For today’s show we welcome Brett Winton, ARK’s Director of Research, to discuss his recent white paper titled Disruptive Innovation – Why Now? The main idea of the paper explores innovation today and how the convergence of five major innovation platforms compares to other innovation periods in our history. Brett details the five technologies that we have identified as transformative signposts today. To unpack just how exciting and unprecedented this is, we look at comparable innovation platforms, their criteria, and impact on our economy. We explore the importance of technologies evolving simultaneously and the exponential nature of stacked innovation platforms. Lastly, we discuss how innovation could impact investing and the different growth industries.

Andrew Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Cerebras, joins us this week to discuss the Wafer Scale Engine, or WSE, an AI chip that is 50 times larger than the largest chips produced by Nvidia and Intel. This radical design has raised a lot of eyebrows and it is already being heralded as the biggest breakthrough in semi-conductor technology in decades. Andrew helps us unpack why AI work needs chips this large, how Cerebras was able to leapfrog industry incumbents, and what why the Wafer Scale Engine is the ideal AI training accelerator. Join us on this podcast as we talk with Andrew about some of the biggest hurdles that his team encountered on this market shifting journey.

The Vibrant Online Education Space with Aaron Nace

On this week’s episode, we are joined by Matt Heider, CEO of Nautilus Labs, to continue the series on looking at startups as a lens to learn about innovation. Nautilus Labs is a maritime tech company that aims to advance the efficiency of ocean commerce. Nautilus is building software solutions for global shipping companies in order to minimize fuel consumption, maximize operations, and optimize fleet performance. In doing so, Nautilus Labs helps ship owners and operators reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enable sustainable global trade. Investors in Nautilus include M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund), Root Ventures, Quiet Capital, Trail Mix Ventures, and Amplifier, amongst others, bringing Nautilus’ total funding raised to $14.5 Million and making it one of the most well-funded maritime startups. Ships transport around 90 percent of the world’s goods across the seas and waste a lot of fuel on poor decisions while doing so. Despite the significant impact of shipping on our daily life, it historically has been a poorly regulated industry, along with very little technological advancements, leading to inefficiencies and fuel waste. Not only is this environmentally destructive, but it also damages companies’ bottom line. Nautilus Labs wants to change that. Its technology platform for shipping companies provides predictive analytics and AI solutions to reduce fuel consumption and maximize ROI. Matt is here to chat with us about this very unique vertical in the SaaS space. If you would like to learn more about Nautilus Labs and the maritime industry, tune into this FYI podcast episode.

Last week was Part 1 of our conversation with Akram’s Razor where he gave his account of how the crypto crash of 2018 impacted Nvidia and AMD. This week, Akram and James go through Nvidia’s data center business in depth and assess the growing competitive landscape for AI accelerators, from cloud and startup companies alike. Akram shares more about how he approached his research for his thesis on Nvidia and we get into a serious discussion about Google’s AI advantage and why he believes they are not making their TPU training chips freely available. We then debate Nvidia’s pricing for their data center boards and talk about their CEO, Jensen Huang, and his refreshing transparency and openness.

On the show today we are joined by Seeking Alpha contributor, Akram’s Razor, to bring to you a Nvidia podcast in two parts, focused on the company, semiconductors, and beyond. Akram has published numerous articles on semiconductors, software, and macro. He notably forecasted the global crypto crash of 2018 and its impact on Nvidia, an opinion that went starkly against the grain of most analysts in his field. In this first of a two part episode, we on Akram’s thesis on Nvidia, the crash, and the players in the drama that unfolded over the subsequent months. In next week’s follow up conversation, Akram unpacks his thoughts on Nvidia’s datacenter business and looks at the growth of the competitive landscape for AI accelerators. Be sure to join us for this episode and check back for part two as well!

This week on For Your Innovation, we are talking to Morgan Dunbar, partner at Bendigo Partners, a firm that specializes in the global financial technology industry as both a principal investor and operational advisor. In addition to that, Morgan is managing partner at AIR Summit, a network and conference targeted at the capital market industry and, in particular, capital market startups. In the podcast, we are going to discuss the capital market space within FinTech, an area that is often overlooked amongst the hype you see around consumer FinTech startups and large venture rounds.

On today’s episode, we are joined by our first ever anonymous guest, who goes by the name of Dylan. James came across him on Twitter and was inspired by his fresh and innovative insights on semiconductors. Dylan works in data science for a large company, but is interested in semiconductors and AI as a personal side project. Having been one of the most stagnant sectors, the semiconductor landscape has dramatically shifted and is now one of the most dynamic and vibrant sectors today. This appears clear as indicated by the meteoric rise of AI chip startups as well as autonomous car developments. Dylan, as an independent analyst, shares some of his background, what spurred his interest, and how his views are different from other analysts. He talks about the state of the chip market, such as current innovations, what the role of trade tensions are, mobile slowdowns and market saturation, to name a few. Then together with ARK analyst Tasha Keeney, he provides an overview of what is unfolding in the self-driving car space in relation to semiconductors, discussing topics such as what current competition there is in the market, anticipated levels of autonomy and whether claims around full autonomy could ever be realized. For this and many more semiconductor insights, join us today!

Joining us on this episode are ARK analysts Yassine Elmandjra and Max Friedrich. Today we talk about the headlines that Facebook has made in recent months, particularly in relation to their plan to launch their own cryptocurrency in 2020. We discuss what Libra is and how it will be governed, what the role of the Libra Association will be and how it will be different to other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It seems as though Bitcoin managed to establish itself before any regulatory measures could intervene, but will Libra be given the same opportunity? Yassine and Max share the governmental responses there have been to Libra and how different markets are likely to react. They share their ideas around why Facebook might have introduced this new dimension in their company and about the function of Calibra as a digital wallet. For all of this and more, be sure to join us!

On this week’s episode of For Your Innovation, we’re talking to ARK analyst Nick Grous about the booming market for smart speakers. In just over four years, devices like Amazon Echo and Google Assistant have gone from niche toys to a mainstream device that’s found in many people’s homes across the world. We have a conversation about why they’ve become popular, the reason why they’re selling at such a low price and how its adoption into the market compares to the smart phone. We also talk about the Amazon Echo and Alexa and why they have not managed to develop a greater variety of apps compared to Apple’s App Store and what developers can do to improve traction. We get into the practical problems that are still being resolved with voice interfaces and its potential for revitalizing the market through interactive music, shopping and connecting home devices.