AI NewsThe PhD students who became the judges of the AI industry

The PhD students who became the judges of the AI industry

2:42 AM IST · March 19, 2026

Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project tobeing valued at $1.7 billion. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-foundersAnastasios AngelopoulosandWei-Lin Chiangto determine how a team like theirs can build a neutral benchmark when the companies they’re ranking are also their backers. Listen to the full episode to hear: Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.

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Nscale adds former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo to its board ahead of potential IPO

Nscale, the buzzy U.K.-based AI data center startup, has appointed former OpenAI, Meta, and Instacart executive Fidji Simo to its board. Simo joins high-profile tech executives Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker, and Nick Clegg on Nscale’s board ahead of the startup’s anticipated IPO this fall. Formerly CEO of AGI deployment at OpenAI, essentially the No. 2 executive at the AI lab, Simoleft the company in Julyciting health reasons. She still advises the company on a part-time basis. Before OpenAI, Simo was chair and CEO of Instacart, where she led the company through its 2023 IPO. She also spent more than a decade at Meta, including as head of the Facebook app. Simo also sits on Shopify’s board. Nscale’s founder and CEO, Josh Payne, said Simo is one of the few leaders who understand what it means to scale products used by billions of people and the demands those products place on the underlying systems. “That’s what we’re building for at Nscale,” he said in a statement. “Fidji joins a board we’ve built deliberately, with the experience of scaling platforms to the largest in the world, and the independence, financial rigor and operating depth to which companies at this scale are held.” Nscale’s valuation has skyrocketed since it was founded just two years ago on the back of booming demand for AI infrastructure. The startup, which designs, builds, and operates AI data centers, is reportedly trying to raise up to $3.5 billion ahead of a planned IPO,Bloomberg reportedlast week, citing unnamed sources.

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An Anthropic researcher’s doomsday warning comes at a very interesting time

An Anthropic researcher resigned this week,warning in a post on Xthat the company is “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. The company’s own alignment lead evenco-signed the messagerather than walking it back. It’s the kind of doomer warning the AI industry has flirted with before, but the timing, with Anthropic reportedly preparing for an IPO, makes it land differently. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into the latest AI safety warning and what it says about the industry’s race toward increasingly capable models. Plus,Apple’s first big event under new CEO John Ternusand 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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Kimi-maker Moonshot AI targets $2B in annual revenue

One of China’s most prominent AI labs, Moonshot AI, believes it can turn its popular open-weight model into serious sales growth. On Friday,Bloomberg reportedthat the lab is targeting $2 billion in annualized revenue by the end of the year, double the company’s reported revenue run rate for August. It’s an aggressive goal that reflects the success of the company’s K3 model since its release this summer. While K3’s usage figures have declined slightly in recent months,OpenRouter datacurrently shows as many as 300 billion tokens being generated each day by K3 models on the system. Moonshot’s projected revenue is still dwarfed by that of OpenAI and Anthropic, which recent reports put at$40 billionand$65 billion, respectively. Because Moonshot’s model weights are freely available, the company has far lower margins than its closed-weight competitors. The rising projections show there’s still money to be made from open-weight AI models, even if they’re not as lucrative as closed-weight frontier models. Still, Moonshot’s model development practices remain controversial — if not downright illegal. Earlier this week, Anthropicaccused the companyof a long-running model distillation campaign that routed nearly 300,000 requests from Kimi directly to Claude Opus, effectively serving Opus in place of Kimi’s own models. In total, more than 23 million responses were collected from Anthropic models for use in Moonshot’s training, the company alleged.

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Final, final, final call for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Side Events

Theabsolute last chanceto apply to host an officialSide EventduringTechCrunch Disrupt 2026istonight, September 11, at 11:59 p.m. PT. No more extensions. No more chances. If you’re bringing your community to Disrupt, don’t just give them another place to gather. Give them a reason to show up — and give your organization a reason to host. A Side Event can help you: Put your team directly in front of founders, investors, customers, partners, and other decision-makers who can unlock your next deal, partnership, investment, hire, or collaboration. Create the kind of conversations that are harder to have on a crowded conference floor — and deepen relationships with the people most relevant to your business. Own the conversation around a topic your audience cares about and give your brand a meaningful role in the Disrupt ecosystem. Bring your existing network together while creating opportunities for members to meet new people, exchange ideas, and make valuable connections of their own. Approved Side Events may be promoted through TechCrunch’s Side Events page, Disrupt agenda, mobile app, newsletters, articles, and social channels. Give your community25% off Disrupt tickets, making your Side Event part of a larger experience — not a stand-alone gathering. The opportunity is bigger than hosting a party or meetup. Use Disrupt week to create relationships, generate opportunities, strengthen your brand, and put your organization at the center of the conversations shaping what’s next. Applications close tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. This is the final deadline. There will be no more extensions. To be considered for the official Side Events lineup,submit your application before midnight. Don’t just attend Disrupt. Make something happen around it. You don’t need to host a Side Event to make Disrupt work for your business. Get a ticket and use the week to source new customers and partners, meet investors, find talent, see what’s next in tech, and have the conversations that can move your business forward. Regular pricing ends September 26. Get your ticket before prices rise — and make sure you’re in the room for the people, ideas, and opportunities shaping what’s next. Get your ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

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The PhD students who became the judges of the AI industry

最新 AI 资讯

Nscale adds former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo to its board ahead of potential IPO

An Anthropic researcher’s doomsday warning comes at a very interesting time

Kimi-maker Moonshot AI targets $2B in annual revenue

Final, final, final call for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Side Events

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