing, We've found that audiences increasingly want to watch their favorite content on the biggest screen at home, whether it's long-form content, a podcast, or a short.
The living room has become a major growth target for YouTube overall.
U.S.
viewers alone are watching over 200 million hours of YouTube content daily.
YouTube shows, shorts, and search results from users watching on TV.
So even if they didn't set out to watch a minute-long clip on the big screen, they might end up checking one out anyway.
Google TV, a platform from YouTube's parent company Alphabet, recently announced a short videos for you row on the Google TV feed, which is supposed to further boost watch time.
Because there's so much extra screen real estate available when watching a vertical video on a TV, YouTube has updated the viewing experience to show comments beside the video.
By tailoring shorts for the big screen, we unlocked a more immersive way for fans to engage with their favorite content while also creating a massive new stage for creators to reach global audiences and scale their businesses, said Sarah Ali, VP of Product Management for YouTube Shorts in a press release.
Now, this trend is even extended to podcast viewership, even though podcasts are generally an audio-first medium.
Streaming companies are increasingly betting on podcasts to become the new daytime talk show, which is something that people can turn on and watch, but also still get the gist if they get up to do something else while they listen to the TV from an adjacent room.
According to YouTube, viewers watched over 700 million hours of podcasts each month on living room devices in 2025, up from 400 million per month in 2024.
Netflix has invested heavily in video podcasts, too.
It signed deals with iHeartMedia, Barstool Sports, Spotify, and other studios to exclusively gain video rights to certain shows.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Sean O'Kane, Amanda Silberling and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
Have a great weekend, folks.
We'll see you here next week and until then find us at techcrunch.com.
Today's new StepStone test is on stepzone.