What startups want from OpenAI

Marc Manara, OpenAI’s head of startups, says the reality of AI has advanced far beyond ideas and experiments. AI-native companies are hitting $200 million in annual recurring revenue, and product cycles have shrunk from two-week sprints to single days. And OpenAI is helping.

Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Russell Brandom sits down with Manara at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 to explore how OpenAI is serving the startups building on its platform. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 

• The shift from two-week sprints to one-day development cycles, and what that means for how startups should structure their engineering teams 

• Why some startups are customizing models for specific tasks in healthcare, finance, and other verticals that seemed out of reach 

• Where AI still hasn’t fully integrated with companies, and why longer-horizon autonomous tasks remain the next frontier for both models and startups 

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