Latest Interviews

AI Sticker Shock: Open Source as the Answer to Broken Tokenomics | Vipul Ved Prakash | RAISE 2026

Vipul Ved Prakash, Josh Wolfe

TogetherAI, led by Co-founder Vinod Khosla, recently achieved a $8.3 billion valuation after scaling inference volume to 400 trillion tokens monthly while expanding its user base from $100 million to over $1 billion in annual revenue. The company is driving a strategic pivot toward open-source models to address economic pressures and geopolitical sovereignty concerns, countering the dominance of closed ecosystems like Anthropic and OpenAI by offering data residency on U.S. and European infrastructure. To overcome global compute constraints, TogetherAI is executing a sovereign infrastructure strategy that partners with nations facing data center moratoriums, aiming to prevent industrial capture and establish a collaborative commons for future AI development.

How Data Became the Most Indispensable Resource for AI | Or Lenchner, Bright Data | RAISE 2026

Or Lenchner, Peter Elstrom

Bright Data re-architected its infrastructure to serve exploding demand for visual data in physical AI and robotics, successfully defending its operational model against major legal challenges involving Meta and X. The privately held company, which achieved a $300 million revenue run rate without external funding, distinguishes its Western outsourcing strategy from Chinese competitors' focus on internal data stack development. While navigating potential market corrections, Bright Data maintains a long-term outlook on the necessity of its data ecosystem for global AI training and continues to prioritize hyper-growth over an imminent IPO.

How the Finance Department Killed Intel - Former CEO

The speaker analyzes Intel's recent decline as a direct consequence of shifting from a technical, PhD-led culture to one dominated by financial management, which prioritized $100 billion in shareholder returns over critical manufacturing investments. This strategic misalignment led to a decade without new factories and the delay of essential Extreme Ultraviolet machine purchases, decisions the speaker argues required technical judgment rather than spreadsheet analysis. In contrast, the discussion highlights that successful modern tech leaders like Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Google's Sundar Pichai maintain deep technical expertise to guide high-stakes, billion-dollar decisions effectively.

Why Ambitious Startup Ideas Are Actually Easier To Sell

James Hawkins

PostHog is transitioning from an open-source analytics platform to an AI-driven service that autonomously fixes engineering issues and solves customer support tickets by generating production-ready pull requests. Co-founders James and Tim restructured their operations to align with this new "self-driving software" vision, delegating management duties to the latter so the former can focus exclusively on AI product architecture while the company doubles in size. This strategic pivot replaces traditional manual product management with a system where AI configures workflows and implements fixes based on deep user data, aiming to secure massive market valuation through "insane" ambition rather than conservative growth.

Fireside Chat with Sid Sheth, Founder & CEO of d-Matrix | RAISE Summit 2026

Sid Sheth, Tony Kim

D-Matrix, founded in 2019, has transitioned its SRAM-based Corsair accelerator into mass production while partnering with NVIDIA to deploy heterogeneous compute solutions for the inference-focused agentic era. Moving beyond current SRAM limitations, the company is developing a 3D stacked In-Memory Compute architecture scheduled for a 2027 tape-out, which aims to simultaneously optimize latency and throughput for high-interactivity workloads. This strategic trajectory envisions a market where specialized inference accelerators coexist with HBM-based GPUs, handling distinct layers of the AI pipeline from heavy pre-fill computations to memory-intensive decoding.

Fireside Chat with Philip Johnston, Starcloud & Chetan Puttagunta, Benchmark | RAISE Summit 2026

Philip Johnston, Chetan Puttagunta

StarCloud is a Seattle-based company that has successfully launched StarCloud 1, proving that terrestrial-grade GPUs can perform high-power training and inference in space while overcoming thermal and radiation challenges. The firm plans to rapidly scale its operations through partnerships with SpaceX and other launch providers, targeting a gigawatt-scale constellation of 88,000 satellites by late 2028 to provide near-instant data processing for government, telecommunications, and lunar exploration clients. With a founding team split between aerospace and cloud engineering giants, StarCloud aims to bypass terrestrial energy permitting delays by establishing a fully vertical infrastructure capable of delivering up to 10 terawatts of compute capacity.

The art of deception in modern war | The Economist

Jack Watling, Shashank Joshi

The event analyzes how modern deception strategies now target an adversary's intent rather than mere presence to neutralize overwhelming surveillance, drawing on historical precedents like D-Day alongside recent intelligence failures in Ukraine, Israel, and Russia. It further details how transparent battlespaces compel forces to deploy resource-intensive drone operations that paradoxically increase human density and logistical footprints, requiring teams of five and nearly two tons of equipment per unit. By forcing enemies to waste munitions on decoys, these tactics aim to degrade capabilities, though the summary notes their inherent vulnerability and limited operational endurance of roughly three days.

David Friedberg Explains America's Economic Crisis in 60 Minutes

David Friedberg, Molly O'Shea

David Friedberg warns that the United States faces potential social collapse within two years due to policy failures that exclude the bottom 50% from capital ownership, a structural gap he estimates represents a $33 trillion wealth disparity. He advocates for replacing Social Security and Treasury-bond-heavy pension systems with equity-based individual accounts, while proposing a 40% capital gains tax and a national goal of shifting 2% of Americans to capital ownership annually. Friedberg argues these reforms, alongside closing inheritance loopholes and eliminating income tax for the bottom earners, are essential to prevent a socialist death spiral and restore economic mobility before the chaotic political landscape of 2028.

Beyond the Helpdesk: AI Turning IT Into a Strategic Function | Serval | RAISE Summit 2026

Jake Stauch, Anas Biad

Serval is an AI-native platform that completely rebuilds IT Service Management infrastructure to replace legacy systems like ServiceNow by integrating dual-agent architecture for full automation of enterprise workflows. Co-founded by Jake, the company has driven an 80% automation rate for major clients such as SeatGeek and Ramp, enabling thousands of IT staff to shift from support roles to building cross-functional solutions in marketing, legal, and HR. By treating AI as a core foundation rather than an add-on layer, Serval allows enterprises to eliminate support queues and rapidly reinvent their operational roadmaps every six months.

Building Global out of Europe in the AI Era | Jan Oberhauser, n8n | RAISE Summit 2026

Jan Oberhauser, Ben Fletcher

N8N positions itself as an open-source AI workflow orchestration layer that connects diverse models and applications, a strategy validated by adoption from major enterprises like Microsoft, SAP, and the German government. By prioritizing model agnosticism and a "fair code" license, the platform enables organizations to maintain data sovereignty and switch providers to optimize costs and mitigate supply chain risks. Supported by a global network of partners and community ambassadors, N8N continues to expand its enterprise footprint by evolving from a tool for technical builders into an accessible infrastructure for non-technical users to deploy robust, ROI-driven AI solutions.

The Infrastructure Powering Live AI | Decart x Bloomberg | RAISE Summit 2026

Dean Leitersdorf, Rachel Metz

CART, a 100-person AI lab, leverages its proprietary DOS stack to generate world-class real-time video models capable of powering autonomous robots and live virtual try-ons for e-commerce partners like Amazon. The company's "Lucy" interface enables photorealistic interactions in live streams and shopping feeds, reportedly tripling sales volumes while streamers achieve seven-fold engagement increases. With a roadmap projecting significant breakthroughs in physical AI and software engineering within 18 to 24 months, CART deploys forward-deployed teams to customize these high-performance solutions for specific enterprise KPIs.

Scaling Taste, Craft & Quality in the AI Era | Figma x Mistral | RAISE Summit 2026

Loredana Crisan, Zach Krasner

At Figma Config 2024, Chief Design Officer Loredana Cosentino and CEO Dylan Field addressed an audience of over 10,000 to unveil AI-driven tools like Figma Agents while redefining the Chief Design Officer role as a bridge between business value and user experience. The event highlighted a critical industry shift where AI lowers barriers to entry for non-specialists yet fails to replicate human creative excellence, necessitating a collaborative convergence of designers and developers around shared prototyping standards. Leaders emphasized that while AI accelerates baseline output, achieving world-class innovation requires maintaining distinct human judgment to avoid cultural stagnation and push beyond historical data constraints.

How Higgsfield Went From 0 to $500M Run Rate in 14 Months | Alex Mashrabov | RAISE Summit 2026

Alex Mashrabov, Antoine Blondeau

Alex, a former competitive programming prodigy and ex-Head of AI at Snapchat, founded Hicksfield in October 2023 to address the retention gaps of mobile-first AI tools by pivoting to an enterprise-focused model. The company recently exceeded a $500 million annual run rate within 15 months through its proprietary "Cinema Studio" platform, which serves creative agencies with specialized product photography models and rapid release cycles. Operating with a hybrid US and Kazakhstan talent structure, Hicksfield is currently driving market adoption by shifting the AI narrative from job replacement to direct revenue growth for small and mid-market brands.

Your Agent Can't Fix What It Can't See | Milin Desai, Sentry | RAISE Summit 2026

Milin Desai, Karim Jalbout, Milo, Amil

Sentry leverages its global platform to serve over 200,000 software teams in addressing the exponential rise in coding complexity driven by AI agents and non-technical developers. The company champions a "self-healing" software paradigm where AI autonomously resolves 30% to 40% of production issues while managing costs through deterministic automation loops rather than raw token usage. This model-agnostic approach shifts the developer role from manual coding to system design, aiming to democratize rapid error resolution for organizations ranging from startups to billion-user enterprises.

Opening Fireside: Ramin Hasani, Liquid AI & Ion Stoica, Arena | RAISE Summit 2026

Ramin Hasani, Ion Stoica, Rachel Metz, Ayaan, Ian

Led by MIT-derived algorithms and advised by Databricks co-founder Ian, Liquid AI is deploying energy-efficient, hardware-agnostic foundation models designed to run locally on consumer-grade chips rather than massive data centers. This approach addresses a shifting market where enterprises prioritize security and regulatory control by replacing expensive, closed-source systems with open-weight alternatives that offer near-parity in performance for specific tasks like coding and office work. The discussion further highlights a strategic pivot toward specialized "cities" of smaller, deterministic models that interact within agentic pipelines to ensure reliable, human-liability-backed deployment across industries.