On the latest episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan, Sean O'Kane, and I were joined by Shardul Shah, a partner at Wiz's largest shareholder Index Ventures. Shah walked us through his history with Wiz, which extends before Wiz itself ' he previously backed Adallom, the startup previously founded by Wiz's Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik. Read an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below. Shah kicked things off by noting, half-jokingly, that we may have been underselling things by calling the acquisition one of our deals of the week. Shardul: And more critically, it's no surprise that it's Wiz. Wiz is at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend. And those are central today in light of the AI era where every single workload needs to be secured. So we're super proud that we were the largest shareholder in the company. And yes, I think it's at least [the] deal of the month. Shardul: Is it six years or 16, is a question for us internally. About 10 years ago, I joined the board of Assaf, Roy, and Ami first company, Adallom. So we got a front row seat at how they make decisions, how they develop trust and how that evolved over time....

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Many artificial intelligence startup ideas are still little more than superficial 'wrappers' built on top of existing models. But as the AI model makers add more features, investors are wary of startups that could become so easily unnecessary. Case in point: when reviewing more 4,000 applications for the joint AI accelerator for India startups run by Google and venture firm Accel, 'wrapper' ideas dominated. But none of them were among the five startups for the latest cohort, Accel partner Prayank Swaroop told TechCrunch (pictured above). Announced in November, the AI-focused Atoms program by Google and Accel aims to back early-stage startups building AI products linked to India. Startups selected for the latest cohort will receive up to $2 million in funding from Accel and Google's AI Futures Fund, along with up to $350,000 in cloud and AI compute credits from Google, the firms said. Roughly 70% of the rejected applications were 'wrappers' ' startups that layered AI features such as chatbots on top of existing software but 'were not reimagining new workflows using AI,' Swaroop said....

The Chinese company, best known as TikTok's parent organization (and now a minority shareholder in its U.S. spinoff), launched Seedance 2.0 in China back in February. Brief videos generated by the model, including a clip featuring Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt, soon went viral and drew intense criticism from Hollywood. While one successful screenwriter declared that the footage meant, 'It's likely over for us,' studios quickly sent ByteDance a flurry of cease-and-desist letters, with Disney's lawyers accusing the company of a 'virtual smash-and-grab of Disney's IP.' ByteDance responded by promising to introduce stronger safeguards for intellectual property. Actively scaling' Fundraising' Planning your next launch'TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 delivers tactical playbooks and direct access to 1,000+ founders and investors who are building, backing, and closing.Register by March 13 to save up to $300....