# SpaceX IPO Windfalls, India AI Subsidies, and Reconfigurable Robotics

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-06-13

## Transcript

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I'm Imran Shaikh and your weekend edition of the Daily Crunch starts right now.
India's AI model output has been, well, slow compared to the US, Europe and China.
Only a few startups are releasing models and most of them, well, they're large language models or voice models.
So, to encourage more development, the government launched the India AI Mission, a roughly $1.2 billion initiative that, among other things, gives selected startups access to subsidized GPU compute in exchange for releasing their models.
publicly.
One of the 12 startups selected for the program, Avatar AI, has launched a new video model called Varya that is built to understand local context, such as identifying different festivals, food, and clothing.
The Peak15-backed startup, which focuses on creating video tools for e-commerce, didn't build Varia from scratch.
No, no, no.
It started with WAN 2.2, a publicly available video generation model released by Alibaba and used a technique called distillation, essentially compressing the model's capabilities into a leaner, faster version optimized for Avatar's specific use cases.
The results?
Well, it's a model that runs in four steps.
rather than one 2.2's 50, producing video 10 times faster and at a fraction of the cost.
Let's see what we've got in robotics news.
Humanoids aren't quite ready to replace factory workers, but the industry...
Cannot wait.
Faced with labor shortages, manufacturers have shown growing interest in startups that promise faster automation without the usual trade-offs.
That's the bet behind Thaker, an AI robotics startup that aims to go beyond robots trained for a single task.
You see, unlike humanoid robots designed around a fixed form, think Boston Dynamics, Thaker's machines are built to be reconfigured.
Their hands, arms, and overall form can be swapped out.
out or resize depending on the task, whether that's sorting packages, packing clothing, or handling bottles and cans in a warehouse.
That Inditex, Zara's parent company, signed on as an early backer is a signal of where Thaker's ambitions start, and not where they end.
The company's broader goal is to move beyond retail into heavier industrial settings like manufacturing, where the complexity and scale of manual tasks is even greater.
Rounding out the daily crunch, SpaceX lifted off on its first day as a public company, immediately jumping to $150 a share after it began trading on the Nasdaq, around 11% higher than the $135 figure at which it officially priced its IPO on Thursday.
The stock pop isn't a surprise.
The company's IPO was oversubscribed by 4X, according to Bloomberg, meaning many institutional investors didn't receive allocations and are likely buying shares on the open market.
The demand for SpaceX is also a function of its small float, with only about 4% of shares available for public trading, while early investors and employees hold the rest.
SpaceX also successfully lobbied a number of indexes, like the Nasdaq 100, to change their inclusion rules.
The company will now join those indexes in a matter of days, not months, increasing demand for SpaceX stock before other large institutions and funds start automatically buying.
The debut is also one of the largest windfalls in the history of venture capital.
The returns to Founders Fund, which invested $600 million in the company and owns a 3% stake, are estimated at more than $50 billion at the IPO price of $135, according to Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, Andreessen Horowitz's stake is worth more than $10 billion, and Sequoia's is valued at over $20 billion.
Debuting at $150 has most likely made founder Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire as well.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Ivan Mehta, Marina Temkin, Sean O'Kane, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here on Tuesday, and until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.