The Data Movement Crisis in AI - How Baya Is Rethinking AI Infrastructure with Nandan Nayampally

On this week’s episode, Laura and Kevin sit down with Nandan Nayampally, the Chief Commercial Officer at Baya, to discuss the shifting landscape of intelligent computing and the hidden challenges behind AI innovation.

Nandan kicks things off by demystifying what Baya actually does, solving the critical problem of data movement, a growing bottleneck that traditional compute-focused architectures can't keep up with. With a rich background that includes scaling Arm’s processor business from $200M to billions and playing key roles at AMD, Amazon (Alexa), and neuromorphic AI startups like Brainchip and Tenstorrent, Nandan offers a unique perspective on where hardware truly sits at the heart of today's AI revolution. He unpacks one of the most misunderstood aspects of AI development: while flashy models grab the headlines, it's the hardware, and even more critically, how data flows across chips, that will define the next generation of intelligent systems. As he explains, we’re moving from a compute problem to a data movement problem, and Baya is right at the center of that inflection point. Laura and Kevin also get Nandan’s expert map of the chip landscape, from Nvidia’s dominant position to Intel, Arm, AWS, and where Baya fits in. Spoiler alert: Baya isn’t trying to out-muscle the big players but to fundamentally enhance and rethink architectures for a world driven by AI at scale.

Nandan also talks about the next big frontier as a hybrid between cloud and edge AI, with massive commercial opportunities tied to how efficiently and securely we can process data wherever it’s generated. He offers a thoughtful, non-political perspective on how escalating tariffs on Chinese goods could impact the semiconductor supply chain, AI innovation, and global data privacy. Along the way, the conversation touches on chiplets, SoC (system-on-chip) trends, and, what he really thinks about Nvidia.

If you care about the future of AI, semiconductors, or where the real innovation is happening behind the scenes, this is a must-listen episode.

Nandan Nayampally is the Chief Commercial Officer at Baya that runs Product
Management, Marketing Communication, Business Development, Sales and Strategic Alliances. Nandan has consistently been passionate about disruptive technologies and being in the eye of the storm in semiconductor inflection points. While he’s had various start up stints in neuromorphic AI at Brain chip, Tenstorrent and Denali Software, a major part of Nandan’s career involved growing Arm’s processor business from $200M to into the $billions, and expanding its reach from the mobile and consumer markets to automotive, networking infrastructure, data center and AI. During his time, Arm’s customers shipped more than a 150B process-based chips. He also had meaningful stints at AMD and Amazon on scaling Alexa into 3rd party devices.