This Week in AI

Jason Calacanis

An experts-only AI podcast: Think the 'All In' podcast for AI. Jason + 3 CEO-level experts breaking down the news & trends.

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#18
June 18 · 1 hr 21 min
Why AI Models Aren’t the Product Any More | TWiAI Ep 18
SpaceX bought Cursor for $60 billion. Satya Nadella says companies need to stop relying on third party AI models and build their own “token capital.” The focus is shifting from LLMs to the application layer sitting on top of them. Here to unpack what that means are guest experts Ali Ansari (Micro1) and Ryan Daniels (Crosby).Plus we get a sneak peek at their new contract redlining benchmark, a crucial eval for how well LLMs don’t just answer questions about the law, but demonstrate actual legal reasoning.Timestamps:0:00 SpaceX acquires Cursor7:36 Distillation vs. building your own model19:43 Nadella's "Frontier Without an Ecosystem"30:21 AI in the courtroom32:15 Ando: the intriguing new workplace tool1:05:38 Inside Micro1 and Crosby's new benchmark1:07:14Guests:Ali Ansari: https://x.com/aliansarinikMicro1: https://www.micro1.ai/Ryan Daniels: https://x.com/ryanjdanielsCrosby: https://crosby.ai/Relevant Links:Bloomberg: “SpaceX acquires Cursor for $60B”: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/spacex-cements-60-billion-deal-to-take-over-ai-startup-cursorQuinn Thompson “brilliant corporate finance” post: https://x.com/qthomp/status/2066859672749977988Business Insider: “Inside Cursor’s Wild Rise”: https://www.businessinsider.com/cursor-ceo-michael-truell-spacex-elon-musk-anthropic-2026-6Satya Nadella: “A frontier without an ecosystem is not stable”: https://x.com/satyanadella/article/2066182223213293753Joshua Browder’s Do Not Pay: https://donotpay.com/Harvard Magazine: “AI Outperforms Doctors in Emergency Room Tasks”: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-studyJoshua Kushner “Long Humans” post: https://x.com/JoshuaKushner/status/2065093542809092465Ando: https://ando.so/Nim Ravid on X: https://x.com/Nim_Ravid1Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com
#17
June 10 · 1 hr 28 min
Hermes Agent, NotebookLM & LiveKit Founders on the AI Agent Race | TWiAI 17
Apple just paid a rival a billion dollars a year because it could not build Siri itself, and that tells you where the AI platform war actually stands: the edge has moved up the stack, from the model to the agent layer sitting on top of it. This week's roundtable makes the case that whoever controls that layer controls the experience, and we brought in three founders building it from different angles: Hermes Agent, NotebookLM, and LiveKit. Their through-line is that the harness is temporary, the model keeps eating it, and the people building agents right now are designing for capabilities that do not exist yet. This week's roundtable: Jeffrey Quesnelle (Co-founder & CEO, Nous Research, the open source AI lab behind Hermes Agent) Steven B Johnson (Editorial Director of NotebookLM & Google Labs, co-creator of NotebookLM) Russ d'Sa (Co-founder & CEO, LiveKit, the open source real-time voice/video infrastructure behind ChatGPT voice mode) Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: https://paypalopen.com Timestamps: 0:00 Cold open 1:08 Welcome to Episode 17 1:40 Jeffrey Quesnelle on Hermes Agent and the open source agent race 5:03 Steven Johnson on NotebookLM, source-grounding, and going agentic 7:32 Why AI got booed at commencement: the first generation raised on ChatGPT 10:48 Russ d'Sa on LiveKit powering ChatGPT, Tesla, Grok, and Salesforce voice 27:50 Apple's $1B Gemini deal and the Siri UX problem 52:49 "Functional AGI, unevenly distributed": where the models actually are 57:24 The harness is temporary: why agent builders design for the next model Guests: Jeffrey Quesnelle, Nous Research: https://nousresearch.com | https://x.com/theemozilla Steven Johnson, NotebookLM (Google Labs): https://notebooklm.google.com | https://x.com/stevenbjohnson Russ d'Sa, LiveKit: https://livekit.io | https://x.com/dsa Referenced in this episode: Nous Research / Hermes Agent: https://nousresearch.com NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google.com LiveKit: https://livekit.io OpenAI ChatGPT: https://openai.com Tesla: https://www.tesla.com Grok (xAI): https://x.ai Salesforce Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce SAP Joule: https://www.sap.com/products/artificial-intelligence/ai-assistant.html Apple Intelligence: https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com Anthropic Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai Apple Podcasts: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify YouTube: https://youtube.com/@ThisWeekinAIPodcast Show X: https://x.com/ThisWeeknAI #ThisWeekInAI #AI #NousResearch #NotebookLM #LiveKit #OpenSourceAI #AIAgents #Siri #Gemini #VoiceAI
#16
June 4 · 54 min
AI Layoffs, Compute Costs & Agents | Naveen Rao & Alex Finn on This Week in AI Episode 16
The future of AI isn't about whether the model is smart enough. It's about whether we can afford to run it. We dug into the AI cost panic, the energy wall that's coming for compute, and why "developers are disappearing" gets the economics exactly backwards.This week's roundtable: Naveen Rao (CEO of Unconventional AI, building brain-inspired analog chips, formerly sold companies to Intel and Databricks) and Alex Finn (founder of Henry Intelligent Machines and Creator Buddy).Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/Timestamps:0:00 Cold open1:21 Welcome to Episode 162:44 Is the AI cost panic real, or just "token maxing"?5:08 It's not the intelligence, it's how people use AI9:40 Surgeons vs. shotguns: prompt discipline & matching models to tasks13:10 Naveen's path from Intel and Databricks to Unconventional15:08 Why developers aren't disappearing18:37 How energy overtook CapEx in the cost of compute21:34 The energy wall & getting to 3 orders of magnitude more efficient25:52 AI's PR problem & the data center backlash27:55 China's hunger vs. America's AI boogeyman30:38 Data center taxes, equity stakes & the politics of AI upside37:54 The Anthropic IPO & how these founders actually invest🔗 Guests:Naveen Rao, Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai | https://x.com/AlexFinnAlex Finn, Henry Intelligent Machines: https://meethenry.ai | https://x.com/NaveenGRao🔗 Host:Alex Wilhelm, This Week in Startups: https://x.com/alex🔗 Referenced in this episode:Unconventional AI (analog chips for AI): https://unconv.aiMosaicML (acquired by Databricks): https://www.databricks.com/research/m...Nervana Systems (acquired by Intel)Creator Buddy: https://creatorbuddy.ioQwen (open-weight model Alex runs locally): https://qwenlm.aiNVIDIA DGX Spark: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/products...Anthropic (filed to go public): https://www.anthropic.comHenry Intelligent Machines: https://meethenry.ai/🔗 Subscribe and follow:Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai#ThisWeekInAI #AI #UnconventionalAI #NaveenRao #AlexFinn #AnalogComputing #AIcompute #AIenergy #TokenMaxing #AIlayoffs #AnthropicIPO
#15
May 27 · 1 hr 7 min
"Nobody Lost Their Job to AI, Just the Promise of AI" - This Week in AI Ep 15
The AI jobs panic is here. Meta cut 8,000. Intuit cut 3,000. CapEx went up. Nobody can agree if anyone has actually lost a job to AI, or just to the promise of it. We dug into the GPU squeeze, the new craft of "reward engineering," Pope Leo's call to disarm AI, and why Chinese open-source models just blew past American ones in token usage. This week's roundtable: Erik Bernhardsson (CEO of Modal Labs, the serverless GPU cloud), Tanay Kothari (CEO of Wispr Flow, the voice dictation app every VC in the valley uses), and Richard Socher (CEO of Recursive Superintelligence and You.com). Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Cold open 0:53 Welcome to Episode 15 5:53 Recursive's plan to build a self-improving "Eureka machine" 8:10 Token spend now exceeds headcount at the frontier 9:56 GPU crunch, Hopper prices, and the Anthropic-Colossus shockwave 12:23 Wispr Flow's 90% gross margin playbook 14:30 Running $100M in marketing with two humans and a swarm of agents 18:29 Reward hacking, paperclips, and the rise of the "reward engineer" 24:39 Why CEOs put one person in charge: multi-objective AI 28:17 Meta's 8,000 layoffs, $145B CapEx, Goldman vs. Stanford 33:23 "Nobody lost their job to AI, just the promise of AI" 37:57 Jevons paradox: software demand is infinite, illustrations aren't 39:48 Meta's keystroke monitoring and the back-channel reaction 42:55 Equity, Trump accounts, and rooting for your old employer 44:06 The Bloomberg/Indeed dev jobs chart 47:34 Jason's pitch: hiring a 22-year-old AI-native "software valet" 50:29 Pope Leo: "AI needs to be disarmed" 57:41 Chris Olah on AI displacement and the global poor 1:00:46 Chinese models hit 9 trillion tokens, DeepSeek V4 Flash goes #1 1:03:04 Strange biases, Tiananmen Square, and the US open-source vacuum 1:05:07 Who they're hiring 🔗 Guests: Erik Bernhardsson, Modal Labs: https://modal.com | https://x.com/bernhardsson Tanay Kothari, Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai | https://x.com/tankots Richard Socher, Recursive Superintelligence / You.com: https://recursive.com | https://x.com/RichardSocher 🔗 Referenced in this episode: Modal Labs: https://modal.com Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai Recursive Superintelligence launch: https://recursive.com You.com: https://you.com Anthropic / SpaceX Colossus 1 compute deal: https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-spacex TechCrunch on the $1.25B/month Anthropic-xAI compute deal: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-will-pay-xai-1-25-billion-per-month-for-compute/ Meta's 8,000 layoffs and 2026 AI CapEx of $145B: https://www.reuters.com Intuit cuts 3,000 jobs to fund AI integration: https://www.reuters.com Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon NYT op-ed on AI job loss: https://www.nytimes.com Stanford study on entry-level AI-exposed jobs (-16%): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu Pope Leo XIV: "AI needs to be disarmed": https://www.vatican.va Chris Olah (Anthropic) on AI and the global poor: https://www.anthropic.com OpenRouter token usage leaderboard: https://openrouter.ai/rankings DeepSeek V4 Flash: https://www.deepseek.com Qwen 3 Max (Alibaba): https://qwenlm.ai 🔗 Subscribe and follow: Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai #ThisWeekInAI #AI #ModalLabs #WisprFlow #Recursive #YouCom #DeepSeek #Qwen #MetaLayoffs #Anthropic #Colossus #PopeLeo #RewardHacking #AIJobs #OpenSource
#14
May 20 · 1 hr 38 min
Grads boo AI, Reese Witherspoon gets dunked + Karpathy joins Anthropic | TWiAI E14
The frontier labs are coming for the application layer, and they're going to steal your idea. We dug into Andrej Karpathy's move to Anthropic, the new rules of AI etiquette, and why graduates are booing AI at commencement speeches. This week's roundtable: Kanjun Qiu (CEO of Imbue, building open source agents), Jeremy Fraenkel (CEO of Fundamental, large tabular models for enterprise data), and Karri Saarinen (CEO of Linear, the product development system used by OpenAI, Coinbase, Cursor, Ramp, and Cash App). Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Cold open 1:02 Welcome to Episode 14 of This Week in AI 1:45 Kanjun Qiu on Imbue's GPU cluster bet that funds the company 5:38 Jeremy Fraenkel on why LLMs choke on structured enterprise data 9:36 Karri Saarinen on Linear and product work for AI agents 12:50 Design in the age of AI: why early-stage product design is getting worse 21:18 Jason coins "AI etiquette": your output is your responsibility 33:30 Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic 40:00 The cult of each AI lab: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI 47:00 Anthropic's pricing misstep and the "punk software" movement 50:00 The verticalization war coming for the application layer 55:00 "Claude knows more about me than my partner": power concentration in AI 58:30 Mac M5 clusters and confidential compute on AWS 1:07:30 Graduates boo AI at commencement: Schmidt, Borchetta, Cawfield 1:22:00 Four founders deliver their own commencement speeches 1:28:30 Reese Witherspoon vs the New York Times 1:33:00 Plugs and where to find the guests 🔗 Guests on X: Kanjun Qiu, Imbue: https://imbue.com | https://x.com/kanjun Jeremy Fraenkel, Fundamental: https://fundamental.tech | https://x.com/fraenkelj Karri Saarinen, Linear: https://linear.app | https://x.com/karrisaarinen 🔗 Referenced in this episode: Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic (announcement): https://x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312?s=20 Imbue Blueprint (open source agent skill): https://imbue.com/blueprint ExoLabs (daisy-chained Mac clusters): https://exolabs.net Abacus (on-prem language models): https://goabacus.co Whisper Flow (voice-to-text): https://wisprflow.ai Perplexity Model Council: https://perplexity.ai NYT editorial on Reese Witherspoon and AI: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/opinion/reese-witherspoon-mel-robbins-girlboss-ai.html 🔗 Subscribe and follow: Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai #ThisWeekInAI #AI #Imbue #Fundamental #Linear #Anthropic #OpenAI #Karpathy #AIEtiquette #VibeCoding #PunkSoftware #AICommencement #OpenSourceAI
#13
May 13 · 1 hr 8 min
How the 1% Will Own Compute (and What It Means for You)
The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute, and the layoff wave that's already here.This week's roundtable: Anastasios Angelopoulos (CEO of Arena, formerly LMArena), Nick Harris (CEO of Lightmatter, photonic computing chips), and Philip Johnston (CEO of StarCloud, building megawatt data centers in space). Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Cold open 1:21 Welcome to Episode 13 2:51 Is China closing the AI gap? Arena's data 5:16 Lightmatter and the photonic interconnect bottleneck 9:42 StarCloud 2, Nvidia Space Ruben 1, and orbital data centers 17:24 Thinking Machines' interaction model: what's actually new 28:22 Whisper Flow and the 3-pedal desk setup 33:48 Real-time desktop and camera awareness as the real unlock 40:25 Why this 100x's compute demand 42:43 The polarization of compute and $10M personal data centers 49:25 The layoff wave: Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork 54:48 The 10x gap between AI-first and non-AI-first employees 59:52 Unlimited agency and the abundance future 1:00:46 Anthropic's Project Luna runs a retail store 1:03:45 Decoupling labor from value creation 1:05:03 P(doom) round 🔗 Guests: Anastasios Angelopoulos, Arena: https://arena.ai | @ML_Angelopolous Nick Harris, Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co Philip Johnston, StarCloud: https://starcloud.com | @philipjohnston 🔗 Referenced in this episode: Thinking Machines, Introducing Interaction Models: https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/interaction-models/ LMArena leaderboard: https://lmarena.ai Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co Starcloud: https://www.starcloud.com TechCrunch, Cloudflare says AI made 1,100 jobs obsolete: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/08/cloudflare-says-ai-made-1100-jobs-obsolete-even-as-revenue-hit-a-record-high/ Fast Company, Tech layoffs this week due to AI (Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork): https://www.fastcompany.com/91538995/tech-layoffs-due-to-ai-this-week-cloudflare-paypal-coinbase-upwork Bloomberg, South Korea floats citizen dividend from AI profits: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-05-12/korea-s-massive-ai-boom-triggers-call-for-tech-tax-roiling-market PYMNTS, Inside a retail store run entirely by AI (Andon Labs / Luna): https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/inside-a-retail-store-run-entirely-by-ai/ Wispr Flow (voice-to-text tool Jason uses): https://wisprflow.ai Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 🔗 Subscribe and follow: Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai #ThisWeekInAI #AI #ThinkingMachines #Lightmatter #StarCloud #Arena #Anthropic #ProjectLuna #AIcompute #AIlayoffs #Superintelligence
#12
May 6 · 1 hr 17 min
Is Anthropic a Cult? AI Beats ER Doctors & Recursive Self-Improvement | This Week in AI E12
This week, JCal sits down with two builders working on opposite ends of the AI stack: Naveen Rao, co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI (his $4.5B startup rethinking the computer from first principles), and Trey Holterman, co-founder and CEO of Tennr, the platform automating the messy paperwork that decides whether millions of patients ever get the care they need. They break down why AI already beats ER doctors at diagnosis, why Epic is the most hated company in healthcare, what it takes to disrupt healthcare's $5 trillion incumbents, and whether $1.1 trillion in hyperscaler CapEx will pay off before the energy runs out. Mentioned in the show: Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai Tennr: https://tennr.com Abridge: https://abridge.com Ambience Healthcare: https://ambiencehealthcare.com Epic: https://epic.com Plaud (NotePin): https://plaud.ai Whoop: https://whoop.com Function Health: https://functionhealth.com Oura: https://ouraring.com Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai Databricks: https://databricks.com Harvard / Beth Israel ER study: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-study Jack Clark on recursive self-improvement: https://jack-clark.net This Week In AI is made possible by:PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 00:51 Welcome & intro to Naveen Rao (Unconventional AI) and Trey Holterman (Tennr) 05:43 Tennr's mission: fixing the U.S. healthcare "black hole" 06:23 Why primary care is changing in the AI era 09:09 The radiologist that wasn't replaced & what AI got right in 2015 15:31 Harvard study: AI beats ER doctors 67% to 55% 20:16 Plaud Pin & the always-on AI in the exam room 22:29 AI scribes, EMR privacy & how Abridge actually works 24:01 Whoop, Aura & when wearable data finally meets the clinic 25:20 Epic, FHIR & the 800-pound gorilla of healthcare 34:21 Disrupting Epic with an open-source EMR play 37:20 The Abridge vs Ambience scribe wars 42:06 Jack Clark's 60% odds on recursive self-improvement by 2028 53:41 Morgan Stanley's $1.1 trillion hyperscaler CapEx forecast 1:04:53 Anthropic's marketing machine & the AI religion thesis Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Thanks for watching! 🤖 If you want to stay ahead of the curve on all things AI, make sure to join our community across all platforms: 📩 Get the Weekly Newsletter: https://thisweekinai.ai/ 📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisWeekinAIPodcast 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinaipodcast 📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinaipodcast ✖️X: https://x.com/ThisWeeknAI Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Follow Oliver: https://x.com/oliverkorzen Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
#11
April 30 · 1 hr 13 min
Cursor's $60B Deal, DeepSeek V4 & the Death of the AI Moat | This Week in AI E11
This week Jason sits down with three founders at the frontier of AI infrastructure, software development, and vertical AI: Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of Factory; Russ d'Sa, co-founder and CEO of LiveKit; and George Sivulka, founder and CEO of Hebbia. They break down why AI coding agents are more powerful than vibe coding, how voice became the default interface for AI, why LLMs are becoming commoditized like RAM, and what it actually takes to build a moat in 2026. Mentioned in the show: Factory: https://factory.ai LiveKit: https://livekit.io Hebbia: https://hebbia.com Cursor: https://cursor.com DeepSeek V4: https://deepseek.com SpaceX / xAI: https://x.ai Polymarket (Cursor acquisition odds): https://polymarket.com/event/will-spacex-acquire-cursor LM Arena (model benchmarks): https://lmarena.ai SWE-bench (coding benchmarks): https://swebench.com Silicon Valley HBO clip (Son of Anton): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0b_D2JgZgY This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https/:/paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro & AGI debate: where are we really? 02:26 Meet the guests: Matan Grinberg, Russ d'Sa, George Sivulka 03:30 Factory's mission: bringing autonomy to software engineering 04:29 LiveKit's origin: open source WebRTC to ChatGPT voice backbone 07:40 Learned helplessness and the raptor fence: a founder story 10:31 Hebbia: financial superintelligence for capital markets 13:21 SpaceX acquiring Cursor for $60B: the deal breakdown 17:28 Why enterprises can't standardize on one model provider 21:50 The Silicon Valley clip: when AI deletes all the software 23:09 How AI coding tools have changed internal dev workflows 26:28 Moats in the age of vibe coding: what actually protects you 30:12 The relentless iteration promise as a company's core moat 33:40 Slack example: the buy vs. build calculation in 2026 38:10 Deterministic agents and encoding institutional expertise 41:17 LLMs as commoditized infrastructure: where value pools 45:56 DeepSeek V4 drops mid-episode: $3.48 vs. Claude's $25 50:13 AI in financial markets: arbitrage, meme stocks, and ASI 56:58 China blocks Metas acquisition, OpenAI-Microsoft deal redux 58:41 AGI definitions and who wins the US vs. China model race 01:02:13 US open source embarrassment and the talent war 01:05:23 OpenAI's spend vs. revenue: risk of ruin or name of the game? 01:09:14 Apple's new CEO, M-series compute flood, and space data centers 01:12:08 P-doom scores and final thoughts Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Follow Oliver: https://x.com/oliverkorzen Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
#10
April 23 · 1 hr 19 min
Aravind Srinivas & Edwin Chen: The $1B Bootstrap, Apple's AI Edge, and Benchmarks | TWiAI E10
This week we sat down with Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen. Aravind is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, whose revenue has grown from $100M to $500M on the back of Perplexity Computer. Edwin is the co-founder and CEO of Surge AI, the data training company teaching frontier models how to think, which quietly bootstrapped past $1B in revenue without ever raising a dollar. This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 01:00 Welcome & intro to Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen 02:40 Why Perplexity Comet and Perplexity Max are taking off 05:25 Edwin on Surge AI and why "data labeling" is the wrong term 10:47 Tim Cook steps down — what Apple's new CEO should do 13:56 Owning your agent loops: why Apple wins 21:20 "The iPhone is not getting disrupted by AI at all" 23:09 $242B raised in Q1 2026 and the late-stage capital flood 23:55 Edwin on bootstrapping Surge past $1B without raising 25:09 The ChatGPT "one weird trick" story and clickbait models 30:58 Claude Code as a loss leader to dominate token collection 33:30 Are we in the endgame for coding? 35:35 Autocomplete to auto-diff to auto-outcomes 38:54 The death of the no-code movement 41:34 30% headcount growth, 5x revenue, the efficiency playbook 45:41 AI in Hollywood, Gal Gadot, and $70M movies that should cost $200M 50:29 "People don't buy models, they buy products" 57:20 Specialization vs commoditization — what actually accrues value58:00 "LM Arena is a cancer on AI" 63:34 Perplexity's heuristics for measuring user intent65:41 Model Council, Jensen Huang, and orchestrating frontier models 71:23 Most impressive AI experiences — WhisperFlow, Grok on X, Claude Design, and WHOOP 78:29 Hiring at Surge AI and Perplexity Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple:https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify:https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify Follow Jason: X: @jason LinkedIn: /jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Links Mentioned on the Show: Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai/ Surge AI: https://surge.ai/ Perplexity Comet: https://comet.perplexity.ai/ Perplexity Max: https://perplexity.ai/max Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code Claude Design: https://claude.com/claude-design OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codex GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot Cursor: https://cursor.com/ LM Arena: https://lmarena.ai/ Kimi K2: https://www.kimi.com/ DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/ Apple Silicon: https://www.apple.com/mac/m4/ WhisperFlow: https://wisprflow.ai/ WHOOP: https://www.whoop.com/
#9
April 15 · 1 hr 14 min
The Future of AI: Personal Agents, Taste & Private Data | Lin Qiao & Demi Guo | E9
This week we sit down with Lin Qiao and Demi Guo on This Week in AI Episode 9. Lin is the co-founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, a frontier inference platform processing tens of trillions of tokens per day, built by seven ex-Meta engineers who created PyTorch. Demi is the co-founder and CEO of Pika, building humanized AI agents for creative work, agents you interact with like a person, not a prompt box. This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPalOpen - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Welcome & intro to Lin Qiao and Demi Guo 02:38 Lin's journey from Meta to Fireworks AI 05:13 Building PyTorch and bootstrapping AI infrastructure 06:58 Who Fireworks competes with and why enterprises need it 08:43 Activating the 95% of private data locked in enterprises 11:31 Demi's journey building Pika and the pivot to humanized agents 16:03 The best interface for creation is a human-like agent 16:42 The AI layoff trap — a prisoner's dilemma for firms 19:00 Cambrian explosion of startups and the hobbyist-to-inventor pipeline 22:07 Flattening organizations and the death of middle management 28:03 Taste, judgment, and why "slop" is the real risk 31:22 Why agents drift and the case for constant iteration 33:40 Rethinking agents: not tools, but children you raise 39:36 How close are open-source models to frontier? 43:20 Token usage and the economics of running agents 46:15 Toys becoming tools — the hobbyist signal 48:59 Public perception of AI: America vs. China vs. Silicon Valley 53:04 Agents as self-expression and identity creation 57:06 The expert vs. public perception gap on AI's impact 63:17 Meta's Muse model and the open-source debate 68:26 Data drought, synthetic data, and the next architecture leap 72:06 Hiring at Fireworks AI and Pika Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Follow Oliver: https://x.com/oliverkorzen Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Links Mentioned on the Show: Fireworks AI: https://fireworks.ai/ Pika: https://pika.art/ PyTorch: https://pytorch.org/ "The AI Layoff Trap" paper (UPenn & Boston University): https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20617 Fortune: CFOs say AI cuts will be 9x bigger than reported: https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/cfo-survey-ai-job-cuts-productivity-paradox-2026/ HBR: Companies firing based on AI potential, not performance: https://hbr.org/2026/01/companies-are-laying-off-workers-because-of-ais-potential-not-its-performance New Yorker profile on Sam Altman (Ronan Farrow): https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/11/sam-altman-responds-to-incendiary-new-yorker-article-after-attack-on-his-home/ Sam Altman home attack: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/sam-altman-house-hit-with-molotov-cocktail-openai-office-threatened.html Block layoffs — Jack Dorsey cites AI: https://fortune.com/2026/02/27/block-jack-dorsey-ceo-xyz-stock-square-4000-ai-layoffs/ Pew Research — AI experts vs. public perception: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/03/how-the-us-public-and-ai-experts-view-artificial-intelligence/ Meta Muse Spark announcement: https://ai.meta.com/blog/introducing-muse-spark-msl/ DeepSeek V3: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3 Bubble Pal AI toy (Shenzhen): https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hugging-every-fun-thought-haivivi-unveils-the-worlds-first-aigc-toy-bubblepal-302209714.html Cursor (Composer): https://cursor.sh/ NVIDIA Nemotron: https://developer.nvidia.com/nemotron Qwen (Alibaba): https://qwenlm.github.io/ Mistral AI: https://mistral.ai/
#8
April 8 · 1 hr 26 min
What's Left for Humans When AI Builds Everything?
This week on TWiAI, Jason sits down with three founders at the center of the AI stack: Kanjun Qiu (CEO of Imbue), Carina Hong (CEO of Axiom), and Jonathan Siddharth (CEO of Turing). They break down Anthropic's explosive $30B run rate, why it just overtook OpenAI in revenue, Meta's bizarre internal token-burning leaderboard, and what happens when every person on Earth has 100 AI agents running for them. Anthropic's Revenue Explosion: Anthropic hit a $30B run rate, up from $9B just six months ago, and appears to have overtaken OpenAI in token sales. The panel breaks down where the money is coming from and why Meta might be the biggest customer. Meta's Token-Burning Leaderboard: Reports surfaced of an internal Meta contest rewarding teams for burning the most tokens, with employees building bots that loop just to rack up usage. Is it brilliant adoption strategy or pure waste? Open Source Agents vs. Lock-In: Kanjun argues that handing your entire business, memories, and workflows to closed AI platforms is a recipe for lock-in. She's building open agent infrastructure so users can swap models freely and own their data. OpenAI's Identity Crisis: The panel dissects OpenAI's dropped Disney deal, its $100B+ raise, internal CFO tensions, and whether the company is doing too many side quests while Anthropic eats its lunch. The Commodification of Developers: A year ago, the debate was whether AI makes developers 5% or 15% more efficient. Now the question is whether everyone is a developer, and what that means for the industry. Why Open Source Must Win: From Apple Silicon to local models, the case for owning your AI stack and why Jason is going all-in on open source hardware and software. Learn more about Imbue: https://imbue.com Learn more about Axiom: https://axiommath.ai Learn more about Turing: https://www.turing.com This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPalOpen - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 01:03 Welcome and intro to this week's panel 01:31 Kanjun Qiu on open source agents and Imbue 05:10 Carina Hong on building an AI mathematician at Axiom 06:30 Formal verification and why superintelligence needs proof 09:52 Jonathan Siddharth on Turing's superintelligence accelerator 15:53 Anthropic's $30B run rate and overtaking OpenAI 22:27 OpenAI's strategy, Disney deal, and $100B raise 28:27 Meta's internal token-burning leaderboard 44:08 The commodification of developers 50:31 God mode for code: formal verification in practice 58:27 Superintelligence in 36 months: what happens next 01:08:41 Apple, Siri, and why Big Tech is failing at AI products Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Thanks for watching! 🤖 If you want to stay ahead of the curve on all things AI, make sure to join our community across all platforms: 📩 Get the Weekly Newsletter: https://thisweekinai.ai/ 📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZo46NiqoWMnuJo1SxCnX0g 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinaipodcast 📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinaipodcast ✖️X: https://x.com/ThisWeeknAI Follow Jason: https://x.com/jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis/ Follow Oliver: https://x.com/oliverkorzen Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
#7
April 1 · 1 hr 11 min
How Focus Killed Sora and Saved Anthropic | This Week in AI with Victor Riparbelli, Nick Harris & Jeremy Fraenkel
This Week in AI, JCal sits down with three CEOs building the infrastructure, intelligence, and interfaces for the next era of AI: Jeremy Fraenkel (CEO, Fundamental), Victor Riparbelli (CEO, Synthesia), and Nick Harris (CEO, Lightmatter). We break down what's actually happening beneath the AI hype: the data modality LLMs completely missed, why copper is the real bottleneck in AI data centers, OpenAI shutting down Sora, the build vs. buy debate for AI tools, and how close we really are to AGI. AI's Biggest Blind Spot, Tabular Data: LLMs transformed text, images, and code, but 70-80% of enterprise data lives in rows and columns. Copper Can't Keep Up: Nick explains why AI data centers are hitting a wall. GPUs compute faster than they can communicate. Lightmatter's photonic chips push 1.6 terabits per fiber and can 3x training speed. Why OpenAI Killed Sora & Anthropic's Focus is Winning: Victor breaks down why even OpenAI had to learn the lesson of focus, and why Claude Code has every founder talking. Vibe Coding Your Own CRM vs. Buying Salesforce: Jeremy reveals Fundamental built their own internal CRM using vibe coding. The panel debates when building beats buying and when it's a distraction. The Omnipresent CEO: Jason shares how he's using AI agents for root access to Slack, Gmail, and Notion, resurrecting former employees as AI personas, automating SDR workflows, and summarizing employee inboxes while they're on vacation. Are We Already at AGI?: Nick says the rate of progress is a double exponential. Jeremy argues AGI is a moving goalpost. Victor warns of "Future Shock" and societal disruption. 🔗 Learn more about Fundamental: https://fundamental.tech🔗 Learn more about Synthesia: https://www.synthesia.io🔗 Learn more about Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.coThis Week In AI is made possible by:PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: paypalopen.comTimestamps:00:00 Welcome & intro to Jeremy Fraenkel, Victor Riparbelli, and Nick Harris01:47 What is Fundamental? Large tabular models explained07:01 Victor Riparbelli on Synthesia & why OpenAI killed Sora11:09 Claude Code dominance & the Lightspeed founder retreat12:08 Nick Harris on Lightmatter, photonics & the new Moore's Law14:38 Copper vs. fiber: why AI data centers are hitting a wall18:44 Reinventing video: interactive, real-time, personalized21:32 The economics of a custom AI movie23:55 Why Amazon, Google & Meta are building their own chips28:06 Tables have a bandwidth problem too32:27 When will compute be as cheap as storage?36:10 The future of software: every company gets a custom stack38:06 Vibe coding your own CRM vs. buying Salesforce45:57 Jason's quest for root access to Slack50:18 The omnipresent CEO: Doctor Manhattan meets Jesus CEO52:13 Resurrecting former employees as AI personas53:25 Victor's executive changelog for a 650-person company55:07 Whisper Flow & the Plaud Pin1:00:03 AGI: is it already here?1:03:37 Jeremy: we've only solved half the brain1:06:30 70% of Americans fear AI will impact jobs1:08:47 Future Shock & keeping the rope tight*Mentioned in the show:* Wisper Flow: https://wisperflow.ai Plaud Pin: https://www.plaud.ai Athena Executive Assistants: https://www.athenawow.com WHOOP: https://www.whoop.com "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler: https://www.amazon.com/Future-ShockAlvin-Toffler/dp/0394425863 Victor on TWiST, E1776: https://youtu.be/jxET4fq_2eA Nick on TWiST, E1787: https://youtu.be/FPW2nnEqfMsSubscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotifySubscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/appleThanks for watching!🤖 If you want to stay ahead of the curve on all things AI, make sure to join our community across all platforms:📩 Get the Weekly Newsletter: https://thisweekinai.ai/📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisWeekinAIPodcast📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinaipodcast
#6
March 25 · 1 hr 15 min
$2.5B Chip Heist, The Future of American AI, and Purpose-Built Robots | This Week in AI Ep 6
This week Jason sat down with Jake Loosararian and Chris Lattner on Episode 6 of This Week in AI. Jake is the CEO and co-founder of Gecko Robotics, a company deploying purpose-built robots and AI for mission-critical infrastructure inspection across energy, defense, and manufacturing. Chris is the CEO and co-founder of Modular, building a universal software layer that lets developers run AI models across Nvidia, AMD, and Apple silicon without being locked into any single hardware vendor. We explore the GPU shortage, why China's chip smuggling reveals the stakes of the AI cold war, how purpose-built robotics are beating humanoids on ROI, the case for American reindustrialization, and why the next decade could be the best ever for private equity in capital-intensive industries. Purpose-Built Robots vs. Humanoids: Jake has been building mission-critical robots for 13 years. He explains why general-purpose humanoids still have too little ROI for industrial use, and why specialized robots that find and fix problems are winning in the field. The GPU Shortage Is Real: Chris breaks down why you can't just go buy 100 Blackwell chips today, why Nvidia's Cuda creates massive lock-in, and how Modular is building a unified software layer across all major chip architectures. Google TPUs Are the Sleeper: Chris ranks Google as the number one threat to Nvidia's dominance, ahead of Amazon's Trainium and AMD. China's Chip Smuggling & the AI Cold War: A Supermicro co-founder allegedly smuggled $2.5B in Nvidia chips to China using fake serial numbers and a hairdryer. The Best Decade for Private Equity: Jake makes the case that capital-intensive, commoditized infrastructure assets: waste-to-energy, water treatment, old power plants will all generate incredible returns. Self-Driving State of Play: Chris, a former Tesla Autopilot lead, gives his read on Waymo's lead, Tesla's small Austin pilot, and why the real signal is when Tesla starts filing for fully autonomous permits in California. Figure's New AI Lab, Hark: Breaking news mid-episode: Brett Adcock announces a new personal intelligence lab. Learn more about Gecko Robotics: https://www.geckorobotics.com Learn more about Modular: https://www.modular.com/ This Week In AI is made possible by: *PayPalOpen* - One Platform for all Business: paypalopen.com *Timestamps:* 00:00 Welcome & intro to Jake Lu (Gecko Robotics) and Chris Lattner (Modular) 01:34 Gecko's 13-year journey & the Cantilever platform 05:15 Chris Lattner on Modular: replacing Cuda & unifying AI hardware 11:10 Nvidia lock-in, AMD's Rock & why the software stack is broken 19:49 The GPU shortage: how real is it? 22:13 Who challenges Nvidia? Google TPUs, Amazon Trainium & AMD ranked 28:17 China chip smuggling: $2.5B in Nvidia GPUs & the AI cold war 37:43 Self-driving update: Waymo, Tesla's Austin pilot & Chris's Tesla history 42:20 Figure's humanoid package sorting — real or demo magic? 43:47 The best decade for private equity in capital-intensive assets 51:04 Reindustrialization, the trades boom & making manufacturing cool 58:39 Building tech companies outside Silicon Valley 1:06:46 Breaking news: Brett Adcock launches Hark from Figure 1:10:15 Closing thoughts: grit over hype, customers over valuations Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Thanks for watching! 🤖 If you want to stay ahead of the curve on all things AI, make sure to join our community across all platforms: 📩 Get the Weekly Newsletter: https://thisweekinai.ai/ 📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisWeekinAIPodcast 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinaipodcast 📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinaipodcast ✖️X: https://x.com/ThisWeeknAI Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason Follow Oliver: https://x.com/oliverkorzen Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Showing 21–33 of 33 episodes