AI NewsThe DOJ is investigating a16z. What does this mean for venture capital?

The DOJ is investigating a16z. What does this mean for venture capital?

7:04 AM IST · August 22, 2026

Andreessen Horowitz has two partners sitting on the boards of companies that now compete with each other: Ben Horowitz at Databricks and Martin Casado at Fivetran. Nothing too scandalous on the surface, exceptthe Department of Justice has reportedly been investigating the arrangementfor almost a year, dusting off a 112-year-old antitrust law that’s rarely used against VCs. Board conflicts aren’t exactly new, and these companies weren’t necessarily direct competitors when a16z first invested in them. But as portfolio companies expand into each other’s markets, the DOJ’s scrutiny raises a much bigger question for venture firms: How do you manage board seats when the boundaries between your portfolio companies keep moving?On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into the a16z probe, what it could mean for VCs, and more of the week’s headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.

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Ex-Nvidia-turned-VC Amulya Vishwanath: ‘Physical AI is in its LEGO era’

It’s the moment everyone is waiting for — the ChatGPT moment for robotics, Amulya Vishwanath explained to TechCrunch’s Equity. She is the founder and managing partner of Techable Ventures, a VC firm focused on physical AI, which she started after spending nearly seven years as a product marketer at Nvidia. Before that, she held the same role at a company that was later bought by Intel and was a digital signal processing engineer at Interconnect Systems, which was later bought by the electronics manufacturer Molex. She stopped by Equity to talk about the future of physical AI — one of the industry’s latest buzzwords. “A lot of companies and experts have been talking about the ChatGPT moment for robotics,” she said, adding that right now the industry was more in a “LEGO era.” “There are a lot of foundational software and building blocks for robotics that are being rethought right now as we speak, and it’s super important in order for innovation to scale,” she continued. Right now, people are building the basics — the robotic hands or the actuators — that can one day come together and build that big-ticket-item, like a bunch of LEGOs coming together. There’s general- and special-purpose robots being built right now, too, and eventually, as people continue building them, they will get better and more advanced. “We’ve done this during the internet era,” she said. “We’ve done this long, long time ago with the Industrial Revolution. I think it’s just a matter of time before things fall into place.” “Talent is also going to be very critical,” she continued, adding elsewhere in the convo that talent is still a key definer of the U.S. market. This is one of the “moats” of her firm, she said, helping connect founders to top talent so they can stay competitive right now, as so much talent is going to big companies like Anthropic and Nvidia. She pointed out that she’s built up a strong network to help founders from her years of working in this space. “This just makes it a lot easier for me to be the strength or the first call for founders,” she said.

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