RAISE Summit
Showing 1–15 of 303 transcripts.
- 40 min
Architecting the Agentic Enterprise | Traversal, Kong, Pigment & Twelve Labs | RAISE 2026
Shubho Sengupta, Anish Agarwal, Carl Mattsson, Eleonore Crespo, Soyoung Lee, Cathy Gao
Moderated by Kathy Gao of Sapphire Ventures, this panel unites five founders to address the critical transition of AI agents from experimental proof-of-concepts to reliable, autonomous enterprise production in 2026. The discussion identifies key obstacles such as non-deterministic failure modes, security friction, and accountability gaps, while proposing strategies like deterministic output layers, structured human-in-the-loop oversight, and outcome-based pricing to ensure value delivery. By analyzing data showing that most current AI initiatives fail to impact EBITDA, the session outlines a roadmap for shifting investment from edge use cases to core business operations through proprietary data infrastructure and stable governance models.
- 39 min
The AI Gold Rush: Models Are Shovels, Data Is the Gold | RAISE Summit 2026
Gareth Davies, Will Bryk, Dmitry Panenkov, Mark Surman, Alex Bouzari, Akhil Ahuja
This panel features industry leaders from Okta, DDN, Mozilla, Emma, and Exa discussing the strategic pivot from model-centric AI to a data-driven economy where proprietary data quality and security determine competitive advantage. Experts highlighted critical infrastructure challenges, noting that 48% of enterprises fail to secure AI agents while emphasizing the urgent need for sovereign data solutions and fair data markets to unlock the exponential costs of agentic inference. The discussion concluded that future enterprise success relies on "data network effects" and robust governance frameworks, as organizations transition from experimental sandboxes to production environments driven by headless, agent-based architectures.
- 18 min
The Invisible Backbone of AI: Why Light Powers Intelligence | Lumentum | RAISE Summit 2026
Lumentum outlines a four-stage data center evolution from kilometer-scale interconnects to millimeter-level optical PCB integration, a shift driven by copper's inability to support 1.6 terabit speeds. This transition promises a 100 to 1,000-fold expansion in optical lanes, with scale-up rack integration expected by mid-2027 and commercial scale-in adoption projected by 2029. To meet the demand for hundreds of millions of lasers, the company has expanded Indium Phosphide wafer fabrication while strategic investments from NVIDIA secure supply for these critical semiconductor components.
- 39 min
The Trillion Dollar Question: Financing AI's Infrastructure | Modular, IREN & More | RAISE 2026
Tim Davis, Kent Draper, James B. Krellenstein, Wayne Nelms, Erwan Menard, Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Jeremy, Tim Buckley, James Kallenstein
The AI infrastructure sector is undergoing a structural shift toward extreme capital intensity, prompting neoclouds like Iron and Crusoe to adopt complex financing models that blend investment-grade debt, Microsoft prepayments, and diverse revenue streams such as token sales. Simultaneously, industry leaders are addressing asset lifecycle mismatches and energy bottlenecks by leveraging software-driven fungibility for non-NVIDIA silicon and securing "behind-the-meter" nuclear uprates to bypass regulatory delays. This evolving landscape enables lenders to backstop sub-investment grade counterparts while hyperscalers vertically integrate to capture higher margins, ultimately transforming compute into a standardized, tradable commodity.
- 21 min
Energy and AI: Sustainable, Sovereign Industrial Campuses | Alain Wilmouth, 2CRSi | RAISE 2026
2CRSI advances its direct liquid cooling technology through the ITER consortium to power a French AI gigafactory while addressing energy mandates and carbon sovereignty via biomass gasification. The company plans to scale operations from 42 to 400 megawatts across 17 decentralized European sites by 2030, offering on-premise infrastructure that protects intellectual property against geopolitical restrictions. This strategy leverages unused agricultural land to generate jobs and targets space-deployable server models, positioning the firm as a leader in sustainable, sovereign high-performance computing.
- 20 min
Fireside Chat with William Falcon & Ozan Kaya of Lightning AI | RAISE Summit 2026
William Falcon, Ozan Kaya, Olivier Huez, Will
Following a rapid expansion to 160 employees, Voltage Park merged with Lightning.ai to transition from a GPU-as-a-service provider into a full-stack platform serving Gen AI enterprises. This combination integrates 24,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs across six data centers with Will's software tooling to help clients own their open-source models rather than relying on hyperscalers. The strategic alliance addresses the market gap for dedicated compute, prioritizing high-uptime infrastructure and digital sovereignty for customers like Cursor.
- 19 min
Fireside Chat with Tess Munsie, Chief of Staff at Fundamental | RAISE Summit 2026
Tess Munsie, Nina dos Santos, Tess Muncy
Fundamental has emerged from stealth with a $1.45 billion valuation to deploy Nexus, a Large Tabular Model specifically engineered to solve the "blind spot" where traditional LLMs fail to process structured enterprise data with deterministic precision. By utilizing a "bring the model to the data" architecture within customer VPCs, the platform enables industries like energy and shipping to transform decades of trapped records into immediate operational insights while maintaining strict data sovereignty. This approach reduces forecasting timelines from months to hours and delivers a generalized solution that replaces brittle, task-specific pipelines across sectors ranging from CPG to sports analytics.
- 19 min
Building Africa's AI Factory: Cassava, Rafay and Sovereign AI | RAISE Summit 2026
Cassava Technologies, a digital solution provider serving over 40 countries, has secured direct investment from NVIDIA and Google to deploy a GPU-rich compute infrastructure across Africa, Latin America, and India. The company distinguishes itself through a custom orchestration layer that democratizes access to AI for students and startups, enabling the development of localized language models and critical sector applications in agriculture and healthcare. With a strategic focus on expanding dark fiber connectivity and green energy integration, Cassava aims to drive economic growth and job creation in emerging markets over the next five years.
- 18 min
Zero Flaps, Zero Excuses: Network Reliability at AI Scale | Credo x TensorWave | RAISE 2026
Credo SVP Phil Kuhman and Tensorwave Co-founder Jeff Tatarchuk discussed the critical role of high-reliability networking in scaling AMD-exclusive GPU clusters, citing a deployment of 8,192 MI325 GPUs supported by Tensorwave's two-gigawatt North American infrastructure. The dialogue highlighted Credo's Zero-Flap transceiver technology, which utilizes rigorous thermal hardening and in-band telemetry to reduce deployment cycles from six weeks to one and eliminate the costly downtime caused by link failures in hyperscale environments like Oracle's. By driving the industry toward a standardized "Purple Cables" architecture that combines copper for short-range reliability with advanced optics for long-haul connectivity, the companies aim to transform networking from a bottleneck into a table-stakes foundation for rapid AI infrastructure revenue.
- 19 min
Inside the AI Inference Cluster: Measuring What Matters | Mansour Karam, Aria Networks | RAISE 2026
The AI infrastructure sector is pivoting from homogeneous general-purpose systems to specialized architectures that optimize distinct model training and serving economics, with high-throughput inference offering potential cost savings of up to 100x. This shift demands deep networking solutions capable of managing dynamic, unpredictable traffic patterns and microsecond-scale latency requirements for complex agent workflows. Leading this transition, ARIA proposes a multi-layered AI agent architecture that integrates full-stack telemetry to dynamically coordinate hardware, software, and network operations across immediate physical reactions and long-term strategic planning.
- 18 min
Where We're Going We Don't Need Keyboards, Just Voice | Neil Zeghidour, Gradium | RAISE 2026
Gradium, a spin-off of the frontier research lab Qtize, is commercializing full-duplex voice AI models like "Moshi" to replace traditional keyboard interfaces with natural, real-time human-machine interaction. By utilizing single audio-to-audio architectures that eliminate turn-taking latency, the Paris-based company enables seamless agentic tasks ranging from customer support to industrial robotics in noisy environments. With recent funding to expand into San Francisco and open-source model access, Gradium aims to establish voice as the primary operating system for always-on, asynchronous agent networks.
- 20 min
Why the Next Marketing Giant Will Be Hyperlocal, Not Global | HubKonnect | RAISE Summit 2026
Michael outlines a critical market shift where enterprise marketing transitions from national campaigns to hyperlocal activation driven by a centralized intelligence layer that compounds data across millions of location-specific points. This operational reset requires C-suite alignment to replace obsolete agency models with an "Ecosystem as a Service" approach, ensuring data reciprocity and transforming marketers into real-time profit center drivers using Hyperlocal Intelligence. Ultimately, the differentiator for future growth lies not in isolated SaaS tools but in "better operators" who leverage proprietary datasets to execute culture shifts that empower rapid, data-informed decision-making at the individual unit level.
- 19 min
What's New for Startups with Google DeepMind? | Omar Sanseviero | RAISE Summit 2026
Omar Sanseviero of Google DeepMind outlined the strategic expansion of the Gemini ecosystem, highlighting the release of Gemini 3.5 Flash, the imminent Gemini 2.5 Pro, and advanced GenMedia models like NanoBanana 2 Lite for rapid image generation. The presentation detailed critical infrastructure updates including the Gemma 4 open model family, which achieved over 250 million downloads on consumer hardware, alongside new real-time APIs for low-latency voice translation and live visual analysis. These advancements collectively aim to accelerate the transition from prompt to production by empowering developers to build complex agentic workflows and specialized applications in sectors ranging from robotics to environmental monitoring.
- 18 min
Operating AI Infrastructure at Multi-Model, Multi-Cloud Scale | RAISE Summit 2026
Lukas Gentele, Bola Malek, Nikita Vdovushkin
Nebius and Base10 are redefining the AI infrastructure landscape by pivoting from raw compute provision to managed "Token Factory" services that prioritize inference efficiency and multi-cloud orchestration across dozens of providers. While Base10 aggregates demand across 90+ regions to ensure redundancy and data sovereignty, Nebius leverages vertical hardware integration to optimize cost-to-performance ratios, together supporting a market shift toward hybrid open-source and proprietary model strategies. This collaboration and competitive tension address the growing enterprise demand for transparent, token-based pricing and localized hosting solutions that balance geopolitical constraints with the need for scalable, specialized AI deployment.
- 20 min
From Software to Hardware: The Next Wave of AI | Atomico x PhysicsX | RAISE Summit 2026
Physics X recently secured a $300 million Series C led by Temasek, raising its valuation to $2.4 billion to accelerate its expansion into Singapore and the broader Asian market. Founded by ex-Formula 1 engineers, the company utilizes AI-native physics models to deliver simulation speeds up to one million times faster than traditional methods for clients in aerospace, automotive, and mining sectors. To address complex engineering challenges in defense and energy transition, the firm operates with a forward-deployed team model while transitioning its platform to support self-service graphical interfaces and automated workflows.