Altman's Long-Term Vision, The GPU Bubble, Acquired Hosts Live in The Ultradome | Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal, David Faugno, Sergiy Nesterenko, Justin Lopas, Ryan Daniels, Zack Ganieany, Yash Rathod, Alex Shieh
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Acquired Hosts Reflect on Podcasting and Research
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal discuss Acquired's origins, research process, deep company episodes, and lessons from ten years.
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- (01:18) - Altman's Long-Term Vision
- (26:18) - Karim Atiyeh, co-founder and CTO of Ramp, discusses the company's innovative use of AI agents to automate financial operations, enhancing efficiency and accuracy in tasks like expense classification and fraud detection. He highlights the integration of these agents with various tools and systems, enabling them to perform complex actions such as web browsing, form filling, and email processing. Atiyeh also addresses the importance of robust controls and guardrails to ensure the security and reliability of AI-driven financial processes.
- (01:02:16) - Are We Entering a GPU Bubble?
- (01:19:17) - đť•Ź Timeline Reactions
- (01:27:26) - Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal are entrepreneurs, investors, and co-hosts of the acclaimed podcast Acquired, which explores the stories and strategies behind the world’s most iconic companies. Gilbert, a former Microsoft product manager who led projects like Office for iPad and ran the company’s internal innovation arm “The Garage,” later co-founded Pioneer Square Labs, a Seattle-based startup studio and venture fund. Rosenthal spent over a decade in venture capital and holds degrees from Princeton University and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Together, they’ve built Acquired into one of the most respected business and technology podcasts, known for its deep research, long-form storytelling, and ability to make complex corporate histories accessible and compelling to a global audience.
- (02:08:55) - đť•Ź Timeline Reactions
- (02:12:11) - David Faugno, co-CEO of 1Password, discusses the company's partnership with Browser Base to introduce Secure Agentic Autofill, enhancing secure credential sharing for AI agents. He emphasizes the urgency of providing secure solutions for AI technologies to meet customer needs and highlights 1Password's growth, serving 175,000 corporate customers and focusing on identity security for enterprises.
- (02:23:00) - Sergiy Nesterenko, CEO and founder of Quilter, a company that simplifies circuit board design, discusses their recent $25 million Series B funding led by Index Ventures. He shares his background at SpaceX, where he spent five years designing avionics for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which inspired him to address the challenges in circuit board design. Nesterenko emphasizes the importance of first-principles thinking, a lesson from his time at SpaceX, and highlights Quilter's focus on reducing time to market for both large corporations and startups by automating PCB design processes.
- (02:29:21) - Justin Lopas, co-founder and COO of Base Power Company, discusses the company's significant growth, including expansion into major Texas markets and the establishment of a new factory in Austin. He highlights the $1 billion Series C funding, emphasizing the vast market potential for home energy storage solutions amid increasing grid demands from AI, EVs, and population growth. Lopas also explains how Base Power's distributed battery systems enhance grid efficiency by managing energy distribution during peak and off-peak times.
- (02:41:44) - Ryan Daniels, co-founder and CEO of Crosby, a hybrid AI-powered law firm, discusses the company's recent $20 million Series A funding led by Index Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures. He highlights Crosby's rapid growth, noting an acceleration from reviewing 1,000 contracts in 170 days to 1,000 every three weeks, achieved by combining AI tools with licensed attorneys to expedite contract processing. Daniels emphasizes Crosby's role as an extension of in-house legal teams, focusing on high-volume, non-strategic agreements to enhance efficiency and support sales and procurement teams.
- (02:48:28) - Zack Ganieany, Vice President of Finance at Clipboard Health, discusses the company's mission to improve hiring by focusing on candidates' actual work products rather than traditional credentials. He highlights the inefficiencies in current hiring practices, such as AI-generated resumes and screeners, and emphasizes the importance of evaluating real-world performance through work trials and samples. Additionally, Ganieany announces a $6 million fundraising round co-led by Guillermo Rauch of Vercel, aiming to further develop their platform and enhance the hiring process.
- (02:58:15) - Yash Rathod, co-founder and CEO of Origin, a San Francisco-based startup, discusses the development of Axis, an AI model designed to unify various biological modalities to enhance drug development for complex diseases. Axis has outperformed Google DeepMind's AlphaFold 3 in predicting molecular interactions, marking a significant advancement in AI-driven drug discovery. Rathod emphasizes the importance of integrating diverse scientific disciplines and plans to expand Axis's capabilities to optimize gene therapies, aiming to initiate a therapeutic program within a year.
- (03:04:09) - Alex Shieh, co-founder of an anti-fraud company, discusses their recent $5 million pre-seed and seed funding from Abstract Ventures, Browder Capital, and Do Measures. The company employs AI and investigative journalism to expose corporate fraud, particularly targeting sectors like big pharma, aiming to recover funds for taxpayers and themselves through whistleblower programs. Shieh emphasizes their unique "snitching as a service" model, where revenue is generated only upon successful fraud detection and government recovery, distinguishing them from traditional SaaS businesses.
- (03:14:19) - đť•Ź Timeline Reactions
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