Tech Talks Daily

Neil C. Hughes

If every company is now a tech company and digital transformation is a journey rather than a destination, how do you keep up with the relentless pace of technological change?

Every day, Tech Talks Daily brings you insights from the brightest minds in tech, business, and innovation, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways.

Hosted by Neil C. Hughes, Tech Talks Daily explores how emerging technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, fintech, quantum computing, Web3, and more are shaping industries and solving real-world challenges in modern businesses.

Through candid conversations with industry leaders, CEOs, Fortune 500 executives, startup founders, and even the occasional celebrity, Tech Talks Daily uncovers the trends driving digital transformation and the strategies behind successful tech adoption. But this isn't just about buzzwords.

We go beyond the hype to demystify the biggest tech trends and determine their real-world impact. From cybersecurity and blockchain to AI sovereignty, robotics, and post-quantum cryptography, we explore the measurable difference these innovations can make.

Whether improving security, enhancing customer experiences, or driving business growth, we also investigate the ROI of cutting-edge tech projects, asking the tough questions about what works, what doesn't, and how businesses can maximize their investments.

Whether you're a business leader, IT professional, or simply curious about technology's role in our lives, you'll find engaging discussions that challenge perspectives, share diverse viewpoints, and spark new ideas.

New episodes are released daily, 365 days a year, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways around technology and the future of business.

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2,001 episodes
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Episodes2001

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Sep 16, 2025 · 21 min
3422: Meet Symphion and the Print Fleet Cybersecurity as a Service
I've spent years talking about endpoint security, yet printers rarely enter the conversation. Today, that blind spot takes center stage. I'm joined by Jim LaRoe, CEO of Symphion, to unpack why printers now represent one of the most exposed corners of the enterprise and what can be done about it. Jim's team protects fleets that range from a few hundred devices to tens of thousands, and the picture he paints is stark. In many organizations, printers make up 20 to 30 percent of endpoints, and almost all of them are left in a factory default state. That means open ports, default passwords, and little to no monitoring. Pair that with the sensitive data printers receive, process, and store, plus the privileged connections they hold to email and file servers, and you start to see why attackers love them. We trace Symphion's path from a configuration management roots story in 1999 to a pivot in 2015 when a major printer manufacturer invited the company behind the curtain. What they found was a parallel universe to mainstream IT. Brand silos, disparate operating systems, and a culture that treated printers as cost items rather than connected computers. Add in the human factor, where technicians reset devices to factory defaults after service as second nature, and you have a recipe for recurring vulnerabilities that never make it into a SOC dashboard. Jim explains how Symphion's Print Fleet Cybersecurity as a Service tackles this mess with cross-brand software, professional operations, and proven processes delivered for a simple per-device price. The model is designed to remove operational burden from IT teams. Automated daily monitoring detects drift, same-day remediation resets hardened controls, and comprehensive reporting supports regulatory needs in sectors like healthcare where compliance is non-negotiable. The goal is steady cyber hygiene for printers that mirrors what enterprises already expect for servers and PCs, without cobbling together multiple vendor tools, licenses, and extra headcount to operate them. We also talk about the hidden costs of DIY printer security. Licensing multiple management platforms for different brands, training staff who already have full plates, and outages caused by misconfigurations all add up. Jim shares real-world perspectives from organizations that tried to patch together a solution before calling in help. The pattern is familiar. Costs creep. Vulnerabilities reappear. Incidents push the topic onto the CISO's agenda. Symphion's pitch is straightforward. Treat print fleets like any other class of critical infrastructure in the enterprise, and measure outcomes in risk reduction, time saved, and fewer surprises. If you are commuting while listening and now hearing alarm bells, you are not alone. Think about the printers scattered across your offices and clinics. Consider the data that passes through them every day. Then picture an attacker who finds default credentials in minutes and uses a printer to move across your network. Tune in for a fast, practical look at a risk hiding in plain sight, and learn how Symphion's Print Fleet Cybersecurity as a Service can help you close a gap that attackers know too well. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 15, 2025 · 30 min
Marketing Intelligence After Cookies: How Funnel Turns Data Into Decisions
Marketing teams used to have a simple enough job: follow the click, count the conversions, and shift the budget accordingly. But that world is gone. GDPR, iOS restrictions, and browser-level changes have left most attribution models broken or unreliable. So what now? In this episode, I sat down with Fredrik Skansen, CEO of Funnel, to unpack how marketing intelligence actually works in a world where data is partial, journeys are fragmented, and the old models don't hold. Since founding Funnel in 2014, Fredrik has grown the company into a platform that supports over 2,600 brands and handles reporting on more than 80 billion dollars in annual digital spend. That scale gives him a front-row seat to the questions every CMO and CFO are asking right now. Fredrik explains why last-click attribution didn't just become inaccurate. It became misleading. With tracking capabilities stripped down and user signals disappearing, the industry has had to move toward modeled attribution and real-time optimisation. That only works if your data is clean, aligned, and ready for analysis. Funnel's platform helps structure campaigns upfront, pull data into a unified model, apply intelligence, push learnings back into the platforms, and produce reporting that makes sense to the wider business. This isn't about dashboards. It's about decisions. We also talk about budget mix. Performance channels may feel safe, but Fredrik points out they are also getting more expensive. When teams bring brand and mid-funnel activity back into the measurement framework, the picture often changes. He shares how Swedish retailer Gina Tricot grew from 100 million to 300 million dollars in three years, in part by shifting spend to brand and driving demand earlier in the customer journey. That move only felt safe because the data supported it. AI adds another layer. With tools like Perplexity reshaping search behavior and the web shifting from links to answers, click-throughs are drying up. But it's not the end of visibility. Content still matters. So does structure. The difference is that now your reader might be an AI model, not a human. That requires a rethink in how brands approach discoverability, authority, and engagement. What makes Funnel interesting is that it doesn't stop at analytics. The platform feeds insight back into action, reducing waste and creating tighter loops between teams. It also works for agencies, which is why groups like Havas use it across 40 offices through a global agreement. If you're tired of attribution theatre and want to understand what marketing measurement looks like when it's built for reality, this episode gives you a clear, usable view. Listen in, then tell me which decision you're still guessing on. Because marketing can be measured. Just not the way it used to be. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 14, 2025 · 49 min
Why FeatureOps Might Be the Future of Software Delivery
I invited Egil Østhus to unpack a simple idea that tends to get lost in release day pressure. DevOps gets code to production quickly, but users experience features, not pipelines. Egil is the founder of Unleash, an open source feature management platform with close to 30 million downloads, and he argues that the next step is FeatureOps. It is a mindset and a set of practices that separate deployment from release, so teams can place code in production, light it up for a small cohort, learn, and only then scale out with confidence. Here is the thing. Controlled rollouts, clear telemetry, and fast rollback reduce risk without slowing teams down. Egil explains how FeatureOps connects engineering effort to business outcomes through gradual exposure, full stack experimentation, and what he calls surgical rollback. Instead of ripping out an entire release when one part misbehaves, teams can disable the offending capability and keep the rest of the value in place. It sounds straightforward because it is, and that is the point. Less drama, more learning, better results. We also talk about culture. When releases repeatedly disappoint, trust between product and engineering frays. Egil shares examples where Unleash helped a hardware and software company move from blame to shared ownership by making rollout plans visible and collaborative. Another client, an ERP vendor, discovered that early feedback from a small group of users allowed them to ship a leaner version that met the need without months of extra scope. That is how FeatureOps saves money and tempers expectations while still delighting customers. AI enters the story too. Code is shipping faster, but reliability can wobble when autogenerated changes move through pipelines. Egil sees feature management as a practical control plane for this new reality. Feature flags provide a real time safety net and, if needed, a kill switch for AI powered functionality. Teams can keep experimenting while protecting users and brand equity. If you want to move beyond release day roulette, this episode offers a practical playbook. We cover privacy first design, open source flexibility, and why metadata from FeatureOps will help leaders study how their organizations truly build. To learn more, visit getunleash.io or search for Unleash in your favorite tool, then tell me how you plan to measure your next rollout's impact. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 13, 2025 · 25 min
From Bots To Agents: Building Trustworthy Autonomy With Hakkōda, an IBM Company
I invited Atalia Horenshtien to unpack a topic many leaders are wrestling with right now. Everyone is talking about AI agents, yet most teams are still living with rule based bots, brittle scripts, and a fair bit of anxiety about handing decisions to software. Atalia has lived through the full arc, from early machine learning and automated pipelines to today's agent frameworks inside large enterprises. She is an AI and data strategist, a former data scientist and software engineer, and has just joined Hakoda, an IBM company, to help global brands move from experiments to outcomes. The timing matters. She starts on the 18th, and this conversation captures how she thinks about responsible progress at exactly the moment she steps into that new role. Here's the thing. Words like autonomy sound glamorous until an agent faces a messy real world task. Atalia draws a clear line between scripted bots and agents with goals, memory, and the ability to learn from feedback. Her advice is refreshingly grounded. Start internal where you can observe behavior. Put human in the loop review where it counts. Use role based access rather than feeding an LLM everything you own. Build an observability layer so you can see what the model did, why it did it, and what it cost. We also get into measurements that matter. Time saved, cycle time reduction, adoption, before and after comparisons, and a sober look at LLM costs against any reduction in FTE hours. She shares how custom cost tracking for agents prevents surprises, and why version one should ship even if it is imperfect. Culture shows up as a recurring theme. Leaders need to talk openly about reskilling, coach managers through change, and invite teams to be co creators. Her story about Hakoda's internal AI Lab is a good example. What began as an engineer's idea for ETL schema matching grew into agent powered tools that won a CIO 100 award and now help deliver faster, better outcomes for clients. There are lighter moments too. Atalia explains how she taught an ex NFL player the basics of time series forecasting using football tactics. Then she takes us behind the scenes with McLaren Racing, where data and strategy collide on the F1 circuit, and admits she has become a committed fan because of that work. If you want a practical playbook for moving from shiny demos to dependable agents, this episode will help you think clearly about scope, safeguards, and speed. Connect with Atalia on LinkedIn, explore Hakoda's work at hakoda.io, and then tell me how you plan to measure your first agent's value. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 12, 2025 · 35 min
3418: Scaling IoT Security with Real Time Visibility at Wireless Logic
Here's the thing. Connecting thousands of devices is the easy part. Keeping them resilient and secure as you grow is where the real work lives. In this episode, I sit down with Iain Davidson, Senior Product Manager at Wireless Logic, to unpack what happens when connectivity, security, and operations meet in the real world. Wireless Logic connects a new IoT device every 18 seconds, with more than 18 million active subscriptions across 165 countries and partnerships with over 750 mobile networks. That reach brings hard lessons about where projects stall, where breaches begin, and how to build systems that can take a hit without taking your business offline. Iain lays out a simple idea that more teams need to hear. Resilience and security have to scale at the same pace as your device rollouts. He explains why fallback connectivity, private networking, and an IoT-optimised mobile core such as Conexa set the ground rules, but the real differentiator is visibility. If you cannot see what your fleet is doing in near real time, you are guessing. We talk through Wireless Logic's agentless anomaly and threat detection that runs in the mobile core, creating behavioural baselines and flagging malware events, backdoors, and suspicious traffic before small issues become outages. It is an early warning layer for fleets that often live beyond the traditional IT perimeter. We also get honest about risk. Iain shares why one in three breaches now involve an IoT device and why detection can still take months. Ransomware demands grab headlines, but the quiet damage shows up in recovery costs, truck rolls, and trust lost with customers. Then there is compliance. With new rules tightening in Europe and beyond, scaling without protection does not only invite attackers. It can keep you out of the market. Iain's message is clear. Bake security in from day one through defend, detect, react practices, supply chain checks, secure boot and firmware integrity, OTA updates, and the discipline to rehearse incident playbooks so people know what to do when alarms sound. What if you already shipped devices without all of that in place? We cover that too. From migrating SIMs into secure private networks to quarantining suspect endpoints and turning on core-level detection without adding agents, there are practical ways to raise your posture without ripping and replacing hardware. Automation helps, especially at global scale, but people still make the judgment calls. Train your teams, run simulations, and give both humans and digital systems clear rules for when to block, when to escalate, and when to restore from backup. I left this conversation with a simple takeaway. Growth is only real if it is durable. If you are rolling out EV chargers, medical devices, cameras, industrial sensors, or anything that talks to the network, this episode gives you a working playbook for scaling with confidence. Connect with Iain on LinkedIn, explore the IoT security resources at WirelessLogic.com, or reach the team at hello@wirelesslogic.com. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 11, 2025 · 32 min
3417: Inflection AI and the Rise of Contextual Intelligence
Here's the thing. Most enterprise AI pitches talk about scale and speed. Fewer talk about trust, tone, and culture. In this conversation with Inflection AI's Amit Manjhi and Shruti Prakash, I explore a different path for enterprise AI, one that combines emotional intelligence with analytical horsepower, enabling teams to ask more informed questions of their data and receive answers that are grounded in context. Amit's story sets the pace. He is a three-time founder, a YC alum, and a CS PhD who has solved complex problems across mobile, ad tech, and data. Shruti complements that arc with a product lens shaped by real operational trenches, from clean rooms to grocery retail analytics. Together, they built BoostKPI during the pandemic, transforming natural language into actionable insights, and then joined Inflection AI to help refocus the company on achieving enterprise outcomes. Their shared north star is simple to say yet tricky to execute. Make data analysis conversational, accurate, and emotionally aware so people actually use it. We unpack Inflection's shift from Pi's consumer roots to privacy-first enterprise tools. That history matters because it gives the team a head start on EQ. When you combine a deep well of human-to-AI conversations with modern LLMs, you get systems that explain, probe, and adapt rather than dump charts and call it a day. Shruti breaks down what dialogue with data looks like in practice. Think back-and-forth exchanges that move from "what happened" to "why it happened," then on to "where else this pattern appears" and "what to do next," all grounded in an organization's language and values. Amit takes us under the hood on deployment choices and ownership. If a customer wants on-prem or VPC, they get it. If they're going to fine-tune models to their vernacular, they can. The model, the insights, and the guardrails remain in the customer's control. I enjoyed the honesty around adoption. Chasing AGI makes headlines, but it rarely helps a merchandising manager spot an early drop in lifetime value or a CX lead understand churn risk before quarter end. The duo keeps the conversation grounded in everyday questions that drive numbers and reduce meetings. They describe a path where EQ and IQ come together to form what Shruti calls contextual intelligence, and where brands can trust AI agents to assist without losing ownership or voice. If you care about making data useful to more people, and you want AI that sounds like your company rather than a generic assistant, this one is for you. We cover startup lessons, the reality of cofounding as a couple during lockdowns, and how Inflection is working with large enterprises to bring conversational analysis to real workloads. It is a grounded look at where enterprise AI is heading, and a timely reminder that technology should elevate humans, not replace them. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 10, 2025 · 35 min
3416: DEUNA: From One-Click Checkout to Intelligent Payments Infrastructure
Here's the thing. Payments only look simple from the outside. In this Tech Talks Daily episode, I sit down with Roberto "Reks" Kafati, CEO and co-founder of DEUNA, to unpack how a scrappy one-click checkout idea grew into an intelligent payments infrastructure that now touches a large slice of Mexico's online economy. Reks explains why Latin America's high decline rates aren't just an inconvenience but a growth killer, and how DEUNA's early focus on orchestration and checkout opened the door to something bigger. When a region routinely sees more than four out of ten online transactions knocked back, the bar for reliability sits in a different place. That practical problem set the stage for what came next. Athia, Real-Time Decisions, and 638 Signals per Transaction DEUNA's pivot point came when merchants asked a fair question. With all this payment data flying through the system, what should we do with it? The answer is Athia, DEUNA's AI-powered layer that watches every transaction and feeds merchants real-time insight, routing choices, and suggested actions. It is not another dashboard you promise to check and then ignore by Friday. It is a reasoning engine that sits on top of 638 data points per transaction and turns mess into movement. That is how you recover revenue without punishing good customers with extra friction, how you avoid surprise fees from networks, and how you protect recurring revenue when a processor wobbles. Reks walks us through results that speak plainly. Ramped merchants saw conversion lift from the original one-click experience. The infrastructure tier recovers meaningful GMV and trims fees. Enterprise clients report double-digit ROI and stick around for the compounding effect. Building Through Adversity and Betting on the Right Layer What resonated most was the human story behind the metrics. DEUNA was born in the first months of the pandemic, shaped by the shock that hit real-world businesses when revenue fell off a cliff and marketplaces became a lifeline with strings attached. Reks shares an unvarnished look at a tough 2023, the kind of year founders rarely talk about on record. Revenues dipped, deals went sideways, life got complicated. The team chose resilience and doubled down on a two-year vision. That bet is paying off. Over the past twenty-four months the company has grown at a pace that would bend a chart, and the focus has shifted from commoditizing orchestration to productizing intelligence. Put simply, earn trust at checkout, then make the data work for the merchant in real time. Agentic Commerce, US Expansion, and What Comes Next We also look forward. If chat interfaces begin to mediate more buying decisions, merchants will need infrastructure that can think, not just connect endpoints. That is the territory DEUNA calls intelligent infrastructure, and it is where Athia operates every day. The company is now in active conversations with major US retailers, confident after winning head-to-head enterprise evaluations. Reks frames the opportunity without hype. If you can see acceptance trends by processor, by country, by card type, and act in the moment, you keep customers, protect margins, and avoid death by a thousand false declines. If you cannot, competitors will gladly welcome your frustrated shoppers. If you care about the real mechanics of growth, this conversation is for you. We talk conversion lift, recovered revenue, and the gritty bits of building a payments company that merchants actually rely on. We also talk about the days that test your resolve and the tenth day that reminds you why you started. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 9, 2025 · 25 min
3415: Secure GenAI for SAP: Syntax Systems CodeGenie on BTP
I sat down with Leo de Araujo, Head of Global Business Innovation at Syntax Systems, to unpack a problem every SAP team knows too well. Years of enhancements and quick fixes leave you with custom code that nobody wants to document, a maze of SharePoint folders, and hard questions whenever S/4HANA comes up. What does this program do. What breaks if we change that field. Do we have three versions of the same thing. Leo's answer is Syntax AI CodeGenie, an agentic AI solution with a built-in chatbot that finally treats documentation and code understanding as a living part of the system, not an afterthought. Here's the thing. CodeGenie automates the creation and upkeep of custom code documentation, then lets you ask plain-language questions about function and business value. Instead of hunting through 40-page PDFs, teams can ask, "Do we already upload sales orders from Excel," or "What depends on this BAdI," and get an instant explanation. That changes migration planning. You can see what to keep, what to retire, and where standard capabilities or new extensions make more sense, which shortens the path to S/4HANA Cloud and helps you stay on a clean core. We also talk about how this is delivered. CodeGenie runs on SAP Business Technology Platform, connects through standard APIs, and avoids intrusive add-ons. It is compatible with SAP S/4HANA, S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition through RISE with SAP, and on-premises ECC. Security comes first, with tenant isolation for each customer and no custom code shared externally or used for AI model training. The result is a setup that respects enterprise guardrails while still giving developers and architects fast answers. Clean core gets a plain explanation in this episode. Build outside the application with published APIs, keep upgrades predictable, and innovate at the edge where you can move quickly. CodeGenie gives you the visibility to make that real, surfacing what you actually run today and how it ties to outcomes, so you can design a migration roadmap that fits the business rather than guessing from stale documents. Leo also previews the Gen AI Starter Pack, launching September 9. It bundles a managed, model-flexible platform with workshops, use-case ideation, and initial builds, so teams can move from curiosity to working solutions without locking themselves into a single provider. Paired with CodeGenie and Syntax's development accelerators, the Starter Pack points toward something SAP leaders have wanted for years, a practical way to shift from in-core customizations to clean-core extensions with much less friction. If you are planning S/4HANA, balancing hybrid and multi-cloud realities, or simply tired of tribal knowledge around critical programs, this conversation is for you. We get specific about how CodeGenie works, where it saves time and cost, and how Syntax is shaping a playbook for AI that helps teams deliver results they can trust. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 8, 2025 · 27 min
3414: Self-Healing Machines and Robotics with Grace Technologies
Drew Allen, CEO of Grace Technologies, shares real stories from the floor, the ideas shaping safer plants, and why culture matters more than slogans. Drew's background stretches from a family line linked to Samuel Morse to teenage years in China to global business development at 3M. That range shows up in how he leads. He listens, he moves fast, and he expects teams to work on things that matter. In his world that means saving electricians from shocks and arc flash while helping manufacturers modernize without losing their soul. Grace started with mechanical and analog products, then took the hard road into fully digital systems. The shift took time and patience. Today their platform brings sensors, AI, and cloud tooling into maintenance and safety. The example that stuck with me is a proximity band for electricians. It lights, beeps, and vibrates as a worker approaches live voltage. At TriCity, that band prevented three near misses in a three month pilot. A fourth incident still ended in a hospital visit and a costly outage because the worker left the band in his car. Another apprentice nearly placed a hand on a live bus bar until the band told him something was wrong. These moments remind you that technology can change a day and a life. Drew's take on culture is refreshingly direct. Values are not a poster. They are a filter for who you hire. He looks for customer obsession, ownership, curiosity, and candid communication. Then he pairs that with high expectations and real care. Autonomy comes with accountability. Impact matters. If someone does not want to work on meaningful problems, this is not their place. It sounds firm. It also explains why the company keeps earning top workplace recognition while raising the bar on performance. We also talked about Maple Studios, the startup incubator Drew launched in Davenport, Iowa. He sees gaps in the industrial ecosystem. Fewer big exits. Slow adoption cycles. Founders stuck inside large companies. Maple gives them tools, space, and hard feedback so they can iterate faster and build things factories will actually deploy. His advice is simple. Ship, learn, and repeat. Do customer reviews early. Expect a thousand small gotchas. Move through them rather than pretending they will not appear. Looking ahead, Drew expects robotics to accelerate for a very practical reason. Companies cannot find enough people. Dangerous work will be automated. He imagines maintenance tasks shifting toward humanoid robots, with machines designed so robotic agents can service them. He also references GM's self healing language to point at a coming blend of sensing, prediction, and automated repair. On AI, he shares Satya Nadella's challenge. Measure productivity and GDP impact rather than hype. The promise is there. The scoreboard will tell the story. If you work in industrial tech, this conversation lands close to home. You will hear how to bring digital tools into legacy environments, how to design for safety from the start, and how to keep teams motivated without losing kindness. You will also catch an open invitation. Drew wants to partner with builders who care about this space. If that is you, reach out to him on LinkedIn or visit graceport.com. And if you are curious about the band that vibrates before a bad day begins, this episode is a good place to start. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 7, 2025 · 25 min
3413: Why Medium-Range Forecasts Could Save Millions: Lessons from Planette AI
I spoke with Kalai Ramea at a timely moment. We recorded this conversation during a heatwave in the UK, which made her work at Planette AI feel very real. Kalai calls herself an all-purpose scientist, with a path that runs through California climate policy, Xerox PARC, and now a startup focused on the forecast window that most people ignore. Not tomorrow's weather. Not far-off climate scenarios. The space in between. Two weeks to two months out, where decisions get made and money is on the line. Kalai explains Planette AI's idea of scientific AI in plain words. Instead of learning from yesterday's weather patterns and hoping the future looks the same, their models learn physics from earth system simulations. Ocean meets atmosphere, energy moves, and the model learns those relationships directly. That matters in a warming world where history is a shaky guide. It also shortens time to insight. Traditional models can take weeks to run. If the output arrives after the risky period has passed, it is trivia. tte AI is building for speed and usefulness. The value shows up in places you can picture. Event planners deciding whether to green-light a festival. Airlines shaping schedules and staffing. Farmers choosing when to plant and irrigate. Insurers pricing risk without leaning only on the past. Kalai shared a telling backcast of Bonnaroo in Tennessee, where flooding forced a last-minute cancellation. Their system showed heavy-rain signals weeks ahead. That kind of lead time changes outcomes, budgets, and stress levels. From Jargon To Decisions What I appreciate most about this story is the focus on access. Too many forecasts live in papers that only specialists read. Kalai and team are working to strip away jargon and deliver answers people can act on. Will it rain enough to trigger a payout. Will a heat threshold be crossed. Will the next month bring the kind of wind that matters for grid operations. The delivery matters as much as the math. NetCDF files might work for researchers, but a map, a simple number, or a chat interface is what users reach for when time is short. There is also a financial thread running through this work. Climate risk now shapes crop insurance, carbon programs, and balance sheets. Parametric insurance is growing because it is simple. Set a threshold. If it hits, the policy pays. Better medium-range signals make those products fairer and more useful. Kalai describes Planette AI's role as a baseline layer others can build on, a kind of AWS for climate intelligence. That framing fits. No single company will build every app in this space. A reliable core makes the rest possible. Kalai's path ties it all together. Policy taught her how decisions get made. PARC sharpened her instincts for practical AI. PlanetteAI is the result. If you care about planning beyond next week, this episode will give you a new way to think about forecasts and the tools that power them. I will add the blog link Kalai shared in the show notes. In the meantime, if you are in agriculture, travel, energy, or insurance, ask yourself a simple question. What would you change if you had a trustworthy signal three to eight weeks ahead. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 6, 2025 · 21 min
3412: PuppyGraph at the IT Press Tour: Graph Power Without the Pain
During the IT Press Tour, I had the pleasure of speaking with Weimo Liu, CEO and co-founder of PuppyGraph, and hearing firsthand how his team is rethinking graph technology for the enterprise. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, Weimo joins me to share the story behind PuppyGraph's "zero ETL" approach, which lets organizations query their existing data as a graph without ever moving or duplicating it. We discuss why graph databases, despite their promise, have struggled with mainstream adoption, often because of complex pipelines and heavy infrastructure requirements. Weimo explains how PuppyGraph borrows from his time at TigerGraph and Google's F1 engine to build something new: a distributed query engine that maps tables into a logical graph and delivers subsecond performance on massive datasets. That shift opens the door for use cases in cybersecurity, fraud detection, and AI-driven applications where latency and accuracy matter most. We also unpack the developer experience. Instead of rewriting schemas or reloading data every time requirements change, PuppyGraph allows teams to define nodes and edges directly from existing tables. That design lowers the barrier for SQL-focused teams and accelerates time to value. Weimo even touches on the role of graph in reducing AI hallucinations, showing how structured relationships can make enterprise AI systems more reliable. What struck me most in our conversation is how PuppyGraph's playful branding belies its serious engineering depth. Behind the "puppy" name lies a distributed engine built to scale with today's data volumes, backed by strong early adoption and a team that listens closely to customer needs. Whether you're exploring graph for cybersecurity, AI chatbots, or supply chain analytics, this discussion offers a glimpse of how the next generation of graph tech might finally break free from its niche and go mainstream. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 6, 2025 · 27 min
3411: Why The Browser Is The New Security Perimeter
When I invited Or Eshed, CEO and co-founder of LayerX Security, onto Tech Talks Daily, I wanted to challenge a blind spot most teams carry into work each day. We talk about phishing, ransomware, and endpoint controls, yet we skip the place where employees actually live online. The browser. That quiet tab bar has become the front door to identities, payments, SaaS, and now AI. Or calls it a different operating system in its own right, and once you hear his examples of how extensions can intercept cookies, mimic logins, or even meddle with AI chats, the penny drops fast. Here's the thing. Blocking extensions across the board no longer fits how people work. Developers, marketers, sales teams, and support agents all lean on extensions for real productivity gains. Or's argument is simple. If the business depends on extensions, security has to meet people where they are with continuous, risk-based controls inside the browser itself. That means assessing code, permissions, ownership changes, and live behaviors, not relying on a static allow list that grows and grows while attackers slip through the cracks. We also unpack Extensionpedia, LayerX's free resource that lets anyone look up the risk profile of a specific extension. It is part education, part early warning system, and it serves a wider mission to raise the floor for everyone. Or shares how a technology alliance with Google has helped the team analyze extensions at serious scale, and why better data beats clever slogans in a space where signals change hour by hour. Malicious Extensions, AI Shortcuts, And The Culture Shift Security Needs One of the standout moments is a real-world story that starts at home and ends inside a corporate network. A spouse installs a screen-recording extension on a personal device, the browser profile syncs at work, and suddenly corporate credentials and sensitive sessions are mirrored to an untrusted machine. No shadowy APT needed. Just everyday sync doing exactly what it was designed to do. It is messy, human, and exactly why policy needs to be paired with continuous visibility in the browser. We explore the gray zone where productivity tools collide with privacy. Password managers, VPN helpers, and AI-everywhere extensions promise convenience, yet they can scrape data across SaaS apps or sync credentials in ways security leaders never intended. Or's advice is refreshingly pragmatic. Assume extensions are staying. Instrument the browser, score risk in real time, and adapt access based on what an extension actually does, not what it claims on a store page. Looking ahead, Or sees the browser taking an even bigger role as email, SaaS, and AI agents converge in one place. With AI companies building their own browsers, the last mile of user interaction gets denser, faster, and more valuable to protect. If 99 percent of enterprise users already run at least one extension, the task is clear. Know which ones are in play, understand how they behave, and keep policy dynamic. If this conversation sparks a rethink of your own approach, check your extensions in Extensionpedia, and then consider what modern, in-browser controls would look like in your environment. After this episode, you may never look at that tidy row of icons the same way again. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 5, 2025 · 37 min
3410: Smartly CEO Laura Desmond on how AI is Rewriting the Rules of AdTech
I invited Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, to make sense of what feels like the biggest shake-up in marketing since the mobile era. She has led through every cycle I can remember, from the early internet to the rise of social, and she sees AI changing the rules faster than any previous wave. Across our conversation we unpack how AI is rewriting creative work, buying, and measurement, while forcing brands to rebuild trust with clear rules on data, models, and creator rights. Here's the thing. Attention is shorter, and the thumb moves fast. Most people give an ad about two seconds, and video is taking over the feed. Laura expects video to account for three quarters of digital ads by 2026, which tracks with what I am seeing across every platform. Smartly is betting on that shift with tools that turn Shorts or TikToks into personalized CTV spots, and bring CTV signal back into social. The goal is simple to say and hard to pull off. Show every person something that feels made for them, then learn from the response and improve the next piece of creative in near real time. We also talk about why the ground is moving under search. A growing number of people, especially younger users, skip the front page of Google and ask an AI assistant instead. That changes how discovery works, how queries appear, and where ad products live. Laura thinks we are heading toward campaigns that cut across search, social, retail media, and CTV as one flowing video-first effort, with creative and media stitched together by software rather than teams tossing files over the wall. Results matter, and Laura shared two proof points I kept coming back to. Smartly's platform has been validated by PwC for a 13 percent ROI lift across clients. The same study confirmed time savings that add up to 42 minutes a day for hands-on users. That reclaimed time funds the work that actually moves the needle, like faster A/B tests, sharper creative decisions, and better budget moves across channels. We also dig into conversational ads. In a recent test with Boots, Smartly's format delivered roughly four times the return on investment versus business as usual, which speaks to how fast query-style interactions are shaping expectations. Trust sits in the middle of all this. Laura is clear that responsible AI is table stakes. Brands need controls to tune or override generated assets, clarity on data sources and model choice, and a stance on creator rights before any content goes live. Her view of AI is creative first. Automate the tedious parts. Keep people in charge of taste, tone, and brand. Use the feedback loop to learn faster, not to replace the team. We close on where this all leads. Expect brand experiences that blur physical and digital without losing the human spark. Stadiums full, stores buzzing, and at the same time richer virtual touchpoints, snackable video, and one-to-one conversations that feel helpful rather than creepy. If this is your world, Laura is hosting Smartly's ADVANCE on September 17 in Brooklyn, and it looks set to be a real working session for marketers who want results, not theater. You can find details here: https://bit.ly/4fRgWEE. Tune in if you want a candid, practical map for where creative, media, and AI are heading next, and how to measure what matters while keeping your brand worthy of trust. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 4, 2025 · 29 min
How Fugro is Using Tech to Chart the Ocean Floor
What does it take to map the oceans when most of the world's seabed remains unseen and unmapped? That's the question I explored with Mike Liddell from Fugro, a company using technology to reveal what lies beneath the waves. In our conversation, Mike explained why surveying the ocean is like "working in heavy fog on a roller coaster" and how traditional tools like light and radio signals are useless underwater. Instead, sonar, robotics, and increasingly AI are stepping in to make sense of this hidden world. Mike described the huge scale of the challenge, from mapping areas larger than major cities to supporting offshore wind farms that power our clean energy transition. With labour shortages and younger generations less willing to spend months at sea, Fugro is shifting to remote operations centres and uncrewed surface vessels. These new approaches not only widen the talent pool but also cut fuel use dramatically—by as much as 95 percent compared to older ships. What really struck me was the pace of change. A few years ago, offshore vessels struggled with internet speeds reminiscent of dial-up modems. Today, satellite systems like Starlink make real-time collaboration between sea and shore possible. Add in AI that can process data at the edge and make instant decisions about where and how to collect information, and you begin to see how marine surveying is entering a new era. This episode is a glimpse into that frontier and into how technology is reshaping the way we understand and care for our blue planet. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 3, 2025 · 28 min
3408: Lightricks, Open Source Video, and the Race for Faster Creativity
Here's the thing. Generative AI for visuals has shifted from a party trick to everyday craftwork, and few people sit closer to that shift than Ofir Bibi, VP of Research at Lightricks. In this conversation, I wanted to understand how a company famous for Facetune, Photoleap, and Videoleap is building for a future where creators expect speed, control, and choice without a headache. What I found was a story about building core technology that serves real creative workflows, not the other way around. Ofir traces Lightricks' journey from clever on-device tricks that made small screens feel powerful to today's foundation models running in the cloud. The constant thread is usability. Making complex editing feel simple requires smart decisions in the background, and that mindset has shaped everything from their early mobile apps to LTX Studio, the company's multi-model creative platform. Across the last three years, generative features moved from novelty to necessity, and that reality forced a bigger question: when do you stop stitching together other people's models and start crafting your own? That question led to LTXV, an open-source video generation model designed for speed, efficiency, and control. Ofir explains why Lightricks built it from scratch and why they shared the weights and trainer with the community. The result is a fast feedback loop where researchers, developers, and even competitors try ideas on a model that runs on consumer-grade hardware and can generate clips faster than they can be watched. The new LTXV 2B Distilled build continues that push toward quicker iteration and creator-friendly control, including arbitrary frame conditioning that suits animation and keyframe-driven workflows. We also talk about the changing data diet for training. Quantity is out. Quality and preparation matter. Licensed, high-aesthetic datasets and tighter curation produce models that understand prompts, motion, and physics with fewer weird edges. That discipline shows up in the product too. LTX Studio blends Lightricks tech with options from partners like Google's Veo and Black Forest Labs' Flux, then steers users toward the right model for the job through thoughtful UI. If you want the sharpest single shot, you can choose it. If you want fast, iterative tweaks for storytelling, LTXV is front and center. Looking ahead, Ofir sees a near future where models become broader and more multimodal, while creators and enterprises ask for local and on-prem options that keep data closer to home. That makes efficiency a feature, not a footnote. If you care about the craft of making, not just the spectacle, this episode offers a grounded view of how AI can actually serve creators. It left me convinced that speed and control are the real differentiators, and that open source can be a very practical way to get both. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 2, 2025 · 25 min
How Altair's AI Fabric Helps Businesses Move Beyond Pilot Projects
Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to experiments in labs or one-off pilot projects. For many enterprises, it is becoming the backbone of how they operate, innovate, and compete. But as companies race to deploy AI, the biggest challenge is not whether the technology works, but whether the foundations exist to scale it safely and effectively. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Christian Buckner, Senior Vice President of Data and AI Platform at Altair, a company known for combining rocket science with data science. Christian unpacks the concept of an AI Fabric, a framework that harmonizes enterprise data and embeds AI directly into a universal model. Rather than scattered tools and isolated projects, the AI Fabric acts as a living system of intelligence, helping organizations move faster, make better decisions, and unlock new kinds of automation. We talk about how global enterprises from automotive suppliers to petrochemical giants are already using Altair's technology to improve safety, optimize production, and cut costs. Christian shares examples including a transportation company that boosted revenue by $50 million in its first year of AI-driven dynamic pricing and a healthcare provider that saved $17 million in analysis time using knowledge graphs for drug discovery. The conversation also explores the hype and the risks around AI agents. While it is easy to spin up a proof of concept with a Python library, Christian explains why real enterprise impact requires governance, monitoring, and infrastructure to make agents trustworthy and sustainable. He likens it to building HR systems for AI, where agents need onboarding, oversight, and performance evaluation to operate alongside humans. We also touch on Altair's acquisition by Siemens and what this means for the future of industrial AI. By integrating Altair's data and AI expertise with Siemens' deep industrial systems, enterprises can add intelligence without ripping out existing infrastructure. The result is not about replacing workers but enabling them to become what Christian calls "10x employees," augmented by AI tools and agents that multiply their effectiveness. For anyone curious about how AI will change product design, operations, and enterprise decision-making, this episode offers a rare inside look at the technology foundations being built today. You can learn more at altair.com/ai-fabric. ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Sep 1, 2025 · 27 min
Arthur AI and the Future of Digital Co-Workers
What if meetings stopped draining your time and instead became engines for action? That's the question driving Christoph Fleischmann, CEO of Arthur AI, and the conversation in today's episode of Tech Talks Daily. Christoph has spent his career at the intersection of human potential and technology, and now he's leading a company that wants to change how enterprises actually get work done. Arthur AI isn't another tool to add to the stack. It's a digital co-worker—an intelligent presence that joins meetings, captures knowledge, and keeps teams aligned across time zones and formats. Whether in XR spaces, on the web, or through conversational interfaces, Arthur AI blends real-time and asynchronous collaboration. The aim is to replace endless, inefficient meetings with something more dynamic: an environment where humans and AI collaborate side by side to deliver outcomes. This conversation goes beyond theory. Christoph shares how Fortune 500 companies are already using Arthur AI to align global strategies, manage complex transformations, and modernize learning and development programs. He explains how their platform is built on enterprise-grade security and a flexible, LLM-agnostic architecture—critical foundations for companies wary of vendor lock-in or compliance risks. We also touch on the cultural shift of inviting AI to take a real seat at the table. From interviewing and project management to knowledge sharing, Arthur AI represents a new category of work experience, one where digital co-workers support people rather than replace them. For leaders tired of meetings that go nowhere and knowledge trapped in silos, this episode offers a glimpse of what smarter, faster collaboration looks like at scale. Could the blueprint for the future of digital work already be here? ********* Visit the Sponsor of Tech Talks Network: Land your first job in tech in 6 months as a Software QA Engineering Bootcamp with Careerist https://crst.co/OGCLA
Aug 31, 2025 · 26 min
From Pinterest and Airbnb to Kumo AI: Reinventing Enterprise AI
Here's the thing. Most enterprise AI talk today starts with chatbots and ends with glossy demos. Meanwhile, the data that actually runs a business lives in rows, columns, and time stamps. That gap is where my conversation with Vanja Josifovski, CEO of Kumo AI really comes alive. Vanja has spent two and a half decades helping companies turn data into decisions, from research roles at Yahoo and Google to steering product and engineering at Pinterest through its IPO and later leading Airbnb Homes. He's now building Kumo AI to answer an old question with a new approach: how do you get accurate, production-grade predictions from relational data without spending months crafting a bespoke model for each use case? Vanja explains why structured business data has been underserved for years. Images and text behave nicely compared to the messy reality of multiple tables, mixed data types, and event histories. Traditional teams anticipate a prediction need, then kick off a long feature engineering and modeling process. Kumo's Relational Foundation Model, or RFM, flips that script. Pre-trained on a large mix of public and synthetic data warehouses, it delivers task-agnostic, zero-shot predictions for problems like churn and fraud. That means you can ask the model questions directly of your data and get useful answers fast, then fine-tune for another 15 to 20 percent uplift when you're ready to squeeze more from your full dataset. What stood out for me is how Kumo removes the grind of manual feature creation. Vanja draws a clear parallel to computer vision's shift years ago, when teams stopped handcrafting edge detectors and started learning from raw pixels. By learning directly from raw tables, Kumo taps the entirety of the data rather than a bundle of human-crafted summaries. The payoff shows up in the numbers customers care about, with double-digit improvements against mature, well-defended baselines and the kind of time savings that change roadmaps. One customer built sixty models in two weeks, a job that would typically span a year or more. We also explore how this fits with the LLM moment. Vanja doesn't position RFM as a replacement for language models. He frames it as a complement that fills an accuracy gap on tabular data where LLMs often drift. Think of RFM as part of an agentic toolbox: when an agent needs a reliable prediction from enterprise data, it can call Kumo instead of generating code, training a fresh model, or bluffing an answer. That design extends to the realities of production as well. Kumo's fine-tuning and serving stack is built for high-QPS environments, the kind you see in recommendations and ad tech, where cost and latency matter. The training story is another thread you'll hear in this episode. The team began with public datasets, then leaned into synthetic data to cover scenarios that are hard to source in the wild. Synthetic generation gives them better control over distribution shifts and edge cases, which speeds iteration and makes the foundation model more broadly capable upon arrival. If you care about measurable outcomes, this episode shows why CFOs pay attention when RFM lands. Vanja shares examples where a 20 to 30 percent lift translates into hundreds of thousands of additional monthly active users and direct revenue impact. That kind of improvement isn't theory. It's the difference between a model that nudges a metric and a model that moves it. By the end, you'll have a clear picture of what Kumo AI is building, why relational data warrants its own foundation model, and how enterprises can move from wishful thinking to practical wins. Curious to try it yourself? Vanja also points to a sandbox where teams can load data and ask predictive questions within a notebook, then compare results against in-house models. If your AI plans keep stalling on tabular reality, this conversation offers a way forward that's fast, accurate, and designed for the systems you already run.
Aug 30, 2025 · 24 min
VMware Explore 2025: Broadcom Showcases the Next Chapter of VCF Innovation
When VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 launched in June, it marked more than just another release. It was the clearest signal yet that Broadcom is betting big on the modern private cloud. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sat down with Prashanth Shenoy, who leads marketing and learning for the VCF division at Broadcom, to discuss what the launch means for enterprises and how those themes are playing out live at VMware Explore in Las Vegas. Prashanth shares how VCF 9.0 was designed to help enterprises operate private clouds with the same simplicity and scale as public hyperscalers, while keeping sovereignty, security, and cost predictability front and center. He explains why this release is more than an infrastructure update. It's a shift toward a workload-agnostic, developer-centric platform where virtual machines, containers, and AI workloads can run side by side with a consistent operational experience. We also unpack Broadcom's headline announcements at the show. From making VCF an AI-native platform to embedding private AI services directly into the foundation, the message is clear: the AI pilots of the past are moving into production, and Broadcom wants VCF to be the default home for enterprise AI. Another major theme is cyber compliance at scale, with VCF now offering continuous enforcement, rapid ransomware recovery, and advanced security services that address today's board-level concerns. But perhaps the biggest takeaway is the momentum. Nine of the top ten Fortune companies are now running on VCF, more than 100 million cores have been licensed, and dozens of enterprises—from global giants to mid-sized insurers—are on stage at VMware Explore sharing their adoption stories. The so-called "cloud reset" that Prashanth has written about is not just theory. Companies are rethinking their cloud strategies, seeking cost transparency, avoiding waste, and building resilient, AI-ready private clouds. This conversation highlights how Broadcom is doubling down on VCF with a singular focus, a massive R&D commitment, and a clear vision of where private cloud is headed. If you want to understand why private AI, developer services, and cyber resilience are now central to enterprise strategy, this is a conversation worth hearing.
Aug 30, 2025 · 19 min
Private AI Takes Center Stage at VMware Explore with Broadcom's Tasha Drew
At VMware Explore in Las Vegas, the buzz wasn't just about generative AI, but about where and how it should run. My guest is Tasha Drew, Director of Engineering for the AI team in the VMware Cloud Foundation division at Broadcom, who has been at the center of this conversation. Fresh off the main stage, where she helped debut VMware's new Private AI Services and Intelligent Assist for VMware Cloud Foundation, Tasha joins me to unpack what these announcements mean for enterprises grappling with privacy, cost, and integration challenges. Tasha explains why private AI is resonating so strongly in 2025, outlining the three pillars that define it: protecting sensitive intellectual property, managing regulated or high-value data, and ensuring role-based control of fine-tuned models. She shares how organizations often start their AI journey in the public cloud, but as experimentation turns to production, cost pressures, data compliance, and proximity to data drive them toward private AI. We also dive into VMware's own evolution toward building an AI-native private cloud platform. Tasha highlights the journey from deep learning VMs and Jupyter notebooks to full AI platform services that empower IT teams to deliver models efficiently, save money, and accelerate deployment of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications. She introduces Intelligent Assist for VMware Cloud Foundation, an AI-powered guide that helps teams navigate complex deployments with context-aware support and step-by-step instructions. Beyond the technology, Tasha reflects on the broader ecosystem shifts, from partnerships with NVIDIA and AMD to the role of Model Context Protocol (MCP) in breaking down integration barriers between enterprise systems. She believes MCP represents a turning point, enabling seamless workflows between platforms that historically lacked incentive to work together. This conversation captures a pivotal moment where private AI is moving from theory into enterprise adoption. For leaders weighing their next move, Tasha provides both the strategic framing and the technical insight to understand why private AI has become one of the most talked-about forces shaping enterprise IT today.