If you’re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don’t mention AI | TechCrunch
Commencement season has come around again — and this year, a couple speakers have discovered that it’s tough to get graduating students excited about a future shaped by artificial intelligence.
Last week, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, gave a speech at the University of Central Florida acknowledging that we’re living in a time of “profound change,” which can be both “exciting” and “daunting.”
“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” Caulfield declared — prompting the students in the audience to begin booing, getting louder and louder until Caulfield chuckled, turned to the other speakers, and asked, “What happened?”
“Okay, I struck a chord,” she said. Caulfield then tried to resume her speech, saying, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — only to be interrupted again by the audience, this time by their loud cheers and applause.
But Schmidt also got loud boos when he told students, “You will help shape artificial intelligence.” The booing was persistent enough that Schmidt tried to speak over it, insisting, “You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.”
To be fair, AI isn’t becoming a third rail at every graduation ceremony. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently spoke at Carnegie Mellon’s commencement, and he didn’t seem to get any audible pushback when he said that AI has “reinvented computing.”
Still, it’s not exactly surprising to find some students in a booing mood. In a recent Gallup poll, only 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it’s a good time to find a job locally, a steep drop from 75% in 2022.
“I too would loudly boo at the prospect of this next industrial revolution if I was in my early twenties, unemployed, and had aspirations for my future greater than entering prompts into an LLM,” Merchant wrote.
Even when graduation speeches didn’t mention AI explicitly, “resilience” was a recurring theme this year. Schmidt himself acknowledged that there is “a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.”
Caulfield, meanwhile, might also have misread her audience of arts and humanities graduates. One student said that before mentioning AI, Caulfield already started to lose them with her “generic” praise of corporate executives like Jeff Bezos.
Another graduate, Alexander Rose Tyson, told The New York Times, “It wasn’t one person that really started the booing. It was just sort of like a collective, ‘This sucks.’”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Commencement season has come around again — and this year, a couple speakers have discovered that it’s tough to get graduating students excited about a future shaped by artificial intelligence.
Last week, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, gave a speech at the University of Central Florida acknowledging that we’re living in a time of “profound change,” which can be both “exciting” and “daunting.”
“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” Caulfield declared — prompting the students in the audience to begin booing, getting louder and louder until Caulfield chuckled, turned to the other speakers, and asked, “What happened?”
“Okay, I struck a chord,” she said. Caulfield then tried to resume her speech, saying, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — only to be interrupted again by the audience, this time by their loud cheers and applause.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced a similar response when he brought up AI at a University of Arizona speech on Friday.
In Schmidt’s case, the criticism actually began before the speech itself, with some student groups calling for him to be removed as commencement speaker due to a lawsuit in which a former girlfriend and business partner accused Schmidt of sexual assault. (He has denied the allegations.) According to a local news report, the booing began even before Schmidt took the stage.
But Schmidt also got loud boos when he told students, “You will help shape artificial intelligence.” The booing was persistent enough that Schmidt tried to speak over it, insisting, “You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.”
To be fair, AI isn’t becoming a third rail at every graduation ceremony. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently spoke at Carnegie Mellon’s commencement, and he didn’t seem to get any audible pushback when he said that AI has “reinvented computing.”
Still, it’s not exactly surprising to find some students in a booing mood. In a recent Gallup poll, only 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it’s a good time to find a job locally, a steep drop from 75% in 2022.
That pessimism isn’t solely a response to the rise of AI (a shift that even tech industry workers are worried about), but journalist and tech industry critic Brian Merchant suggested that for many students, AI has become “the cruel new face of hyper-scaling capitalism.”
“I too would loudly boo at the prospect of this next industrial revolution if I was in my early twenties, unemployed, and had aspirations for my future greater than entering prompts into an LLM,” Merchant wrote.
Even when graduation speeches didn’t mention AI explicitly, “resilience” was a recurring theme this year. Schmidt himself acknowledged that there is “a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.”
Caulfield, meanwhile, might also have misread her audience of arts and humanities graduates. One student said that before mentioning AI, Caulfield already started to lose them with her “generic” praise of corporate executives like Jeff Bezos.
Another graduate, Alexander Rose Tyson, told The New York Times, “It wasn’t one person that really started the booing. It was just sort of like a collective, ‘This sucks.’”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
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Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at $10 billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a $75 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just $400 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a $450 million valuation despite an announced $1 billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at $10 billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a $75 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just $400 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a $450 million valuation despite an announced $1 billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at $10 billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a $75 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just $400 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a $450 million valuation despite an announced $1 billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
ASUS has launched a Battery Finder microsite that will make laptop battery replacement easy for its customers. Using this facility, consumers can enter their laptop model and find a compatible battery. The system also finds the locations nearest to them where such batteries are available at exclusive ASUS outlets and channel partners. Consumers can even contact ASUS’s authorized service centers for assistance.
The battery replacement program supports many of ASUS’s most popular laptop series. Customers with Vivobook laptops can access genuine replacement batteries through the initiative. Several ROG gaming laptops are also part of the program. ASUS has further expanded coverage to include ExpertBook, ProArt, and TUF models. The Battery Finder platform helps users confirm compatibility before visiting a store or service center.
ASUS Strengthens Its After-Sales Support Network
As part of enhancing its customer support services, ASUS has extended its post-sale service network in various parts of India. This has included areas such as Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Punjab, and others. ASUS has made this service available as part of its Assurance Program. The organization’s main aim is to provide reliable and effective service, warranties, and an enhanced customer experience.
Apart from increasing the number of battery sources, ASUS is also working to help consumers manage their batteries effectively. Consumers are advised on how to charge their laptop batteries to ensure that their performance remains high. ASUS also highlights the need to control laptop temperature and have devices serviced regularly.
ASUS has launched a Battery Finder microsite that will make laptop battery replacement easy for its customers. Using this facility, consumers can enter their laptop model and find a compatible battery. The system also finds the locations nearest to them where such batteries are available at exclusive ASUS outlets and channel partners. Consumers can even contact ASUS’s authorized service centers for assistance.
The battery replacement program supports many of ASUS’s most popular laptop series. Customers with Vivobook laptops can access genuine replacement batteries through the initiative. Several ROG gaming laptops are also part of the program. ASUS has further expanded coverage to include ExpertBook, ProArt, and TUF models. The Battery Finder platform helps users confirm compatibility before visiting a store or service center.
ASUS Strengthens Its After-Sales Support Network
As part of enhancing its customer support services, ASUS has extended its post-sale service network in various parts of India. This has included areas such as Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Punjab, and others. ASUS has made this service available as part of its Assurance Program. The organization’s main aim is to provide reliable and effective service, warranties, and an enhanced customer experience.
Apart from increasing the number of battery sources, ASUS is also working to help consumers manage their batteries effectively. Consumers are advised on how to charge their laptop batteries to ensure that their performance remains high. ASUS also highlights the need to control laptop temperature and have devices serviced regularly.
#ASUS #Expands #Access #Genuine #Laptop #Battery #Replacements #IndiaAsus">ASUS Expands Access to Genuine Laptop Battery Replacements Across India
ASUS has introduced a new initiative to make genuine laptop battery replacements easier for customers across India. Through this initiative, customers can now replace their laptop batteries with ease and get proper service and warranty advantages in the process. Rather than opting for risky third-party alternatives, customers can now purchase official ASUS batteries. This initiative covers not only regular laptops but also gaming laptops.
Battery Finder Tool Simplifies the Replacement Process
ASUS has launched a Battery Finder microsite that will make laptop battery replacement easy for its customers. Using this facility, consumers can enter their laptop model and find a compatible battery. The system also finds the locations nearest to them where such batteries are available at exclusive ASUS outlets and channel partners. Consumers can even contact ASUS’s authorized service centers for assistance.
The battery replacement program supports many of ASUS’s most popular laptop series. Customers with Vivobook laptops can access genuine replacement batteries through the initiative. Several ROG gaming laptops are also part of the program. ASUS has further expanded coverage to include ExpertBook, ProArt, and TUF models. The Battery Finder platform helps users confirm compatibility before visiting a store or service center.
ASUS Strengthens Its After-Sales Support Network
As part of enhancing its customer support services, ASUS has extended its post-sale service network in various parts of India. This has included areas such as Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Punjab, and others. ASUS has made this service available as part of its Assurance Program. The organization’s main aim is to provide reliable and effective service, warranties, and an enhanced customer experience.
Apart from increasing the number of battery sources, ASUS is also working to help consumers manage their batteries effectively. Consumers are advised on how to charge their laptop batteries to ensure that their performance remains high. ASUS also highlights the need to control laptop temperature and have devices serviced regularly.
Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom gets an action figure. Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead has “moved away” from familiar favorites. Two new horror movies explore poodle breeding and the Civil War. They’re here already! You’re next! It’s Morning Spoilers!
Brine
Deadline reports Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) and Dave Annable (Lioness) will star in Brine, a “supernatural Civil War thriller” from director B.J. Golnick. Co-starring Jonah Wharton, Sissy Sheridan, and Grayson Lay the story concerns “a family of Confederate deserters who escape the Union bombardment of Fort Pulaski with a cache of stolen gold and disappear into the Georgia marshlands. When they take refuge in a remote plantation house, what first appears to be salvation slowly reveals itself as part of something ancient, predatory and impossible to escape.”
Untitled Spy Comedy
Deadline also had word Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a currently untitled “spy comedy” at Netflix from director McG. Said to be “based on a short story by Sean Lewis,” the story follows “two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, and whose wives become fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood.”
Breeder
Variety reports Daniel Doheny, Dot Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, and Tanaya Beatty will star in Breeder, a horror movie from director Alex Goyette that sounds quite a bit like Sssssss with poodles. The film concerns “an eccentric poodle breeder who lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. As he soon learns, there’s a catch.”
Evil Dead Burn/Evil Dead Wrath
In a recent interview with Deadline, Bruce Campbell stated the Evil Dead franchise has “moved away” from Ash Williams, Sam Raimi, and the cabin in the woods.
No, no. I think I think basically from Evil Dead Rise on, Ash is… you know, they wanted some little gag of Ash at the end of the movie. We did that as a lark. He’s not part of any big overriding story or scheme. [The Evil Dead has] done three things: We moved away from the cabin, we’ve moved away from Sam Raimi, we’ve moved away from Ash and Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Evil Dead Rise made the most of any money we’ve made from any Evil Dead, so far, and it validated the fact that we can get away from those main elements. You’ve got to find a new audience, because the original Evil Dead fans, you get some of them, you’re not going to get all of them, because they like those original elements. They like me and Sam and Ash and all that sort of crap.
Man of Tomorrow
Lex Luthor pulls a ray gun on Superman in newly-leaked photos from the Man of Tomorrow set.
David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult filming “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” in Atlanta
— Avengers Updates (@AvengersUpdated) June 7, 2026
Toy Story 5
Taylor Swift has released a music video for her song from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack comprised entirely of Jessie clips.
The Last of Us
According to the Director’s Guild of Canada (via Screen Rant), filming on the third season of The Last of Us has temporarily ceased beginning June 1 and will not resume until June 28. The reason for the hiatus is not currently known.
Ghostbusters: Night Shift
Finally, Netflix has revealed the new Ghostbusters animated series is officially titled Night Shift and is slated for release sometime next tear.
Can’t contain this one any longer. Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an original animated series, is coming to Netflix in 2027. pic.twitter.com/mZvvmpAnG0
Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom gets an action figure. Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead has “moved away” from familiar favorites. Two new horror movies explore poodle breeding and the Civil War. They’re here already! You’re next! It’s Morning Spoilers!
Brine
Deadline reports Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) and Dave Annable (Lioness) will star in Brine, a “supernatural Civil War thriller” from director B.J. Golnick. Co-starring Jonah Wharton, Sissy Sheridan, and Grayson Lay the story concerns “a family of Confederate deserters who escape the Union bombardment of Fort Pulaski with a cache of stolen gold and disappear into the Georgia marshlands. When they take refuge in a remote plantation house, what first appears to be salvation slowly reveals itself as part of something ancient, predatory and impossible to escape.”
Untitled Spy Comedy
Deadline also had word Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a currently untitled “spy comedy” at Netflix from director McG. Said to be “based on a short story by Sean Lewis,” the story follows “two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, and whose wives become fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood.”
Breeder
Variety reports Daniel Doheny, Dot Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, and Tanaya Beatty will star in Breeder, a horror movie from director Alex Goyette that sounds quite a bit like Sssssss with poodles. The film concerns “an eccentric poodle breeder who lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. As he soon learns, there’s a catch.”
Evil Dead Burn/Evil Dead Wrath
In a recent interview with Deadline, Bruce Campbell stated the Evil Dead franchise has “moved away” from Ash Williams, Sam Raimi, and the cabin in the woods.
No, no. I think I think basically from Evil Dead Rise on, Ash is… you know, they wanted some little gag of Ash at the end of the movie. We did that as a lark. He’s not part of any big overriding story or scheme. [The Evil Dead has] done three things: We moved away from the cabin, we’ve moved away from Sam Raimi, we’ve moved away from Ash and Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Evil Dead Rise made the most of any money we’ve made from any Evil Dead, so far, and it validated the fact that we can get away from those main elements. You’ve got to find a new audience, because the original Evil Dead fans, you get some of them, you’re not going to get all of them, because they like those original elements. They like me and Sam and Ash and all that sort of crap.
Man of Tomorrow
Lex Luthor pulls a ray gun on Superman in newly-leaked photos from the Man of Tomorrow set.
David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult filming “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” in Atlanta
— Avengers Updates (@AvengersUpdated) June 7, 2026
Toy Story 5
Taylor Swift has released a music video for her song from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack comprised entirely of Jessie clips.
The Last of Us
According to the Director’s Guild of Canada (via Screen Rant), filming on the third season of The Last of Us has temporarily ceased beginning June 1 and will not resume until June 28. The reason for the hiatus is not currently known.
Ghostbusters: Night Shift
Finally, Netflix has revealed the new Ghostbusters animated series is officially titled Night Shift and is slated for release sometime next tear.
Can’t contain this one any longer. Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an original animated series, is coming to Netflix in 2027. pic.twitter.com/mZvvmpAnG0
#Ghostbusters #Cartoon #Title #Release #DateEvil Dead Burn,Ghostbusters: Night Shift,Man of Tomorrow,Morning Spoilers,Toy Story 5">The New ‘Ghostbusters’ Cartoon Gets a Title and Release Date
Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom gets an action figure. Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead has “moved away” from familiar favorites. Two new horror movies explore poodle breeding and the Civil War. They’re here already! You’re next! It’s Morning Spoilers!
Brine
Deadline reports Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) and Dave Annable (Lioness) will star in Brine, a “supernatural Civil War thriller” from director B.J. Golnick. Co-starring Jonah Wharton, Sissy Sheridan, and Grayson Lay the story concerns “a family of Confederate deserters who escape the Union bombardment of Fort Pulaski with a cache of stolen gold and disappear into the Georgia marshlands. When they take refuge in a remote plantation house, what first appears to be salvation slowly reveals itself as part of something ancient, predatory and impossible to escape.”
Untitled Spy Comedy
Deadline also had word Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a currently untitled “spy comedy” at Netflix from director McG. Said to be “based on a short story by Sean Lewis,” the story follows “two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, and whose wives become fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood.”
Breeder
Variety reports Daniel Doheny, Dot Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, and Tanaya Beatty will star in Breeder, a horror movie from director Alex Goyette that sounds quite a bit like Sssssss with poodles. The film concerns “an eccentric poodle breeder who lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. As he soon learns, there’s a catch.”
Evil Dead Burn/Evil Dead Wrath
In a recent interview with Deadline, Bruce Campbell stated the Evil Dead franchise has “moved away” from Ash Williams, Sam Raimi, and the cabin in the woods.
No, no. I think I think basically from Evil Dead Rise on, Ash is… you know, they wanted some little gag of Ash at the end of the movie. We did that as a lark. He’s not part of any big overriding story or scheme. [The Evil Dead has] done three things: We moved away from the cabin, we’ve moved away from Sam Raimi, we’ve moved away from Ash and Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Evil Dead Rise made the most of any money we’ve made from any Evil Dead, so far, and it validated the fact that we can get away from those main elements. You’ve got to find a new audience, because the original Evil Dead fans, you get some of them, you’re not going to get all of them, because they like those original elements. They like me and Sam and Ash and all that sort of crap.
Man of Tomorrow
Lex Luthor pulls a ray gun on Superman in newly-leaked photos from the Man of Tomorrow set.
David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult filming “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” in Atlanta
— Avengers Updates (@AvengersUpdated) June 7, 2026
Toy Story 5
Taylor Swift has released a music video for her song from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack comprised entirely of Jessie clips.
The Last of Us
According to the Director’s Guild of Canada (via Screen Rant), filming on the third season of The Last of Us has temporarily ceased beginning June 1 and will not resume until June 28. The reason for the hiatus is not currently known.
Ghostbusters: Night Shift
Finally, Netflix has revealed the new Ghostbusters animated series is officially titled Night Shift and is slated for release sometime next tear.
Can’t contain this one any longer. Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an original animated series, is coming to Netflix in 2027. pic.twitter.com/mZvvmpAnG0
![If you’re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don’t mention AI | TechCrunch
Commencement season has come around again — and this year, a couple speakers have discovered that it’s tough to get graduating students excited about a future shaped by artificial intelligence.
Last week, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, gave a speech at the University of Central Florida acknowledging that we’re living in a time of “profound change,” which can be both “exciting” and “daunting.”
“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” Caulfield declared — prompting the students in the audience to begin booing, getting louder and louder until Caulfield chuckled, turned to the other speakers, and asked, “What happened?”
“Okay, I struck a chord,” she said. Caulfield then tried to resume her speech, saying, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — only to be interrupted again by the audience, this time by their loud cheers and applause.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwYkHS8jvSE[/embed]
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced a similar response when he brought up AI at a University of Arizona speech on Friday.
In Schmidt’s case, the criticism actually began before the speech itself, with some student groups calling for him to be removed as commencement speaker due to a lawsuit in which a former girlfriend and business partner accused Schmidt of sexual assault. (He has denied the allegations.) According to a local news report, the booing began even before Schmidt took the stage.
But Schmidt also got loud boos when he told students, “You will help shape artificial intelligence.” The booing was persistent enough that Schmidt tried to speak over it, insisting, “You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.”
To be fair, AI isn’t becoming a third rail at every graduation ceremony. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently spoke at Carnegie Mellon’s commencement, and he didn’t seem to get any audible pushback when he said that AI has “reinvented computing.”
Still, it’s not exactly surprising to find some students in a booing mood. In a recent Gallup poll, only 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it’s a good time to find a job locally, a steep drop from 75% in 2022.
That pessimism isn’t solely a response to the rise of AI (a shift that even tech industry workers are worried about), but journalist and tech industry critic Brian Merchant suggested that for many students, AI has become “the cruel new face of hyper-scaling capitalism.”
“I too would loudly boo at the prospect of this next industrial revolution if I was in my early twenties, unemployed, and had aspirations for my future greater than entering prompts into an LLM,” Merchant wrote.
Even when graduation speeches didn’t mention AI explicitly, “resilience” was a recurring theme this year. Schmidt himself acknowledged that there is “a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.”
Caulfield, meanwhile, might also have misread her audience of arts and humanities graduates. One student said that before mentioning AI, Caulfield already started to lose them with her “generic” praise of corporate executives like Jeff Bezos.
Another graduate, Alexander Rose Tyson, told The New York Times, “It wasn’t one person that really started the booing. It was just sort of like a collective, ‘This sucks.’”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#youre #giving #commencement #speech #dont #mention #TechCrunchcommencement speeches,Eric Schmidt,gloria caulfield](https://i3.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/university.jpg?resize=1200%2C641&ssl=1 "If you’re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don’t mention AI | TechCrunch
Commencement season has come around again — and this year, a couple speakers have discovered that it’s tough to get graduating students excited about a future shaped by artificial intelligence.
Last week, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, gave a speech at the University of Central Florida acknowledging that we’re living in a time of “profound change,” which can be both “exciting” and “daunting.”
“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” Caulfield declared — prompting the students in the audience to begin booing, getting louder and louder until Caulfield chuckled, turned to the other speakers, and asked, “What happened?”
“Okay, I struck a chord,” she said. Caulfield then tried to resume her speech, saying, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — only to be interrupted again by the audience, this time by their loud cheers and applause.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwYkHS8jvSE[/embed]
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced a similar response when he brought up AI at a University of Arizona speech on Friday.
In Schmidt’s case, the criticism actually began before the speech itself, with some student groups calling for him to be removed as commencement speaker due to a lawsuit in which a former girlfriend and business partner accused Schmidt of sexual assault. (He has denied the allegations.) According to a local news report, the booing began even before Schmidt took the stage.
But Schmidt also got loud boos when he told students, “You will help shape artificial intelligence.” The booing was persistent enough that Schmidt tried to speak over it, insisting, “You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.”
To be fair, AI isn’t becoming a third rail at every graduation ceremony. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently spoke at Carnegie Mellon’s commencement, and he didn’t seem to get any audible pushback when he said that AI has “reinvented computing.”
Still, it’s not exactly surprising to find some students in a booing mood. In a recent Gallup poll, only 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it’s a good time to find a job locally, a steep drop from 75% in 2022.
That pessimism isn’t solely a response to the rise of AI (a shift that even tech industry workers are worried about), but journalist and tech industry critic Brian Merchant suggested that for many students, AI has become “the cruel new face of hyper-scaling capitalism.”
“I too would loudly boo at the prospect of this next industrial revolution if I was in my early twenties, unemployed, and had aspirations for my future greater than entering prompts into an LLM,” Merchant wrote.
Even when graduation speeches didn’t mention AI explicitly, “resilience” was a recurring theme this year. Schmidt himself acknowledged that there is “a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.”
Caulfield, meanwhile, might also have misread her audience of arts and humanities graduates. One student said that before mentioning AI, Caulfield already started to lose them with her “generic” praise of corporate executives like Jeff Bezos.
Another graduate, Alexander Rose Tyson, told The New York Times, “It wasn’t one person that really started the booing. It was just sort of like a collective, ‘This sucks.’”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#youre #giving #commencement #speech #dont #mention #TechCrunchcommencement speeches,Eric Schmidt,gloria caulfield")
![Mercor’s Brendan Foody calls out Sequoia over ‘dual-pricing’ valuation tricks | TechCrunch
In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a million Series B at a billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just 0 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a 0 million valuation despite an announced billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Mercors #Brendan #Foody #calls #Sequoia #dualpricing #valuation #tricks #TechCrunchMercor,Sequoia Partners,Valuations](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/GettyImages-1258486979.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 "Mercor’s Brendan Foody calls out Sequoia over ‘dual-pricing’ valuation tricks | TechCrunch
In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a million Series B at a billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just 0 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a 0 million valuation despite an announced billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Mercors #Brendan #Foody #calls #Sequoia #dualpricing #valuation #tricks #TechCrunchMercor,Sequoia Partners,Valuations")
![The New ‘Ghostbusters’ Cartoon Gets a Title and Release Date
Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom gets an action figure. Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead has “moved away” from familiar favorites. Two new horror movies explore poodle breeding and the Civil War. They’re here already! You’re next! It’s Morning Spoilers! Brine Deadline reports Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) and Dave Annable (Lioness) will star in Brine, a “supernatural Civil War thriller” from director B.J. Golnick. Co-starring Jonah Wharton, Sissy Sheridan, and Grayson Lay the story concerns “a family of Confederate deserters who escape the Union bombardment of Fort Pulaski with a cache of stolen gold and disappear into the Georgia marshlands. When they take refuge in a remote plantation house, what first appears to be salvation slowly reveals itself as part of something ancient, predatory and impossible to escape.” Untitled Spy Comedy Deadline also had word Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a currently untitled “spy comedy” at Netflix from director McG. Said to be “based on a short story by Sean Lewis,” the story follows “two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, and whose wives become fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood.”
Breeder Variety reports Daniel Doheny, Dot Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, and Tanaya Beatty will star in Breeder, a horror movie from director Alex Goyette that sounds quite a bit like Sssssss with poodles. The film concerns “an eccentric poodle breeder who lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. As he soon learns, there’s a catch.”
Evil Dead Burn/Evil Dead Wrath In a recent interview with Deadline, Bruce Campbell stated the Evil Dead franchise has “moved away” from Ash Williams, Sam Raimi, and the cabin in the woods. No, no. I think I think basically from Evil Dead Rise on, Ash is… you know, they wanted some little gag of Ash at the end of the movie. We did that as a lark. He’s not part of any big overriding story or scheme. [The Evil Dead has] done three things: We moved away from the cabin, we’ve moved away from Sam Raimi, we’ve moved away from Ash and Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Evil Dead Rise made the most of any money we’ve made from any Evil Dead, so far, and it validated the fact that we can get away from those main elements. You’ve got to find a new audience, because the original Evil Dead fans, you get some of them, you’re not going to get all of them, because they like those original elements. They like me and Sam and Ash and all that sort of crap. Man of Tomorrow Lex Luthor pulls a ray gun on Superman in newly-leaked photos from the Man of Tomorrow set. David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult filming “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” in Atlanta 05/06/26 pic.twitter.com/goNKFF8CSw — 🐤 (@hsufhkshndk11) June 6, 2026 Avengers: Doomsday A new slate of tie-in action figures provides the best looks yet at Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor in Avengers: Doomsday.
First look at Hasbro’s Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor action figures for ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’ 📷: @idlehandsblog pic.twitter.com/MiqHxoWKWT — Avengers Updates (@AvengersUpdated) June 7, 2026 Toy Story 5 Taylor Swift has released a music video for her song from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack comprised entirely of Jessie clips. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDU4GB1PTxc[/embed] The Last of Us According to the Director’s Guild of Canada (via Screen Rant), filming on the third season of The Last of Us has temporarily ceased beginning June 1 and will not resume until June 28. The reason for the hiatus is not currently known. Ghostbusters: Night Shift Finally, Netflix has revealed the new Ghostbusters animated series is officially titled Night Shift and is slated for release sometime next tear. Can’t contain this one any longer. Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an original animated series, is coming to Netflix in 2027. pic.twitter.com/mZvvmpAnG0 — Ghostbusters (@Ghostbusters) June 6, 2026 Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Ghostbusters #Cartoon #Title #Release #DateEvil Dead Burn,Ghostbusters: Night Shift,Man of Tomorrow,Morning Spoilers,Toy Story 5](https://i2.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/Morning-Spoilers-June-8-1280x853.jpg?ssl=1 "The New ‘Ghostbusters’ Cartoon Gets a Title and Release Date
Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom gets an action figure. Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead has “moved away” from familiar favorites. Two new horror movies explore poodle breeding and the Civil War. They’re here already! You’re next! It’s Morning Spoilers! Brine Deadline reports Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) and Dave Annable (Lioness) will star in Brine, a “supernatural Civil War thriller” from director B.J. Golnick. Co-starring Jonah Wharton, Sissy Sheridan, and Grayson Lay the story concerns “a family of Confederate deserters who escape the Union bombardment of Fort Pulaski with a cache of stolen gold and disappear into the Georgia marshlands. When they take refuge in a remote plantation house, what first appears to be salvation slowly reveals itself as part of something ancient, predatory and impossible to escape.” Untitled Spy Comedy Deadline also had word Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a currently untitled “spy comedy” at Netflix from director McG. Said to be “based on a short story by Sean Lewis,” the story follows “two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, and whose wives become fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood.”
Breeder Variety reports Daniel Doheny, Dot Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, and Tanaya Beatty will star in Breeder, a horror movie from director Alex Goyette that sounds quite a bit like Sssssss with poodles. The film concerns “an eccentric poodle breeder who lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. As he soon learns, there’s a catch.”
Evil Dead Burn/Evil Dead Wrath In a recent interview with Deadline, Bruce Campbell stated the Evil Dead franchise has “moved away” from Ash Williams, Sam Raimi, and the cabin in the woods. No, no. I think I think basically from Evil Dead Rise on, Ash is… you know, they wanted some little gag of Ash at the end of the movie. We did that as a lark. He’s not part of any big overriding story or scheme. [The Evil Dead has] done three things: We moved away from the cabin, we’ve moved away from Sam Raimi, we’ve moved away from Ash and Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Evil Dead Rise made the most of any money we’ve made from any Evil Dead, so far, and it validated the fact that we can get away from those main elements. You’ve got to find a new audience, because the original Evil Dead fans, you get some of them, you’re not going to get all of them, because they like those original elements. They like me and Sam and Ash and all that sort of crap. Man of Tomorrow Lex Luthor pulls a ray gun on Superman in newly-leaked photos from the Man of Tomorrow set. David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult filming “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” in Atlanta 05/06/26 pic.twitter.com/goNKFF8CSw — 🐤 (@hsufhkshndk11) June 6, 2026 Avengers: Doomsday A new slate of tie-in action figures provides the best looks yet at Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor in Avengers: Doomsday.
First look at Hasbro’s Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor action figures for ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’ 📷: @idlehandsblog pic.twitter.com/MiqHxoWKWT — Avengers Updates (@AvengersUpdated) June 7, 2026 Toy Story 5 Taylor Swift has released a music video for her song from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack comprised entirely of Jessie clips. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDU4GB1PTxc[/embed] The Last of Us According to the Director’s Guild of Canada (via Screen Rant), filming on the third season of The Last of Us has temporarily ceased beginning June 1 and will not resume until June 28. The reason for the hiatus is not currently known. Ghostbusters: Night Shift Finally, Netflix has revealed the new Ghostbusters animated series is officially titled Night Shift and is slated for release sometime next tear. Can’t contain this one any longer. Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an original animated series, is coming to Netflix in 2027. pic.twitter.com/mZvvmpAnG0 — Ghostbusters (@Ghostbusters) June 6, 2026 Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Ghostbusters #Cartoon #Title #Release #DateEvil Dead Burn,Ghostbusters: Night Shift,Man of Tomorrow,Morning Spoilers,Toy Story 5")
![The New ‘Ghostbusters’ Cartoon Gets a Title and Release Date
Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom gets an action figure. Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead has “moved away” from familiar favorites. Two new horror movies explore poodle breeding and the Civil War. They’re here already! You’re next! It’s Morning Spoilers! Brine Deadline reports Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) and Dave Annable (Lioness) will star in Brine, a “supernatural Civil War thriller” from director B.J. Golnick. Co-starring Jonah Wharton, Sissy Sheridan, and Grayson Lay the story concerns “a family of Confederate deserters who escape the Union bombardment of Fort Pulaski with a cache of stolen gold and disappear into the Georgia marshlands. When they take refuge in a remote plantation house, what first appears to be salvation slowly reveals itself as part of something ancient, predatory and impossible to escape.” Untitled Spy Comedy Deadline also had word Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a currently untitled “spy comedy” at Netflix from director McG. Said to be “based on a short story by Sean Lewis,” the story follows “two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, and whose wives become fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood.”
Breeder Variety reports Daniel Doheny, Dot Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, and Tanaya Beatty will star in Breeder, a horror movie from director Alex Goyette that sounds quite a bit like Sssssss with poodles. The film concerns “an eccentric poodle breeder who lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. As he soon learns, there’s a catch.”
Evil Dead Burn/Evil Dead Wrath In a recent interview with Deadline, Bruce Campbell stated the Evil Dead franchise has “moved away” from Ash Williams, Sam Raimi, and the cabin in the woods. No, no. I think I think basically from Evil Dead Rise on, Ash is… you know, they wanted some little gag of Ash at the end of the movie. We did that as a lark. He’s not part of any big overriding story or scheme. [The Evil Dead has] done three things: We moved away from the cabin, we’ve moved away from Sam Raimi, we’ve moved away from Ash and Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Evil Dead Rise made the most of any money we’ve made from any Evil Dead, so far, and it validated the fact that we can get away from those main elements. You’ve got to find a new audience, because the original Evil Dead fans, you get some of them, you’re not going to get all of them, because they like those original elements. They like me and Sam and Ash and all that sort of crap. Man of Tomorrow Lex Luthor pulls a ray gun on Superman in newly-leaked photos from the Man of Tomorrow set. David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult filming “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” in Atlanta 05/06/26 pic.twitter.com/goNKFF8CSw — 🐤 (@hsufhkshndk11) June 6, 2026 Avengers: Doomsday A new slate of tie-in action figures provides the best looks yet at Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor in Avengers: Doomsday.
First look at Hasbro’s Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor action figures for ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’ 📷: @idlehandsblog pic.twitter.com/MiqHxoWKWT — Avengers Updates (@AvengersUpdated) June 7, 2026 Toy Story 5 Taylor Swift has released a music video for her song from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack comprised entirely of Jessie clips. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDU4GB1PTxc[/embed] The Last of Us According to the Director’s Guild of Canada (via Screen Rant), filming on the third season of The Last of Us has temporarily ceased beginning June 1 and will not resume until June 28. The reason for the hiatus is not currently known. Ghostbusters: Night Shift Finally, Netflix has revealed the new Ghostbusters animated series is officially titled Night Shift and is slated for release sometime next tear. Can’t contain this one any longer. Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an original animated series, is coming to Netflix in 2027. pic.twitter.com/mZvvmpAnG0 — Ghostbusters (@Ghostbusters) June 6, 2026 Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Ghostbusters #Cartoon #Title #Release #DateEvil Dead Burn,Ghostbusters: Night Shift,Man of Tomorrow,Morning Spoilers,Toy Story 5](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/Morning-Spoilers-June-8-1280x853.jpg "The New ‘Ghostbusters’ Cartoon Gets a Title and Release Date
Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom gets an action figure. Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead has “moved away” from familiar favorites. Two new horror movies explore poodle breeding and the Civil War. They’re here already! You’re next! It’s Morning Spoilers! Brine Deadline reports Jennifer Holland (Peacemaker) and Dave Annable (Lioness) will star in Brine, a “supernatural Civil War thriller” from director B.J. Golnick. Co-starring Jonah Wharton, Sissy Sheridan, and Grayson Lay the story concerns “a family of Confederate deserters who escape the Union bombardment of Fort Pulaski with a cache of stolen gold and disappear into the Georgia marshlands. When they take refuge in a remote plantation house, what first appears to be salvation slowly reveals itself as part of something ancient, predatory and impossible to escape.” Untitled Spy Comedy Deadline also had word Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a currently untitled “spy comedy” at Netflix from director McG. Said to be “based on a short story by Sean Lewis,” the story follows “two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, and whose wives become fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood.”
Breeder Variety reports Daniel Doheny, Dot Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, and Tanaya Beatty will star in Breeder, a horror movie from director Alex Goyette that sounds quite a bit like Sssssss with poodles. The film concerns “an eccentric poodle breeder who lures a broke college student to her remote ranch with a promise of research funding. As he soon learns, there’s a catch.”
Evil Dead Burn/Evil Dead Wrath In a recent interview with Deadline, Bruce Campbell stated the Evil Dead franchise has “moved away” from Ash Williams, Sam Raimi, and the cabin in the woods. No, no. I think I think basically from Evil Dead Rise on, Ash is… you know, they wanted some little gag of Ash at the end of the movie. We did that as a lark. He’s not part of any big overriding story or scheme. [The Evil Dead has] done three things: We moved away from the cabin, we’ve moved away from Sam Raimi, we’ve moved away from Ash and Bruce Campbell. Thankfully, Evil Dead Rise made the most of any money we’ve made from any Evil Dead, so far, and it validated the fact that we can get away from those main elements. You’ve got to find a new audience, because the original Evil Dead fans, you get some of them, you’re not going to get all of them, because they like those original elements. They like me and Sam and Ash and all that sort of crap. Man of Tomorrow Lex Luthor pulls a ray gun on Superman in newly-leaked photos from the Man of Tomorrow set. David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult filming “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” in Atlanta 05/06/26 pic.twitter.com/goNKFF8CSw — 🐤 (@hsufhkshndk11) June 6, 2026 Avengers: Doomsday A new slate of tie-in action figures provides the best looks yet at Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor in Avengers: Doomsday.
First look at Hasbro’s Doctor Doom, Captain America and Thor action figures for ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’ 📷: @idlehandsblog pic.twitter.com/MiqHxoWKWT — Avengers Updates (@AvengersUpdated) June 7, 2026 Toy Story 5 Taylor Swift has released a music video for her song from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack comprised entirely of Jessie clips. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDU4GB1PTxc[/embed] The Last of Us According to the Director’s Guild of Canada (via Screen Rant), filming on the third season of The Last of Us has temporarily ceased beginning June 1 and will not resume until June 28. The reason for the hiatus is not currently known. Ghostbusters: Night Shift Finally, Netflix has revealed the new Ghostbusters animated series is officially titled Night Shift and is slated for release sometime next tear. Can’t contain this one any longer. Ghostbusters: Night Shift, an original animated series, is coming to Netflix in 2027. pic.twitter.com/mZvvmpAnG0 — Ghostbusters (@Ghostbusters) June 6, 2026 Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Ghostbusters #Cartoon #Title #Release #DateEvil Dead Burn,Ghostbusters: Night Shift,Man of Tomorrow,Morning Spoilers,Toy Story 5")
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