Latest Interviews

Paul Copplestone (SupaBase) & Abel Samot (Commit): Open Source Backend for the AI Age

Paul Copplestone, Abel Samot, DAN GALPIN, FRANCESC CAMPOY, ALEXIS MOUSSINE

Supabase has achieved a $2 billion valuation following a $200 million funding round, driven by a user base that tripled to over 3 million developers and a strategy positioning the open-source platform as a default modern web backend. Founder Paul Copplestone highlights rapid adoption fueled by AI-assisted "vibe coding" tools while the company pursues enterprise growth through "configuration over customization" and upcoming infrastructure breakthroughs like the Multigress sharding solution. Operating as a fully remote organization of 140 specialists, the firm continues scaling by launching Pico instances for zero-to-one applications and recruiting senior talent to support petabyte-scale database capabilities.

A fireside Chat with May Habib, CEO & Co Founder of Writer ft. Rana Yared, GP, Balderton Capital

May Habib, Rana Yared

Writer is an enterprise AI company accelerating the transition to "Era 3.0" agentic systems by deploying vertically specific, revenue-impacting solutions that integrate with legacy infrastructure while maintaining full-stack control over security and reliability. The organization addresses adoption barriers like traceability and scalability through a frugal, synthetic-data-driven architecture that enables rapid model iteration and distinct competitive moats against infrastructure providers. By structuring implementation around 30-to-365-day value increments, Writer facilitates deep corporate transformation from efficiency tools to autonomous agents capable of executing complex, high-stakes business workflows.

Poolside AI, IREN, Forbes: From 10x to 100x Building AI Systems for Real World Scale

Emma Allen, Dennis Skriniop, Isa Kent

Dennis Skriniop of Iron and Isa Kent of Poolside discuss the critical infrastructure and energy requirements for scaling foundation models toward human-level intelligence. Kent outlines Poolside's $500 million investment in automating a "model factory" that executes 1,800 monthly experiments, emphasizing that 80% of success relies on distributed systems engineering rather than algorithmic discovery. Skriniop and Kent further analyze the necessity of hybrid power grids, disaggregated storage architectures, and the emerging role of specialized "Neo-Clouds" to address the exponential complexity of operating clusters exceeding 10,000 GPUs.

Dr. Walden C. Rhines, Cornami: Scalable Secure AI Deploying LLMs with Fully Homomorphic Encryption

Dr. Walden C. Rhines

Facing the impending threat of quantum computers breaking current encryption, Kornami deploys its TrueStream software and hardware architecture to make Fully Homomorphic Encryption practical by eliminating the computational bottlenecks that traditionally limit its use. Their "sea of cores" system delivers banking security benchmarks in seconds rather than days and achieves performance levels orders of magnitude more efficient than NVIDIA H100s for AI and blockchain workloads. With beta units scheduled for deployment this quarter and volume production targeted for late this year, the company aims to resolve global power constraints while enabling secure data monetization and privacy compliance without exposing raw information.

Together AI & SemiAnalysis: In Conversation Together AI's Vision For the Future of AI Infrastructure

Vipul Vaid-Prakash, Dylan Patel

Founded in late 2022, Together AI challenges hyperscaler dominance by reengineering the cloud stack to achieve 75% maximum FLOP utilization on H100 GPUs, significantly outpacing the 50% industry standard. Led by chief scientist Tri Dao and the ClusterMax initiative, the firm drives down inference costs for massive models like DeepSeek from $8 to 30 cents per million tokens through architectural innovations and Reinforcement Learning frameworks. These technical advancements enable new MoE-based workloads and position the company to define emerging optimization surfaces before new hardware generations are fully adopted.

A Fireside Chat with Nicolas Dessaigne (YC-Combinator) & Jean de la Rochebrochard (Kima Ventures)

Nicolas Dessaigne, Jean de la Rochebrochard, Nicolas Tassin

Kima Ventures' Jean de la Rochebrard and Y Combinator partner Nicolas Tassin discussed their investment strategies, emphasizing that AI has shifted from a distinct category to a de facto standard comparable to cloud computing. The investors outlined distinct regional dynamics, noting that US founders leverage superior risk tolerance and speed while European entrepreneurs must overcome cultural humility to access the capital pools required for billion-dollar growth. They concluded that future market leaders will likely emerge in vertical applications within "boring" industries rather than horizontal platforms, provided founders prioritize authentic execution over hype and build defensible data moats.

Inception Fund & AI: From Inception to Exit Building AI Giants from Europe and the Nordics

Peter Sarlin, Oliver

Former professor Peter Sarlin founded the private AI lab Silo AI in 2017 and led the bootstrapped company to a $700 million exit when acquired by AMD in 2022, establishing the largest pure-play AI acquisition in Europe. Sarlin attributes this success to a contrarian philosophy that prioritized functional machine learning over hype while hiring primarily from academia, resulting in a workforce of over 220 AI scientists before the strategic sale. Beyond this specific case study, Sarlin highlights that the fragmentation of the European single market remains the primary barrier preventing regional startups from scaling into trillion-dollar enterprises, forcing founders to adopt a global-first strategy despite Europe's strengths in industrial AI applications.

Lambda, Hugging Face, SemiAnalysis: The Neural Network Is the Computer

The discussion outlines a fundamental shift from traditional programming to "neural software," where generative models act as dynamic interfaces that execute user intent through natural language rather than static code. Key developments in video, audio, and multimodal integration are enabling consistent, real-time content creation while replacing fixed graphical user interfaces with adaptive, semantic environments. This evolution promises to eliminate conventional coding barriers by 2030, though it simultaneously introduces complex challenges regarding state retention and the societal implications of AI-driven interactions.

Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Co-Founder & CEO, Artisan: How We Generate 1000s of Leads with AI

Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Jasper

Founded by CEO Jasper in September 2023, Artisan has rapidly scaled to over $6 million in annual recurring revenue as the second-fastest-growing AI startup globally following its Y Combinator Winter '24 graduation. The company distinguishes itself through a controversial "Stop Hiring Humans" marketing campaign that generated over one billion impressions and a proprietary AI agent named Ava, which recently delivered nearly $1 million in ARR from a $20,000 investment by autonomously managing outbound sales cycles. Looking ahead, Artisan is preparing a major Q4 product expansion while refining its strategy to leverage AI-generated content for high-volume marketing, reserving human oversight for SEO and brand-critical communications.

OVH Cloud, ClickHouse, Neon, Aiven, Airbyte & Commit: Open Software Infrastructure 2.0

Abel, German, Oskari, Heike, Michel, Alexei, Francois Beaufort

Executives from Aiven, Neon, Airbyte, ClickHouse, and OVHcloud converged to discuss how open-source data platforms are securing $10 billion in combined valuations while addressing enterprise needs for data sovereignty and interoperability. The panel detailed how the AI boom is driving a shift from human-led development to agentic provisioning, creating demand for storage-centric architectures that support short-lived, unstructured data workloads. Looking ahead, industry leaders predict a five-year trajectory where hundreds of millions of citizen developers leverage commoditized AI to compress development cycles, necessitating hybrid infrastructure strategies that balance local model execution with scalable cloud data management.

Alix, SAP, Daytona, Feedly, Prosus & Handelsblatt: The Future Agentic AI & Autonomous Workflows

Alix, Edwin Kodabachan, Paul Van der Boor, Alexander Maisor, Emmanuel Casimates, Ivan Bourazin

Experts at a recent industry gathering defined Agentic AI as a shift from simple request-response models to autonomous systems capable of multi-step planning, emphasizing that security and governance remain critical barriers requiring strict human oversight. SAP and other leaders proposed frameworks like "agentic quality controls" and locally hosted environments to manage agent identities and comply with regulations, while anticipating a workforce evolution where humans supervise "digital teammates" rather than performing manual tasks. Despite concerns over the hype cycle, participants agreed that organizations with mature data and processes will soon leverage these tools to exponentially increase productivity, provided they implement robust guardrails to direct this technological capability toward tangible business value.

A fireside Chat with Paddy Srinivasan, CEO of DigitalOcean ft. Semafor

Paddy Srinivasan, Patti, Reid

DigitalOcean CEO Patti and Reid Hoffman discuss the platform's role in serving 3 million developers by providing specialized AI infrastructure for both native startups and traditional firms integrating large language models. The conversation highlights critical global bottlenecks, including power constraints necessitating nuclear energy and a talent war driving new hiring protocols for AI automation engineers. Hoffmann forecasts a massive economic expansion where AI increases the technology sector's share of global GDP to 25% within a decade, alongside a predicted dispersion of value beyond current market leaders.

Oege De Moor (XBOW) & Apoorv Agrawal (Altimeter): Hackers with GPUs Offensive Security in the AI Era

Oege De Moor, Apoorv Agrawal, Uhey Dhimur

Altimeter Capital-backed startup Expo has deployed an autonomous AI agent that ranks as the world's top ethical hacker, identifying over 1,200 vulnerabilities including critical zero-days in enterprise giants like Palo Alto Networks and Salesforce within a single week. This superhuman capability forces a strategic industry shift toward AI-driven defense to combat a "skill shortage" in malicious actors that has enabled nation-states to automate attacks with unprecedented speed. While the market anticipates a major cyber incident within twelve months due to rising AI-generated code risks, human security roles are expected to evolve from technical execution to the strategic orchestration of these autonomous systems.

A fireside Chat with Ramin Hasani, Co-Founder & CEO of Liquid AI ft. Robert Cahill (Enhance Venture)

Ramin Hasani, Robert Cahill

Liquid AI, an MIT spin-off founded by Ramin Hassani, is deploying a unique full-stack foundation model platform that utilizes biologically inspired Liquid Neural Networks to run generative AI directly on edge devices. This architecture achieves linear scaling rather than the quadratic costs of standard Transformers, enabling powerful on-device intelligence in resource-constrained hardware like smartphones and satellites without relying on data centers. Positioned as a specialized "gatekeeper" alongside massive cloud-based Oracles, the Boston-based company targets a projected $1 trillion on-device AI market by 2035 with applications spanning consumer electronics, automotive, and aerospace sectors.

SQORUS & Oracle: How AI is transforming step by step our industries. Use cases by ONET

Cyril Grira, Geoffrey, Gaurit Champenois, Romain Guyettremotier

Oracle, Skorus, and ONET Airport Services unveiled a comprehensive digital transformation at a 40th-anniversary celebration that leverages Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to reduce annual baggage losses by 25%. Led by Cyril Grira of Oracle, Geoffrey of Skorus, and ONET CIO Guillaume de Montessu, the project utilizes Autonomous Database 23ai, AI-powered vision services, and generative AI to shift operations from rigid timing-based SLAs to value-driven, real-time decision-making. Future initiatives plan to advance this system toward autonomous mission assignment and augmented reality interfaces to further optimize ground service productivity across Charles de Gaulle and other major hubs.