Tech Turns to Mining, Meta VR Layoffs, Thinking Machines Shakeup | Matthew Prince, Chirantan Desai, Delian Asparouhov, Deepak Pathak, David Tearse, Blake Resnick
TBPN
Skilled AI Raises $1.4B for Robot Brain
Deepak Pathak announces Skilled's $1.4 billion raise and explains their vision for a general-purpose robot brain.
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- (01:30) - Big Tech Turns to Mining
- (12:09) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
- (21:44) - Thinking Machines Loses Top Executives
- (29:24) - NYC Sauna Wars
- (38:46) - Meta VR Layoffs
- (57:12) - Chirantan "CJ" Desai, appointed President and CEO of MongoDB in November 2025, discusses the company's reintroduction in San Francisco, emphasizing its evolution to support AI-driven applications. He highlights MongoDB's growth to over 60,000 customers, attributing this to its agility in handling unstructured data like images and videos, which is crucial for modern AI applications. Desai also mentions the company's strategic acquisitions, such as Voyage, to enhance AI capabilities, and expresses confidence in cloud providers' ability to meet computing demands, ensuring MongoDB's continued innovation and scalability.
- (01:07:55) - Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, discusses the €14 million fine imposed by Italy's communications watchdog, AGCOM, for allegedly failing to block access to pirated content via Cloudflare's services. He explains that the fine stems from a law allowing media executives to blacklist websites, requiring companies like Cloudflare to remove them globally within 30 minutes—a mandate he criticizes as overreaching and impractical. Prince expresses concern over the broader implications of such laws, emphasizing the potential for censorship and the challenges they pose to maintaining an open and free internet.
- (01:33:47) - Delian Asparouhov, a Bulgarian-born entrepreneur and investor, is a Partner at Founders Fund and Co-Founder and President of Varda Space Industries, which focuses on manufacturing in space. In the conversation, he discusses his pattern of investing during the holiday season, noting that over the past nine years, he has signed term sheets within 48 hours of Christmas Day in seven of those years. He attributes this to the quieter environment during the holidays, which facilitates focused negotiations with founders, and mentions that this period allows for setting clear deadlines, such as requiring deals to be signed by New Year's, making it a convenient time for both investors and founders to engage in discussions.
- (01:55:55) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
- (02:07:01) - Deepak Pathak, CEO and co-founder of Skild AI, is developing a general-purpose robot brain capable of controlling various robotic forms, from humanoids to quadrupeds, with a single system. In the conversation, he discusses the company's recent $1.4 billion funding round, valuing Skild AI at $14 billion, and emphasizes the importance of integrating robots into everyday environments alongside humans to handle the unpredictability of real-world scenarios. He also highlights the challenges in robotics due to the scarcity of data, contrasting it with fields like language and vision, and explains Skild AI's approach of learning from human videos and simulations to overcome this hurdle.
- (02:16:56) - David Tearse, co-founder and CEO of Karman Industries, discusses the launch of their Heat Processing Unit (HPU), a cooling system designed for gigawatt-scale AI data centers. The HPU utilizes supercritical CO₂ to efficiently manage heat, reducing energy consumption by at least 25% compared to existing solutions, and offers a modular 10-megawatt design that decreases mechanical yard space by about 80%, accelerating deployment times. Tearse also highlights the potential for waste heat recovery, including converting excess heat back into electricity or providing heating to nearby communities, emphasizing the environmental and operational benefits of their technology.
- (02:35:53) - Blake Resnick, founder and CEO of BRINC Drones, began his engineering career with internships at McLaren Automotive, Tesla Motors, and DJI Inc. In the conversation, he discusses BRINC's development of drones designed for public safety, including the LEMUR, which assists SWAT teams by flying indoors, breaking glass, and enabling two-way communication. He also highlights the company's growth, noting that approximately 20% of SWAT teams in the U.S. are utilizing BRINC's drones, and shares plans for expanding their applications to include rapid response to 911 calls and integration with emergency medical services.
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