3 weeks ago
37
9:53 AM PDT · August 21, 2026
39 min
Andreessen Horowitz has 2 partners sitting connected the boards of companies that now compete with each other: Ben Horowitz astatine Databricks and Martin Casado at Fivetran. Nothing excessively scandalous connected the surface, except the Department of Justice has reportedly been investigating the arrangement for almost a year, dusting off a 112-year-old antitrust law that’s rarely utilized against VCs.
Board conflicts aren’t exactly new, and these companies weren’t necessarily nonstop competitors erstwhile a16z archetypal invested successful them. But arsenic portfolio companies grow into each other’s markets, the DOJ’s scrutiny raises a overmuch bigger question for task firms: How bash you negociate committee seats erstwhile the boundaries betwixt your portfolio companies support moving?
On this occurrence of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane excavation into the a16z probe, what it could mean for VCs, and much of the week’s headlines.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and each the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, astatine @EquityPod.
Theresa Loconsolo is an audio shaper astatine TechCrunch focusing connected Equity, the network’s flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch successful 2022, she was 1 of 2 producers astatine a four-station conglomerate wherever she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered unrecorded performances and interviews from guests similar lovelytheband. Theresa is based successful New Jersey and holds a bachelors grade successful Communication from Monmouth University.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Theresa by emailing theresa.loconsolo@techcrunch.com.
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