An Anthropic researcher resigned this week and warned on X that the company is “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.

” Notably, Anthropic‘s own alignment lead co-signed the message rather than publicly walking it back.

The warning echoes doomer rhetoric the AI industry has flirted with before, but the timing matters: Anthropic is reportedly preparing for an IPO, which gives the resignation and the co-signed safety warning a different weight.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane discuss the latest AI safety warning and what it says about the industry’s race toward increasingly capable models.

The episode also covers Apple’s first major event under new CEO John Ternus, where the company leaned hard into AI.

The hosts argue that always-on features baked into the Watch and AirPods may matter more than the splashy new foldable iPhone.

Other topics include Stokes Space’s $1 billion raise, which reflects a launch market that’s suddenly wide open now that SpaceX is winding down its Falcon rockets; why investors poured $2 billion into coding startup Cognition at a $48 billion valuation, and what that says about how much room VCs think is left in AI coding; and a $50 million seed round for floating nuclear reactors, tied to the scramble to power AI data centers.