Tech
The DeepMind trio who built a poker AI are now making money for quant hedge funds
Three former DeepMind researchers who created an AI that beat humans at poker have now applied the same technology to trading stocks — and the bet appears to be paying off. Their Prague-based AI lab, EquiLibre Technologies, is now valued at $500 million after raising an undisclosed-sum Series A, TechCrunch learned.
The round was led by Creandum, and, although the VC also declined to disclose the size of the round, vice president Cameron Sellers confirmed that it was the largest single investment the firm “has ever made in one go into a company,” he told TechCrunch.
The common denominator between poker and Wall Street is that they are well suited for reinforcement learning, an AI training technique where self-learning models are incentivized by rewards. According to Martin Schmid, EquiLibre CEO, “The nice thing about trading and markets is that the scoring is super simple: how much money did the agent make?”
This isn’t just game money. In partnership with quant firm Tower Research Capital, EquiLibre’s algorithms have been trading billions in daily volume across the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The startup claims its agents have been doing well since their rollout on crypto markets in 2025, and now on stock exchanges, with “a perfect record of zero negative months since inception,” meaning they have finished each month with their investments up overall.
By applying its AI to quant hedge funds, the startup is in a field where automation is commonplace and, if successful, improvements can quickly turn into cash. That made the startup appealing to Creandum, Sellers said.
“The potential total addressable market of trading in the financial markets is one of the biggest on earth, and there are countless funds over the years that have generated quantums of profit that make most venture-backed successes look small,” Sellers said. But he noted that EquiLibre explicitly defines itself as “a lab first, not a finance firm.”
Schmid and his two founders — CTO Rudolf Kadlec and CSO Matej Moravcik — don’t have a background in finance, and it is not what drives them, he told TechCrunch. “I’m not doing this because I’m excited about making markets efficient. I’m doing this because we are all excited about building new things that have never been built before, and this is a lot of fun to build,” Schmid said.
The prospect of frontier AI by by DeepMind alumni is an area of hot pursuit by VCs as well. Another recent such example is Ineffable Intelligence, which recently raised 1.1 billion. Most of these are based in the U.K., but there are notable exceptions, including EquiLibre.
In the case of EquiLibre’s founding trio, they were visiting PhD students at the Google-owned company’s first international AI research office in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (which Alphabet shut down in 2023.) While there, they built DeepStack, the first AI program to defeat pro players at no-limit poker, also known as Texas hold ’em. They also worked with professors who are now part of the startup’s high-profile advisory board — including Rich Sutton, who went on to receive the Turing award in 2024 for his work on reinforcement learning.
To build their startup, EquiLibre’s founders decided to move back to their home country, Czechia. “This is where we had a lot of people we had worked with, and there was a large Czech diaspora at Google and other places,” Schmid said. “These were our friends, so we told them, ‘Hey, guys, we are moving back to Prague, do you want to join us?’”
That helped EquiLibre build its initial team back in 2022 and reach its current headcount of 25 people; but according to Schmid, that choice of location keeps paying dividends. Compared to San Francisco, “It’s much easier to keep the good people here, because there’s not a new sexy AI thing happening every two months.”
Not that EquiLibre is the only hot AI startup in town. BottleCap AI is based in the same building.
Still, this is one of the more notable AI companies in the region for talent. It next plans to scale its compute infrastructure, bringing online what it expects will be one of the largest compute clusters in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
While the startup also declined to disclose its total funding to date, Schmid said it previously raised two other funding rounds, with pre-seed backers including CEE-focused VC firm Credo, which also backed ElevenLabs and UiPath. According to Dealroom data, EquiLibre’s $10 million seed round was led by Blossom Capital at a $140 million valuation.
Sellers confirmed that the Series A $500 million valuation was a big jump. But it also comes after the winds have changed favorably for reinforcement learning (RL), including in trading. “When we started, people were skeptical,” said Schmid. But now RL is the standard. “Because we started four years back, we believe we are ahead.”
Still, there is a risk that the startup will get leapfrogged by competitors. Trading giant Jane Street, for instance, states it already uses RL with LLMs, “or whatever else we need to train good models.” It also claims it has “tens of thousands of high-end GPUs,” while EquiLibre is seeking to squeeze more compute out of way fewer chips and “get more from less,” Schmid said.
Considering how profitable Jane Street is, EquiLibre will have to play its cards well in order to reach its goal to be known as “the AI lab in trading.” But this isn’t poker, and there might be no losers. Says Schmid: “This is not a winner-takes-all market.”
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Tech
‘Odyssey’ director Christopher Nolan calls AI an obvious ‘Trojan horse’
Christopher Nolan, the Oscar-winning director whose new version of “The Odyssey” is currently conquering the box office, said it’s been “pretty encouraging” to see deep skepticism of AI, especially from young people.
Nolan was responding to a question from interviewer Hugo Travers, who publishes on YouTube under the name HugoDécrypte. Travers brought up the legendary Trojan horse, which plays a key role in Nolan’s film — just as the horse was a gift concealing murderous Greek invaders, he wondered if AI might be something “that you welcome in your daily life” only to see it become “something else and something darker.”
Laughing, Nolan responded, “I think AI is a Trojan horse that everybody knows the Greeks are inside.” He later described the technology as “a transparent horse, it’s made of glass.”
“I’ve never seen a technology advancing so rapidly [that’s been] so completely rejected by the public,” he said. “Everybody’s suspicion of it is so extreme, particularly young people. The reaction to AI videos online and people my children’s age immediately calling it ‘AI slop’ and coining that term and just putting it in a box.”
In Nolan’s view, this is “a very healthy skepticism, because technology is always going to give us great gifts, as you say, but it has to be viewed with skepticism.” Similarly, he said, “The motives of the people giving it to us also have to be viewed with skepticism. That’s when we’ll get the best out of a new technology, rather than just blind faith that everything’s going to be great.” (Meanwhile, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been angrily posting about the film’s nonwhite and transgender cast members.)
Nolan didn’t get more specific about what he views as the threat from AI, but the technology has been a growing source of concern in Hollywood and was a major focus during the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023. The Directors Guild of America, where Nolan is president, also won some generative AI protections in its most recent contract.
The director has been famously resistant to other technologies, including smartphones; his embrace of film can make him seem simultaneously like a Luddite and a pioneer, with “The Odyssey” becoming the first feature film to be shot entirely on Imax film and cameras.
When The New York Times recently asked Nolan if he thinks of himself as a technophobe, he replied, “I think of myself as a techno-skeptic,” and said his love of film comes from the fact that it’s “better in terms of representing the way the eye sees the world than any digital imaging system I’ve seen.”
“I embrace new technology all the time, but it tends to be sold to people at the expense of systems that might still be valid and viable,” Nolan said. “That’s what I saw in my industry — throwing the baby out with the bath water. We almost lost film!”
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Tech
Federal employees can download TikTok on their work phones again
The Department of Justice says that federal employees can now download TikTok on their government devices, according to Reuters.
A 2022 law banned federal employees from using the short-form video app on those devices, but the DOJ reportedly says the law no longer applies, thanks to a deal transferring ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a joint venture backed by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. (Oracle serves as the security partner for the new joint venture, while previous owner ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake.)
The DOJ memo reportedly says President Donald Trump has cleared “employees of Executive Branch agencies” to “download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency’s discretion and consistent with all applicable workplace policies.”
Following the ban focused on government employees and devices, the app was banned more broadly across the United States. But just as the law took effect early last year, the app only went down briefly before Trump repeatedly delayed the move and urged service providers to restore access.
Tech
All the EVs that were discontinued or killed off in the U.S. this year
The Honda Prologue, you may have heard, is officially dead — a decision the company confirmed to TechCrunch, removing the last all-electric vehicle from the automaker’s U.S. portfolio. The Prologue’s departure signals more than Honda’s EV backpedaling. It also illustrates a broader EV industry retreat from the U.S. market (in stark contrast to the rest of the world).
The demise of the Honda Prologue got us thinking: What other EVs have left the U.S., and why?
The end of the $7,500 federal tax credit had an outsized effect on EV sales in the United States. But there are other reasons behind the winnowing choices, including tariffs, changing consumer tastes, costs, company priorities, and regulatory action. According to data published in July by Kelley Blue Book and Cox Automotive, 247,226 EVs were sold in the second quarter or about 5.8% of the total market. While EV sales grew between the first and second quarters of 2026, they are still down from the same period last year (and before that tax credit ended in fall 2025).
Still Americans are still buying EVs, and there are new EVs entering the U.S. market — the Rivian R2 is one example. And there are signs of a slow recovery. Fourth quarter 2025 sales were 36% lower than the same period in 2024. This year that gap has narrowed, albeit still below sales figures from the previous year. For example, EV sales in Q2 were 20.5% lower than the same period in 2025.
Even with a recovery underway, automakers are pulling the plug on many EV modes. Here are those ones that have left or are leaving. TechCrunch will periodically update this list of EVs that have left, or are leaving, the U.S. market in 2026.
Afeela
Ah, Afeela we never even knew ya.
The Afeela got its start as the Vision S, a prototype announced by Sony in 2020 at the Consumer Electronics and that ended up being one of the big, surprising reveals of the annual tech trade show. Honda entered the picture in 2022 when the two Japanese conglomerates announced a joint venture; they showed off an Afeela-branded prototype the following year.
In the months and years that followed, there was constant barrage of updates about the Afeela, which seemed to be everywhere, and yet nowhere. It was even displayed at TechCrunch Disrupt one year.
The Afeela, despite the marketing blitz, never made it into production. In March 2026, the joint venture gave up on the two Afeela-branded EVs. The move followed Honda’s decision, announced just a two weeks before, to cancel three EVs planned for the U.S. market.
Honda (and Acura!)
It was just a couple of years ago that Honda declared its EV ambitions with its O Series, including a mid-sized SUV prototype that debuted at the CES 2025 tech trade show and its futuristic Saloon and Space-Hub concepts the year before. The SUV, which was slated for production at Honda’s “EV Hub” factory in Ohio, was supposed to debut in North America in the first half of 2026.
Honda stopped development of the Acura RDX, Honda O sedan and SUV in March 2026 as part of a major overhaul of the company’s EV plans. The company blamed U.S. tariffs and Chinese competition for the decision.
There was also chatter at the time that Honda was planning to stop production of the Prologue, but there was no official announcement until July 16 when CarBuzz was the first to report that the Prologue program was ending. TechCrunch confirmed with Honda that the Prologue was going out of production.
The death of the Series 0 is difficult to measure since it never went into production. The Prologue represented more grounded goals than the O Series, and one that actually went into production and sold to U.S. consumers. The Prologue was a product of a partnership with General Motors — it is built at GM’s Ramos Assembly Plant in Mexico — and closely related to the Chevrolet Blazer EV. And it did OK for awhile, selling roughly 33,000 units in 2024 and 39,000 in 2025, before the tax credit ended and sales went into a free fall.
Hyundai
The Korean automaker has actually done quite well selling EVs to Americans. But it has made a few changes based on changing economics. In March, the company said it would no longer sell the Hyundai Ioniq 6 in the U.S., a decision that was likely tied to tariffs. The Ioniq 6 is made in South Korean and imported to the U.S., while its Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 models are assembled at its Georgia factory.
The company has said it will continue to import its more expensive, lower volume N-model of the Ioniq 6.
Nissan
Nissan decided last year it would not produce a 2026 model year of its all-electric Ariya SUV for the U.S. market. And it doesn’t appear to be returning. Nissan first unveiled the Ariya in 2020 and planned to start selling it in Japan the following year.
The Ariya was the first all-electric to come out of Nissan since the early EV pioneer introduced the Leaf hatchback a decade ago.
Polestar
Swedish EV maker Polestar, owned by Chinese automotive giant Geely, has been forced to leave U.S. over the country’s ban on Chinese-connected vehicle technology. Polestar needed specific authorization from the U.S. Department of Commerce to continue importing and selling its vehicles in the United States.
Without it, Polestar has been effectively banned from the United States. The company said it would continue selling its existing stock of Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 vehicles in the U.S., and that it will “continue to support customers, including providing access to its service network.” The Polestar 3 was assembled at a factory in South Carolina and in Chengdu, China.
Volvo Cars, Polestar’s sibling company that is also owned by Geely, did receive the authorization.
Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X
Tesla announced in January that it would end production of the Model S sedan and Model X SUV to make way for what the company views is the future. And it’s not a traditional electric sedan or SUV. In Tesla’s view, the future is AI, autonomy, and robots. It’s worth noting that sales of the S and X have fallen steadily over the years as consumers turned to its high volume and cheaper vehicles, the Model 3 and Model Y.
The last Model S and X vehicles rolled off the assembly line this spring. The company recently removed the assembly lines for the S and X at its Fremont, California factory to make room for production of its Optimus robots.
Volkswagen
Volkswagen has pulled back on the ID. 4 electric SUV and the ID Buzz.
In April, Volkswagen said it would no longer produce the ID.4 at its U.S. factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee in a shift to high-volume vehicles like its upcoming gas-powered Atlas SUV. The company said, at the time, U.S. customers will be able to buy the ID.4 until the current inventory runs out. VW said it expects U.S. inventory to last into 2027.
To be clear, Volkswagen has said the ID Buzz is merely on a hiatus and will return in 2027. But there is no 2026 model.
There are, however self-driving versions of the ID buzz currently being tested in the United States. Volkswagen subsidiary MOIA America and Uber started testing autonomous microbuses in Los Angeles in April in preparation for a robotaxi service that is supposed to launch in late 2026. When the service initially launches there the vehicles will have himan safety operators.
Volvo
Volvo decided in March that it would pull its subcompact EX30 and EX30 Cross Country variant from the U.S. market. The company said at the time that production for the U.S. would end sfter the summer. The EX30 had a promising start. It recieved a lot of attention prior to it official entry into the U.S. in 2025, and it was the company’s more affordable EV option.
Volvo does plan to continue selling the larger, all-electric EX60 and EX90 SUVs in the United States.
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‘Odyssey’ director Christopher Nolan calls AI an obvious ‘Trojan horse’
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