00:26:51 · Anthony Ha, Kirsten Korosec
[00:26:51] S0: Yeah. So this isn't the only acquisition that we wanted to talk about this week. We're We're about to talk about some other deals that I think on a normal week would seem like pretty sizable deals, but they are kind of dwarfed by by the the Marvell deal. But CrowdStrike paid $400,000,000 for a cybersecurity company called Fiddler AI and then 95,000,000 for another company called Dreadnode. It seemed like these, you know, deals kind of got packaged together in an announcement of, you know, CrowdStrike kind of making a big investment to kind of expand on the AI security side of things, which seems very well timed. [00:27:22] S1: Yeah. Cybersecurity is so hot right now. I wonder why.
00:27:22 · Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane
[00:27:22] S1: Yeah. Cybersecurity is so hot right now. I wonder why. [00:27:26] S2: Yeah. I mean, this is, like, one of those things where I wonder what the backroom process was like. Like, is this the kind of thing where it was these conversations were happening and then the last... You know, and then, you know, quote, unquote, Black October happened and they accelerated? Or I I would love to know more about what kind of pressure CrowdStrike felt it was under to go after acquisitions like this. And with so much up in the air about cybersecurity in general, I think we're gonna see a lot of... A lot more stuff like this where it's like a hardening around the biggest names in the sector because trust is such a big deal when it comes to, you know, cybersecurity in general, which sounds like a dumb statement, but, like, it... Knowing knowing the companies like CrowdStrike and knowing the players having a reputation, like, all that stuff is just going to have so much more of a premium as we move into more uncertain worlds.
00:28:20 · Anthony Ha, Kirsten Korosec
[00:28:20] S0: This actually gives me a chance to correct something I said when we did our discussion about the the PHP vulnerability a few weeks ago, which I did... When I did my post about it, I I already posted the correction. But I'll just mention because I think that when people have talked about that vulnerability, they've talked about it as something that was discovered by AI, which as our colleague Zach Whitaker pointed out, like, that's not true. It was discovered by human researchers, and they were participating in an OpenAI program. They used AI tools to actually explore some, like, you know, some of the, like, ways that this vulnerability could be exploited, but it wasn't... That giant vulnerability was not a case of AIs just going out and finding that thing. It sounds like that is a future that we are moving into, but I think all those forces that the the two of you are talking about, I think, are still in place, though, that there's gonna be a lot of pressure on cybersecurity companies to have, like, technology and plans for how they might deal with similar situations in the future. And it does seem like a market where, yeah, the incumbents are going to have a big advantage because trust and the desire to kind of have a single, you know, provider rather than, like, 10 different point solution seems like it's gonna be pretty compelling. [00:29:29] S1: Totally. And thank you for making that correction. We forgive you. [00:29:34] S0: Yeah. [00:29:35] S1: But it'll be interesting to see what happens.
00:29:35 · Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha
[00:29:35] S1: But it'll be interesting to see what happens. [00:29:37] S0: Oh, also, if anyone wants more detail about what actually happened, we had the CTO of Wiz on Equity last week, so go check that out. [00:29:44] S1: Yeah. You know what is another big trend? Is micro dramas, and that leads us to our last deal. And I actually had no idea the numbers were this big. So it's another one of those where I was like, oh, wow. Okay. I need to adjust my thinking here. Apparently, more than a 118,000,000 users watch microdramas every month as a serialized format. Elo Elo Story TV just raised $80,000,000 in a series c from Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal. And who knew that so much money could be made on microdramas? [00:30:20] S0: I'm mostly just excited because, you know, one of my... The millions of different roles I had at TechCrunch was as a media and entertainment reporter. And it just felt like for so long, you know, every VC... And, you know, NBCUniversal is in a VC. But the, like, the idea of investing in a media startup was so laughable that, obviously, who would do this? There's so many more lucrative and promising areas to invest in. And so it's exciting to see that that media companies can can raise money again, albeit from other media companies rather than from VCs.
00:30:20 · Anthony Ha, Sean O’Kane, Kirsten Korosec, S3
[00:30:20] S0: I'm mostly just excited because, you know, one of my... The millions of different roles I had at TechCrunch was as a media and entertainment reporter. And it just felt like for so long, you know, every VC... And, you know, NBCUniversal is in a VC. But the, like, the idea of investing in a media startup was so laughable that, obviously, who would do this? There's so many more lucrative and promising areas to invest in. And so it's exciting to see that that media companies can can raise money again, albeit from other media companies rather than from VCs. [00:30:50] S2: Quibi redeemed. Jeffrey Katzenberg wasn't wrong. He was just too early. So true. Well, you know what? That feels like as good a place as ever to end my final episode of the Equity podcast. We... It's been a pleasure doing this with you guys. But, you know, the the show will go on, and Equity Pod will be back next week. Follow along at Equity Pod on X and threads, and it's been a real one. Thanks, y'all. [00:31:19] S1: Thank you. Bye, Sean. We're gonna miss you. [00:31:23] S3: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch senior reporters and produced by Teresa Loconzola with editing by Cal. Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and find out what's next at techcrunch.com/events. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.