EPISODE
Joe Weisenthal, Jason Droege, Dave Marra, Mert Mumtaz, Harish Abott, Tuhin Srivastava, Cecilia Ziniti
00:59:35 Joe Weisenthal, born September 2, 1980, in Detroit, Michigan, is an American journalist and financial expert. He serves as the executive editor of news for Bloomberg's digital brands, co-anchors Bloomberg Television's "What’d You Miss?", and co-hosts the "Odd Lots" podcast. In the conversation, Weisenthal discusses the recent jobs report, noting that the number was below expectations and highlighting concerns about the labor market's state. He mentions that excluding health care, the economy has been shedding jobs, with manufacturing employment down 78,000 so far this year. Weisenthal also touches on the impact of AI investments on employment, suggesting that while data centers may not add significantly to employment, the promise of AI could lead to job destruction rather than growth.
02:05:45 Jason Droege, a seasoned technology executive and entrepreneur, is the Interim CEO of Scale AI, having previously founded Uber Eats and served as a Venture Partner at Benchmark. In the conversation, Droege discusses his extensive experience in the tech industry, including his role in launching and scaling Uber Eats to a $20 billion annual gross merchandise volume, and his current focus on expanding Scale AI's applications and services business to deliver customized AI solutions for enterprises and governments.
02:29:45 Dave Marra, CEO of Rivet Industries, discusses the company's mission to serve the half-billion workers in the Western world who are underserved by big tech, focusing on those in demanding environments like flight lines, factories, and battlefields. He highlights Rivet's recent $195 million contract with the U.S. Army to develop next-generation soldier mission command systems, emphasizing the importance of comfort, ruggedization, compliance, and utility in their products. Marra also notes that advancements in technology have now made it feasible to create such devices, which were not possible five years ago, and underscores the significance of dual-use applications for both military and commercial markets.
02:43:45 Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius—a developer platform for the Solana blockchain—discusses the launch of Tempo, a new Layer 1 blockchain focused on payments, developed by Stripe and Paradigm. He highlights the controversies surrounding Tempo, including its positioning as an L1 rather than an L2, and the challenges of maintaining a payments-only chain in a permissionless environment. Mumtaz also addresses the potential for Tempo to become permissionless in the future and the implications of such a transition.
03:00:10 Harish Abbott, co-founder and CEO of Augment, announced the company's $85 million Series A funding round, led by Redpoint Ventures, to enhance their AI logistics assistant, Augie. He discussed Augie's role in automating tasks like quoting, dispatching, tracking, and billing, aiming to streamline operations in the fragmented $900 billion freight industry. Abbott also reflected on lessons from his previous venture, Deliverr, emphasizing the importance of customer focus and operational efficiency in scaling Augment's solutions.
03:06:25 Tuhin Srivastava, CEO of BaseTen, an AI infrastructure company, announced the company's recent $150 million funding round. He discussed BaseTen's focus on simplifying AI inference for businesses by managing the complexities of deploying and scaling machine learning models, allowing companies to concentrate on their unique applications. Srivastava also highlighted the company's rapid growth, expanding from 30 to 104 employees in the past year, and emphasized the importance of speed and efficiency in the competitive AI landscape.
03:13:35 Cecilia Ziniti is a seasoned technology and legal executive with over 20 years of experience, including roles as the founding lawyer for Amazon's Alexa and General Counsel for Replit. In the conversation, she discusses Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors over AI copyright infringement, highlighting that the agreement addresses past unauthorized use of pirated works for training their AI model, Claude, and noting that authors will receive compensation of at least $3,000 per work.