$2.5B Chip Heist, The Future of American AI, and Purpose-Built Robots | This Week in AI Ep 6
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This week Jason sat down with Jake Loosararian and Chris Lattner on Episode 6 of This Week in AI. Jake is the CEO and co-founder of Gecko Robotics, a company deploying purpose-built robots and AI for mission-critical infrastructure inspection across energy, defense, and manufacturing. Chris is the CEO and co-founder of Modular, building a universal software layer that lets developers run AI models across Nvidia, AMD, and Apple silicon without being locked into any single hardware vendor.
We explore the GPU shortage, why China's chip smuggling reveals the stakes of the AI cold war, how purpose-built robotics are beating humanoids on ROI, the case for American reindustrialization, and why the next decade could be the best ever for private equity in capital-intensive industries.
Purpose-Built Robots vs. Humanoids: Jake has been building mission-critical robots for 13 years. He explains why general-purpose humanoids still have too little ROI for industrial use, and why specialized robots that find and fix problems are winning in the field.
The GPU Shortage Is Real: Chris breaks down why you can't just go buy 100 Blackwell chips today, why Nvidia's Cuda creates massive lock-in, and how Modular is building a unified software layer across all major chip architectures.
Google TPUs Are the Sleeper: Chris ranks Google as the number one threat to Nvidia's dominance, ahead of Amazon's Trainium and AMD.
China's Chip Smuggling & the AI Cold War: A Supermicro co-founder allegedly smuggled $2.5B in Nvidia chips to China using fake serial numbers and a hairdryer.
The Best Decade for Private Equity: Jake makes the case that capital-intensive, commoditized infrastructure assets: waste-to-energy, water treatment, old power plants will all generate incredible returns.
Self-Driving State of Play: Chris, a former Tesla Autopilot lead, gives his read on Waymo's lead, Tesla's small Austin pilot, and why the real signal is when Tesla starts filing for fully autonomous permits in California.
Learn more about Gecko Robotics: https://www.geckorobotics.com
Learn more about Modular: https://www.modular.com/
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*Timestamps:*
00:00 Welcome & intro to Jake Lu (Gecko Robotics) and Chris Lattner (Modular)
01:34 Gecko's 13-year journey & the Cantilever platform
05:15 Chris Lattner on Modular: replacing Cuda & unifying AI hardware
11:10 Nvidia lock-in, AMD's Rock & why the software stack is broken
19:49 The GPU shortage: how real is it?
22:13 Who challenges Nvidia? Google TPUs, Amazon Trainium & AMD ranked
28:17 China chip smuggling: $2.5B in Nvidia GPUs & the AI cold war
37:43 Self-driving update: Waymo, Tesla's Austin pilot & Chris's Tesla history
42:20 Figure's humanoid package sorting — real or demo magic?
43:47 The best decade for private equity in capital-intensive assets
51:04 Reindustrialization, the trades boom & making manufacturing cool
58:39 Building tech companies outside Silicon Valley
1:06:46 Breaking news: Brett Adcock launches Hark from Figure
1:10:15 Closing thoughts: grit over hype, customers over valuations
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Coinbase CEO's Top 3 Crypto Trends for 2026 + More from Davos!
(0:00) Intro
(0:37) Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong on Crypto Adoption
(38:51) Cerebras CEO, Andrew Feldman on Compute Power
(1:18:50) Gecko Robotics CEO, Jake Loosararian on AI and Physical Robots
This episode is sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange - a modern marketplace and exchange for building the future. It all happens at the NYSE.
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Featuring Brian Armstrong (CEO, Coinbase), Andrew Feldman (CEO, Cerebras), and Jake Loosararian (CEO, Gecko), this conversation explores how AI is changing work, infrastructure, and productivity in real time- from the builders shaping what comes next.
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Winning the AI Race Part 1: Michael Kratsios, Kelly Loeffler, Chris Power, Shyam Sankar, Paul Buchheit, Jake Loosararian
(0:00) The besties introduce the day with Jacob Helberg
(9:08) Michael Kratsios, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
(18:24) Chris Power, Hadrian
(35:15) Jake Loosararian, Gecko Robotics
(44:37) Shyam Sankar, Palantir
(1:00:33) Paul Buchheit, Y Combinator
(1:13:35) Kelly Loeffler, Administrator of the Small Business Administration
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AI Robots with Purpose with Jake Loosararian of Gecko Robotics | E1947
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Todays show:
Jake Loosararian of Gecko Robotics joins Jason to discuss the purpose-designed robots being built at Gecko (3:01), the value of “bear hugging” your key customers (23:39), the “BOM” of current and future robots (1:02:14), and more!
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Timestamps:
(0:00) Jake Loosararian of Gecko Robotics joins Jason.
(3:01) The purpose-designed robots being built at Gecko.
(7:03) Origin story behind Jake’s startup.
(9:45) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at http://www.vanta.com/twist
(10:38) Show us the robots!
(17:43) Details on the frequency of needed infrastructure inspections.
(19:24) DevSquad - Get an entire product team for the cost of one US developer plus 10% off at http://devsquad.com/twist
(23:39) The value of “bear hugging” your key customers.
(27:42) Bridging physical and digital with Gecko’s Cantilever digital twins.
(29:36) Hubspot for Podcast Networks - The Next Wave: https://www.youtube.com/@TheNextWavePod “The Large Language Model Race with Pete Huang, Founder of The Neuron” episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8elHTM9cOOA
(33:50) Extending the value of inspections with fixed sensors.
(46:47) Opening up the conversation to the AI data collected.
(54:44) Why some robotics companies fail while others succeed.
(1:02:14) The “BOM” of current and future robots.
(1:06:29) Where humanoid robots may first be “employed”.
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Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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