Latest Interviews

A Fireside Chat: Beyond Asimov's Laws: How GenesisAI is Bringing AI to the Physical World

Omar, Sebastien Detranier, Francois Beaufort, Theo Varontas

Genesis AI is a Paris-San Francisco startup backed by Eclipse, BP France, and Alvin that aims to automate 50% of the global economy's physical tasks by applying internet-scale foundation models to general-purpose robotics. Co-founder Sebastien Degraffe leverages a proprietary physics engine and a three-pronged data strategy to solve the scarcity of diverse robotics training data, differentiating the firm from competitors reliant on expensive human-in-the-loop collection methods. With a seed round exceeding $100 million, the company plans to deploy Proof of Concepts in pharmaceutical labs and hotels within the next year while targeting full-scale commercialization of adaptable, generalist machines over a three-to-five-year timeline.

Alok Sama & Nikesh Arora: AI, Cybersecurity, and Bold Leadership

Alok Sama, Nikesh Arora

The event outlines a systemic shift toward the democratization of intelligence, where agentic AI transforms search, disrupts traditional ride-sharing economics through autonomous fleets, and expands cybersecurity threats into state-sponsored warfare. Parallel to these technological shifts, the discussion contrasts high-risk investment strategies at SoftBank with Palo Alto Networks' disciplined acquisition model of retaining founders to build unified security platforms. The presentation concludes by warning of an imminent quantum computing vulnerability that threatens current encryption standards before defenders can establish quantum-safe protocols.

Mike Mattacola, CBO of CoreWeave: Building the Next Generation of Cloud in Europe

Mike Mattacola, Michael

CoreWeave announced an all-stock acquisition of Core Scientific to secure over 1.3 gigawatts of U.S. power capacity, while its revenue surged from $15.8 million to nearly $2 billion driven by strategic partnerships with major AI firms like Mistral and NVIDIA. The company is aggressively expanding European infrastructure with €1 billion in investments across six data centers and a seventh pipeline, utilizing a global supply chain strategy to mitigate local capital and talent shortages. Looking ahead, CoreWeave aims to lead industry consolidation by focusing on rapid capacity deployment and talent acquisition rather than active mergers, positioning its Blackwell and future Rubin hardware to support the next generation of high-performance computing.

Alexis Ohanian, Founder, 776, Reddit & Victorien Tixier, CEO, ScorePlay: The Future of AI in Sports

Alexis Ohanian, Victorien Tixier, Vic

At an industry conference, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian interviewed Scoreplay CEO Vic LaRosa to discuss how artificial intelligence will commoditize content production while elevating live sports as the premier vehicle for authentic, real-time human connection. Their dialogue highlighted Scoreplay's mission to replace legacy infrastructure with centralized AI automation for media asset management, a strategy designed to unlock global market reach through instant localization and data-driven camera placement. The conversation further emphasized a strategic pivot toward women's sports, where Ohanian argues that re-underwriting assets from first principles and leveraging digital-first storytelling will drive exponential valuation growth and reshape traditional league dynamics.

Fabricio Bloisi, CEO of Prosus Group at RAISE 2025

Fabricio Bloisi

On the one-year anniversary of his appointment as CEO, Fabricio outlined Prosus's strategy to transform its $130 billion valuation into a €1 trillion European tech giant through a $15 billion AI investment and aggressive expansion. The company is accelerating this vision by restructuring 40,000 employees, deploying 200 AI models at portfolio firm iFood, and seeking regulatory approval for a $4 billion acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway. With profitability increasing tenfold and $18 billion in reserves, Prosus plans to double its size and target fintech and e-commerce sectors to secure global leadership in AI-driven commerce execution.

Stephanie Cohen - CSO @ Cloudflare: Future of Content & Fair Compensation in the Age of AI

Stephanie Cohen

On July 1, Cloudflare implemented a permission-based default policy to block AI scrapers while launching a beta for micropayments via HTTP 402, aiming to transition the web into a value-based economy where content creators control data access. This strategic shift, supported by data showing a 65% surge in training crawler traffic, has drawn criticism from industry figures like BrightData's David Bossert but is defended by CEO Matthew Prince as necessary to repair the broken economic relationship between publishers and tech giants. Complementing this infrastructure, newly appointed Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen leverages her Wall Street background to guide Cloudflare's expansion into cybersecurity and AI financial services, predicting that high-value human judgment will remain essential even as automation transforms data-rich sectors.

CoreWeave @ RAISE 2025: Building the Next Generation of Cloud in Europe

Michael

CoreWeave announced a strategic all-stock acquisition of Core Scientific to secure 1.3 gigawatts of U.S. power capacity, a move designed to accelerate AI cluster deployment and eliminate intermediary costs. Following its rapid pivot from crypto to artificial intelligence, the company recently completed an innovative IPO and is aggressively expanding its European footprint with $2.2 billion in committed capital and plans to deploy next-generation Blackwell and Rubin Next architectures. This growth trajectory positions CoreWeave to address global power bottlenecks while advising the market that future consolidation will be driven primarily by talent migration rather than traditional mergers.

Wes Cummins, Founder & CEO of Applied Digital: Ellendale’s Purpose Built AI Factory in North Dakota

Wes Cummins

Applied Digital is expanding its high-power density data center operations by securing a 400-megawatt contract with CoreWeave to construct a North Dakota campus utilizing stranded wind energy and designed for AI workloads. The company transitioned from Bitcoin mining to Tier 3 semiconductor-grade infrastructure after spending $5 billion on this project to ensure "five nines" reliability and extreme cooling standards for hyperscalers. With approximately 3% ownership by NVIDIA, the firm is capitalizing on the shortage of available power sites in the U.S. heartland while planning future phases that will integrate gas assets and explore nuclear options like small modular reactors.

RAISE 2025: Building AI for Security-Minded Enterprises

A French math PhD turned AI leader leveraged their academic background to build the Llama family at Meta before joining Cohere to prioritize business traction and secure, localized enterprise solutions. The speaker details a strategy where data quality and strategic partnerships, such as those with Fujitsu and RBC, drive the development of models optimized for specific languages and industries rather than pursuing Artificial General Intelligence. By focusing on grounded generation and flexible hosting options, the organization ensures data sovereignty and verifiable outputs for regulated sectors while avoiding the inherent risks of trying to mimic human cognition.

RAISE 2025 : Fireside Chat with Amit Bendov, CEO & Co Founder of Gong

Amit Bendov, Brian Bauman, Amit Bhandav

Founded by Amit Bhandav to solve CRM data gaps, Gong.io leverages autonomous AI to capture sales communication and transform enterprise productivity from manual entry to instant, context-aware insights. Operating on a maturity scale between assisted and near-autonomous levels, the platform currently handles high-volume administrative tasks while preserving human judgment for high-liability decisions. As enterprise leaders demand integrated AI for revenue generation, Gong drives adoption by eliminating briefing bottlenecks for Fortune 500 clients while fostering a unique culture that prioritizes employee personal branding and deep client relationships.

Clara Chappaz - French Minister Delegate: Can France Overtake AI? Inside the French Vision

Clara Chappaz

Building on eight years of pro-business reforms and a strategic focus on nuclear-powered compute infrastructure, France has secured its position as a global fifth in AI capability while launching the "Dare AI" initiative to bridge the gap between scientific excellence and public adoption. This €109 billion investment supports frugal model development and open-source principles, aiming to train 15 million citizens and equip 125 SMEs across sectors like healthcare and agriculture to overcome current deployment barriers. With key players including Mistral AI and OVH Cloud driving the ecosystem, the government is positioning the nation to define the next 24 months of the AI race through inclusive talent acquisition and targeted sector-specific innovation.

Benoît Dageville @ RAISE 2025: Zero to IPO and Beyond. From Startup to Snowfall Building Snowflake

Benoît Dageville, Roxanne Varza

After founding Snowflake in 2012 to decouple data storage and compute, co-founders Benoit Dageville and Thierry Kremer steered the company to the most expensive software IPO in history while rejecting acquisition offers to maintain their independent vision. Today, the enterprise serves thousands of clients including OpenAI and Disney by abstracting infrastructure complexity, a strategy that enables users to reduce processing times from weeks to minutes. The platform now leverages AI to ingest unstructured data and democratize analytics, allowing non-technical employees to access enterprise-grade insights without deep SQL expertise.

Cloudflare CSO, Stephanie Cohen: The Future of Content & Fair Compensation in the Age of AI

Stephanie Cohen, Matthew Prince

Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen announces the implementation of "Content Independence Day," a permission-based policy that allows website owners to block or charge AI crawlers for access via new default settings. This initiative seeks to rebalance the relationship between content creators and technology platforms by establishing a market where data-rich sectors, particularly financial services, can monetize their intellectual property directly. While facing industry pushback from competitors who argue against restricting bot access, Cohen contends that shifting to a controlled ecosystem is essential to incentivize high-value content creation and secure a sustainable future for the internet.

Conversation with Daniel Dines, Founder & CEO of UiPath

Daniel Dines, John Furrier

UiPath is transitioning its 10,000 enterprise clients from traditional RPA to agentic AI by introducing orchestration engines that manage both specialized workflow agents and dynamic master agents within a secure governance framework. CEO Daniel Deneis advises the European market to avoid isolation by verticalizing AI solutions and leveraging defense-industry partnerships to compete against US and Chinese dominance, while urging governments to prioritize aggressive adoption over premature regulation. Supporting this global vision, the company is acquiring vertical startups like Peak to solve distribution challenges and encouraging founders to execute rapidly to dominate specific market spaces.

Snyk CEO, Peter McKay: Building Securely in the AI Era

Peter McKay, Helena Chow

Snyk has pivoted from its roots as a developer security pioneer to an AI-first organization that launched an AI Trust Platform to secure the exponential growth of code generation vulnerabilities. By integrating guardrails into tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor, the company leverages its decade of DevSecOps experience to automate vulnerability remediation and protect agentic systems for its 4,500 global customers. Backed by $400 million in cash reserves for strategic acquisitions, Snyk is aggressively executing an "AI SecOps" strategy to shift enterprise security from a reactive model to one where protection is built-in by default for a rapidly expanding universe of non-technical developers.