Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex  gathered to riff through the week's biggest startup and venture news. A big thank you to Becca for stepping in while Alex was on leave, and a note before we dive into topics that Natasha Mascarenhas will be back on the podcast next week!

Now, here's what we got into:

• Deals of the Week: Divert's $100 million round to tackle food waste, Trust & Will's $15 million round, and what's happening in the land of NFT sales.
• Boston: TechCrunch held a Boston City Spotlight this week, so we took a look at a few pieces that we wrote about the lovely city to our North. Boston for example has a pretty good list of reasons why it's worth considering as a place to build a startup, and investors in the area are pretty hyped about its resilience.
• AI, crypto, and venture hype cycles: The crypto venture capital boom has collapsed; but is there a new AI bubble forming? Not in the way that we expected, it turns out.
• Amazon and Better.com: Of all the things that we didn't expect to see this year, the latest Amazon-Better tie-up is up high on our list. We had more than a few thoughts.

And that is all we had time to chew on, friends. We will talk to you soon!

For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website. 

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Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.