The price differential for engineers is declining

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

The whole crew was here this week, with Danny and Natasha and Alex together with Grace and Chris to sort through a very, very busy week. Yep, somehow it is Friday again, which means it’s time for our weekly news roundup.

Here’s what we got to in our short window of time:

• The Jianzhi Education IPO: We have questions. The Chinese edtech company is looking to list in the United States after Chinese regulators clamped down on Didi and other China-based, American public offerings. Bravery? Stupidity? Brilliance? It’s hard to say, but we’ll be watching.
• Zomato’s IPO and the Indian tech scene: As Zomato puts the final touches on its impending public offering, we chatted about the listing and what it may mean for the larger, red-hot Indian startup market.
• The AI conversation: ZoomInfo bought Chorus.ai this week, which we had lots to say about, especially in light of Gong’s epic valuation. And Discord bought Sentropy, which also uses AI, albeit for a very different purpose. The great AI startup marketing push of years past has finally led to a few neat exits.
• Apple vs. Startups: That’s the gist of our chat about the BNPL space and Apple’s possible invasion of the hot startup market. In short, who’s at risk? We have a few ideas.
• The TechCrunch List is dead — long live commodity capital: We get into how a list that separates VCs by sector and stage makes no sense in today’s lawless investing world.
• Which brings us to a series of new funds. As Natasha pointed out, the scene for emerging fund managers has never looked more diverse. 
• Nooks raised a seed round, which turned us back into the world of virtual HQs. 
• And we closed with a quick digest of the latest morsels from the fake-meat startup smorgasbord, including what Gourmey is cooking, what Next Gen Foods is whipping up and how Beyond Meat plans to keep its market cap sizzling.

Like we said, a busy week! Chat you all on Monday morning, early.