Powering AI: Energy Bottlenecks, Hyperscalers, & AGI w/ Freda Duan, Principal at Altimeter Capital

In this episode, Will sits down with Freda Duan, investor at Altimeter Capital. They explore critical topics such as the energy bottlenecks in AI development, the future of AGI and ways in which we may have already achieved it today, and the future role of AI agents. Freda also discusses the capital expenditure trends among big tech companies and the nuanced competition between open source and closed source models.

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LINKS:

https://x.com/fredaduan

X/SOCIAL:

@WillSummerlinAI (Will)

@fredaduan (Freda)

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:02:32) Energy consumption in AI data centres

(00:05:20) Challenges and solutions for energy supply

(00:09:00) Cooling and infrastructure innovations

(00:12:10) CapEx and ROI in AI development

(00:20:22) Open source vs closed source models

(00:25:21) The rise of XAI and smaller models

(00:27:35) Economic risks and historical parallels

(00:29:54) Investment cycles and AI's future impact

(00:36:13) The AI agent revolution

(00:38:16) Debating AGI and its implications

(00:48:15) The future of AI-driven industries