20VC: "Anti-Data Centres is a Chinese Psyop" | How Many Planned Data Centers Will Actually Get Built? | Is Energy AI's Biggest Bottleneck? With Thomas Sohmers, Co-Founder @ Positron

Thomas Sohmers is the co-founder and chairman of Positron AI, building chips to make running AI dramatically cheaper and more energy-efficient. The company recently announced an $875 million Series C at a $5 billion valuation, backed by investors including Gavin Baker's Atreides Management, NEA, Valor Equity Partners and Netscape co-founder Jim Clark. AGENDA: 04:30 Why Does AI Inference Need Different Hardware from Training? 10:25 What Is Nobody Telling You About AI's Token Economics? 13:10 Should We Really Slow Down the AI Frontier? 16:55 What Happens If America Slows Down—and China Doesn't? 19:30 Should We Restrict China's Access to AI Chips? 20:15 Why Aren't Zuckerberg and Jensen Backing an AI Slowdown? 21:25 Are We Being Misled About Data Centers? 23:25 Can the West Beat China While Drowning in Regulation? 26:20 How Many Planned Data Centers Will Actually Get Built? 27:15 Data Centers in Space: Real Opportunity or Elon Hype? 28:10 Is Energy AI's Biggest Bottleneck? 29:55 Could the Debt Boom Derail AI? 31:25 What Is KV Caching—and Why Does It Change AI Economics? 35:25 Does Compressing AI's Memory Make It Less Intelligent? 41:05 How Do We Solve AI's Exploding Memory Demands? 43:45 Will Every Company Own Its Own AI Model? 47:10 Why Bet on Ever-Bigger Models? 48:20 If We Already Have AGI, What Comes Next? 53:25 What Happens When Every AI Lab Builds Its Own Chips? 57:30 If DeepSeek Can Slash Costs with Software, Why Build New Hardware? 59:50 How Cheap Will AI Tokens Be by 2028? 1:03:15 What Would Be the First Warning Sign of an AI Bust? 1:03:55 Could Open Models Break OpenAI and Anthropic's Growth? 1:05:55 Could Mercor and Surge Become $200 Billion Companies?  

AGENDA: 03:40 Dario Calls to "Pace the Frontier" 11:30 Why the Fed Will Raid Anthropic if Needed  21:50 Meta Launches Muse to Take On Instinct 28:30 Instinct Raising $1BN at $10BN—Would You Invest? 39:55 Miro Sells for $1.35BN After a $17.5BN Valuation 47:45 Could Sam Bankman-Fried Win His Freedom? 51:25 WordPress Power Struggle: Matt Mullenweg Ousted, Then Returns 1:01:20 Mistral Raises €3BN in Europe's Biggest-Ever Tech Round 1:05:00 Adobe's New CEO & Canva's Slowing Growth: SaaS Giants Under Pressure  

David Morehead is one of the most respected CIOs in the endowment fund world as Chief Investment Officer at Baylor University, overseeing its $2.6BN endowment. Before joining Baylor in 2011, he was a senior portfolio manager at several Chicago hedge funds, investing across corporate securities, distressed debt and public and private energy. AGENDA: 04:00 The Portfolio Construction of a $2.6 Billion University Endowment? 09:00 Why We Spend More Time on Porfolio Construction Than Manager Selection? 14:00 Should LPs Back VC's Biggest Names or Find the Next Breakout Manager? 21:00 How Baylor Made Millions in the SaaSpocalypse? 26:00 Are Public Markets a Casino or Are Private Valuations the Real Fiction? 34:00 How Do You Buy a Market Crash Without Catching a Falling Knife? 49:00 Would You Fire a Fund Manager Who's Making You Money? 57:00 Could the Backlash Against Data Centres Derail the AI Boom? 01:02:00 Which Asset Class Is Overhyped—and Where Is the Next Big Opportunity?  

AGENDA:  04:30 How Do You Hire Exceptional People in the AI Era? 08:00 What Actually Works in Growth—and Why Can't You Trust Meta's Numbers? 17:00 How to Run Hundreds of Millions in Marketing with Zero Employees  19:30 "Our Engineers Stopped Coding": What Stack Does Eight Sleep Use? 24:00 Is China Leaving the Rest of the World Behind? 35:00 How Do You Turn Superstar Athletes into Investors and Brand Ambassadors? 43:00 What Happens When Your Co-Founder Is Also Your Wife? 51:30 Should You Match Anthropic's Salaries—or Let Your Best People Leave? 59:30 Will Children Born Today Ever Need to Work? 01:05:00 What Drives You to Succeed—and Why Can't You Ever Switch Off?  

AGENDA:  00:00 Jensen Huang Declares AGI Has Arrived 04:05 Instinct and GrokBot Ignite the AI Assistant War 13:32 OpenAI's GPT Astra Redefines What AGI Means 26:00 GPT Astra and Fable 5.1 Accelerate the Model Race 30:38 OpenAI's Chief Scientist Calls for Enforced AI Safety Limits 40:50 Tesla Launches Cybercabs as Travis Kalanick Returns to Robotaxis 45:55 Index Pulls Out of Town Deal Following Instinct Conflict 49:45 Anthropic Abandons $6BN Descartes Acquisition After Due Diligence 56:18 Robinhood Earns First Underwriting Role in Oura IPO 01:00:28 Wonderful Doubles to $5BN and Approves $170M in Secondaries 01:09:02 Thinking Machines Targets $40BN Valuation in $6BN Funding Round

Jean-Denis "JD" Grèze is the Co-Founder and CEO of Town, the AI work assistant reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $1BN valuation. Before founding Town, JD spent seven years as CTO of Plaid. Before Plaid, he was Director of Engineering at Dropbox. He is also a prolific angel investor backing companies including Modal, BaseTen, Merge and NexHealth. AGENDA: 00:00 Why AI Assistants Are Silicon Valley's Hottest Market 07:00 How Does Town Compete With Grokbot, Instinct and Big Tech? 11:00 Will We Have One AI Agent or Different Agents for Every Part of Our Lives? 17:00 How Many Mistakes Can AI Agents Make Before We Stop Trusting Them? 20:00 How Does Town Choose the Best Models Without Destroying Its Margins? 29:00 Is the AI Assistant Market Already Too Crowded? 37:00 Can Apple Win the Agent Race—and Are We Entering a Cybersecurity Nightmare? 41:00 What Does a Successful Town User Look Like—and Which Pricing Tier Makes Money? 47:00 What Will AI Agents Be Able to Do in Three Years That They Cannot Do Today? 54:00 Is the Skepticism Around Billion-Dollar AI Assistant Companies Justified? 58:00 What Needs to Happen for Town to Become a $100BN Company? 1:02:00 How Has AI Changed Hiring—and Why Does Town Spend $75K Per Engineer on AI Tools? 1:06:00 What Is JD Most Excited About Over the Next Decade?

Cliff Weitzman is the co-founder and CEO of Speechify, the world's leading AI voice and text-to-speech platform, used by more than 60 million people globally. Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, Cliff first built Speechify at Brown University to help him consume written material through audio.  AGENDA:  00:00 Cliff Weitzman Reveals His Biggest-Ever Strategic Mistake 03:08 Why Speechify Is Paying Millions to Build Their Own Data Centres 09:59 What No One Knows About Buying Chips That Everyone Should Know? 20:19 The AI Data Gold Rush Has a Brutal Business-Model Problem 23:42 How ElevenLabs Leapfrogged Speechify—and Why It Was Cliff's Fault 31:00 The $15M AI Talent War: Can Startups Still Compete for the Best Talent? 36:57 The New 10X Engineer: Ten Killer Decisions Every Day 46:12 The Voice-AI Bloodbath: Who Survives Commoditisation? 53:21 The Screen Is Dying—and Voice Will Replace It 57:58 How Cliff Plans to Use AI to Cure His Brother's Disease

AGENDA:  00:00 Nvidia crushes $96.2B quarter and nears $12.9B Hugging Face deal 13:52 OpenAI cuts off Cursor as the Altman–Musk feud escalates 17:40 OpenAI's 1,000-agent cyberattack triggers an industry wake-up call 22:58 Instinct hits $2.5B valuation as AI assistants gain spending power 36:39 Cognition targets $1.6B ARR as the coding-agent market explodes 40:31 AI forces every startup to become a compound company—or get left behind 52:42 Salesforce embraces Claude and outcome-based pricing in major AI reset 1:00:52 Stripe–PayPal deal collapses as both sides clash over price 1:02:31 Clay hits $7B and Linear reaches $100M ARR as agents choose their tools 1:11:52 Texas pauses Flock cameras as police-surveillance backlash grows

Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickHouse, the real-time analytics database powering companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Tesla and Microsoft. ClickHouse just surpassed $350M in ARR and raised over $1B from investors including Dragoneer, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, 20VC and Benchmark. Previously, Aaron was CRO at Elastic, where he helped scale revenue from approximately $5M to $500M and led the company through its IPO. Before Elastic, he spent 12 years at Salesforce, working alongside Marc Benioff and helping transform it from a 200-person startup into a global software giant. AGENDA: 4:05 Are we in an AI bubble? 13:40 How does software change when agents—not humans—make buying decisions? 22:28 Will 90% of tokens flow through open models; can enterprises trust them? 31:09 Why did ClickHouse sponsor Fulham; and could sports teams become $20B assets? 35:49 When will ClickHouse hit $1B ARR?  38:31 Can startups still win elite talent from OpenAI? Biggest remote work mistake? 44:54 Is zero-to-$100M ARR now table stakes; or is durable growth what matters? 48:51 Is college still worth it;  which jobs will survive AI? 57:58 When will ClickHouse go public; and why not next year?  

Eno Reyes is the co-founder and CTO of Factory, the agent-native software development platform building autonomous "Droids" for enterprise engineering teams. Factory has raised $220 million, most recently a $150 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, from investors including Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, 20VC, NEA, Blackstone, Insight Partners and Nvidia. Before founding Factory, Eno worked as a machine-learning engineer at Hugging Face, training, optimizing and deploying large language models for enterprise customers. AGENDA: 00:00 Are We Underestimating AI by an Order of Magnitude?  06:35 Why Can the Smartest AI Model Be the Cheapest?  18:51 Is Anthropic's Coding Business Really Worth $2 Trillion?  33:41 Will Continuous-Learning Models Help or Hurt Factory?  40:43 Will 80–90% of Neo-Labs Die in the Next 18 Months?  44:33 Should American Enterprises Work With Open-Source Chinese Models?  55:42 Must AI Founders Radically Rethink What a Great Outcome Looks Like?  1:04:30 Do Pedigree and Credentials Still Matter in AI Hiring?  1:19:17 Which Is the Biggest Threat: Claude Code, Codex, Cognition or Cursor?  1:24:20 What Seems Crazy Today but Will Be Obvious in Five Years?