AI NewsNEA’s Tiffany Luck on AI IPOs, personal agents, and the ROI reckoning

NEA’s Tiffany Luck on AI IPOs, personal agents, and the ROI reckoning

3:54 AM IST · June 18, 2026

Tokenmaxxingwas the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, with CEOs encouraging employees to push AI usage as far as it would go.Then the bill came due. Uber reportedly blew through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their org, and Meta killed its internal leaderboard. This tension between hype and ROI is exactly whereNEA partner Tiffany Lucklives these days. She got her start convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, and now she’s all in on AI, especially when it comes to the possibilities for “magic moments” in the consumer business. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Luck joins Rebecca Bellan to talk about the future of personal agents, her thoughts on this year’s AI IPOs, and how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend. Listen to the full episode to hear: Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.