Equity (TechCrunch)

VCs are betting billions on AI's next wave, so why is OpenAI killing Sora?

March 27, 2026·37 min·3 clips
An 82-year-old Kentucky farmer turned down $26 million to build a data center on her family's 1,200-acre farm.
The setup is simple on purpose. Kirsten Korosek asks Anthony Ha whether he would take $26 million from a data center buyer for part of a farm, turning a headline into a question with dirt under its nails. Anthony does not posture. He says he would like to think the answer is no, then admits a real offer that large is harder to wave away in theory. The Kentucky farmer said no, and that answer gives the segment its weight. This is not just infrastructure demand on a spreadsheet. It is land, family ownership, and the kind of pressure a large tech project can bring to one community. Then the show heads into drones. The panel talks through a market that has been promised for years and may finally have enough technical and social momentum for some uses to work. Anthony brings New York into the frame. He compares possible drone delivery to e-bikes and delivery apps, which have already changed the city's streets, except drones would be harder to ignore. A sky full of food delivery drones over New York sounds less like a perk and more like a city argument waiting to happen. Lucid Bots gets the grounded case. Its $20 million raise and window washing focus make drones feel less like doorstep theater and more like a way to take people off dangerous skyscraper work. That use lands better with the panel. Urban window washing sounds plausible. Consumer home delivery sounds more suburban. The skepticism stays useful. Skydio, Amazon, and Google have all chased drone businesses without taking over the market, which is the part investors should sit with. The panel is not anti-drone. It is wary of pretending better tech magically fixes deployment, lawsuits, penalties, and public pushback. The closing point is plain enough: those remedies need work now, before the sky gets crowded.

As heard by us

Land, labor, and automation collide in a grounded look at data centers and robotics.

This Equity episode starts with a sharp, ordinary question: what happens when a data center wants part of a 1,200-acre family farm? The Kentucky story gives the conversation a concrete edge, and from there it moves into the messy middle of data-center expansion, local consent,…

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Why you'd press play

When you want a startup-tech conversation that moves from a $26 million farm offer to drones, bots, and data centers.

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