It’s hot IPO summer, and the MANGOS are ripe

Episode notes

The IPO market is back, and it's not the same companies leading the charge. FAANG had a good run, but a new acronym is taking over: MANGOS - Meta (or Microsoft, depending on who you ask), Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX. Half of that bunch is heading to public markets in the same window, and it's a stress test for investors, for valuations, and for what we can even expect from a public tech company in 2026. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane break down what this IPO moment actually means beyond the headline numbers, and who stands to benefit. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why Apple's biggest WWDC announcement might matter less than how they showed it, and what a $250M settlement had to do with the change How Waymo just turned Apple's abandoned self-driving dream into its next big proving ground What a $920 million-per-month compute deal between Google and SpaceX says about who's leading the AI infrastructure race How Sam Bankman-Fried's pardon request and a new Zuckerberg biopic somehow ended with the Equity team getting cast by ChatGPT

• What if the AI giants are building the roads, not the destinations? Chi-Hua Chien thinks he knows who wins61 / 100
• The US banned Anthropic's Fable 5 release, but the numbers don't seem to care36 / 100
• NEA's Tiffany Luck on AI IPOs, personal agents, and the ROI reckoning47 / 100
• The SpaceX IPO has finally arrived
• Andrew Yang on Noble Mobile, UBI, and why he's done waiting for policy to catch up