Inside AI

In this episode, Marcel sits down with Dr. Eamonn Maguire, Director of Engineering for AI and ML at Proton, for a wide-ranging conversation about privacy-preserving AI, the evolution of Proton’s products from anti-abuse systems to Lumo—Proton’s private, end-to-end encrypted alternative to ChatGPT—and the deeper implications of today’s rapidly shifting AI landscape. They discuss Proton’s mission as a privacy-first alternative to Big Tech, what it takes to build secure AI services, the challenges of agentic systems, open models like Apertus, and why the future of AI must balance innovation with user protection. More information at : https://proton.me/

Can a small Swiss lab out-reason trillion-parameter giants? In this episode, Aldo Podestà, founder & CEO of Giotto.ai, explains how his team reached the #1 spot on the ARC-AGI v2 leaderboard—with a ~200M-parameter system scoring 23.19% on an extremely challenging, non-memorization reasoning benchmark. Aldo traces his journey from EPFL math student to entrepreneur, the Kaggle win that sparked the company, and why Giotto spun out a successful vertical product before going 100% R&D. Aldo also talks about why the next big leaps will come from generating small programs to check answers and from better hardware. More info: - https://www.giotto.ai/ - https://arcprize.org/arc-agi

In this episode, Marcel talks with Annie Hartley, EPFL Professor and Director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Global Health & Humanitarian Response Technologies (LiGHT), about building trustworthy medical AI that works in the field. They cover LiGHT’s cross-institution work with EPFL and Harvard/Ariadne Labs, operational hubs in Rwanda and India, why neutrality matters in humanitarian tech, and how to evaluate models via clinician collaboration and real-world trials. They also discuss Meditron (a medical LLM pipeline), truly open models like Apertus, and MOOVE, a massive open validation platform where experts collaborate to align medical LLMs with real-world standards. Find out more: LiGHT Laboratory: https://www.light-laboratory.org/ Join the MOOVE: https://jointhemoove.org/

In this episode, Marcel talks with Antoine Bosselut, Martin Jaggi and Imanol Schlag, the lead researchers behind Apertus, the newly released large language model. They discuss what it means to be truly open and compliant, and why Apertus is designed as much as a recipe for building transparent models as it is a model itself. The conversation explores the trade-offs between compliance and performance, the pioneering use of the Goldfish loss to curb memorization, and the importance of supporting low-resource languages like Romansh and Swiss German. They also talk about the Swiss AI Charter as a framework for aligning models with shared values, the role of students and researchers in building at scale, and how access to the Alps supercomputer made this possible. From the messy reality of benchmarks to the opportunities for education, from the geopolitical stakes of sovereign AI to the future of multimodality and reasoning, this episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build an open, trustworthy foundation model at scale.

In this conversation, Andreas Goeldi, a partner at b2venture and a seasoned entrepreneur focused on AI and B2B SaaS, shares his insights into the current and future state of artificial intelligence. He discusses the cyclical nature of tech markets, drawing parallels to the dot-com bubble. Goeldi emphasizes the need for realistic evaluations of startups amidst industry hype and explores the transformative potential of AI in business. His insights on regulatory challenges and the evolution of solopreneurs are particularly thought-provoking.

Marcel chats with Adrian Cabrera de Luis, CEO of MailMaestro, about his path from EPFL and Harvard to BCG, MIT, and launching two startups—one acquired, the other now a leader in AI tools for Microsoft. Adrian shares how “seed-strapping” keeps his company profitable, why small AI-driven teams can outpace big players, and lessons from navigating consulting, entrepreneurship, and rapid tech change. Find out more: https://www.maestrolabs.com/

In this episode, Marcel Salathé talks with Babak Falsafi, professor at EPFL and founder of EcoCloud, about the growing energy demands of AI and cloud computing. They dive into the real-world impact of data centers, the technological and geopolitical dynamics of AI infrastructure, and what it means for sustainability. From GPU power trends to cooling challenges, and from energy-efficient algorithms to national strategies, this conversation unpacks the complex trade-offs at the intersection of AI and energy. Find out more : https://parsa.epfl.ch/~falsafi/#portfolio-area https://www.sdea.ch/

In this episode of Inside AI, Marcel sits down with Stef van Grieken, co-founder and CEO of Cradle, the company rewriting the rules of biology through generative AI. From a small Dutch village to building Google’s TPU and now the frontier of synthetic biology, Stef shares the journey that led him to ask a transformative question: What if we could design proteins the way we generate images or text? Cradle’s software is already helping design next-generation drugs, materials, and sustainable alternatives to oil- and animal-based products — even enabling interns with no biology background to outperform billion-dollar pharma solutions.

Anton Osika, CEO and co-founder of Lovable, discusses his journey with the fastest-growing AI startup. He shares how recent advancements in large language models have fueled Lovable’s success in app development. Anton highlights the challenges of growth, including security issues and evolving coding practices. He also emphasizes how Lovable democratizes app creation for non-coders and reflects on the startup environment in Europe. The conversation is filled with insights about the future of AI and its role in software development.

In this mind-bending episode of Inside AI, we dive into the fascinating world of human-AI hybrid systems. Forget your sci-fi dystopias — Marcel and Nicholas Christakis talk about bots that make us better humans. From robots that crack jokes to boost group morale, octopus's consciouness, and digital assistants that might be raising your kids (politely or not), we explore how social AIs can change the way we interact — with each other and with machines. Christakis also explains why your AI co-pilot should maybe come with flaws (on purpose), how simple bots can catalyze group cooperation, and why your emotional bond with ChatGPT might be more revealing than you think.