Sam Altman calls current AI infra buildout the “biggest joint industrial project in human history.”
Across the world, companies are building infrastructure with urgency: big tech spending hundreds of billions on data centers, semiconductor fabs investing as much in new capacity, energy providers signing multi-gigawatt power contracts to power AI clusters.
The Scaling Era tells the stories behind this buildout. We talk to chip designers, roboticists, data center operators, and founders across the value chain—the builders whose efforts determine whether AI scales or stalls.
Tapa Ghosh on AI chips, studying your field, and collective self-belief
Jeson and I interview Tapa Ghosh (https://x.com/semiDL), an engineer, Thiel Fellow, and the founder of Volantis Semi, which raised $5M from Open AI’s Sam Altman to build photonic motherboards for AI chips. Tapa's journey began with crashed drones, leading him to a hardware deep dive and giving a talk Stanford on designing 3D ICs for deep learning as a teenager.
We explore Volantis's approach to solving a key bottleneck in AI: latency and bandwidth in communication between chips. Tapa explains why using light instead of electricity could revolutionize AI infrastructure, and offers insights into the current landscape dominated by NVIDIA.
His perspectives on self-learning, team building, and resurfacing old ideas to solve new problems reveal what it’s like to work on the foundational layer to our AI future. Please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Tapa Ghosh.
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - Tapa’s origin story: How a crashed drone sparked an interest in chip design
(00:05:45) - How to speedrun to the frontiers of knowledge
(00:11:28) - Giving a talk at Stanford: Petascale Deep Learning on a Single Chip
(00:13:27) - Differences between CPUs, GPUs, and ASICs
(00:15:48) - How NVIDIA went from graphics to AI computing
(00:17:37) - Why AI workloads today are communication-bound, not compute-bound
(00:19:32) - Study the history of your field
(00:21:48) - Why Volantis is building a photonic motherboard
(00:25:48) - What he’s doing differently this time around vs. his last startup
(00:32:21) - The landscape of AI chips: NVIDIA, AMD, challengers
(00:38:10) - New problems as we continue to scale AI clusters for training & inference
(00:39:51) - What Moore’s Law teaches us about human psychology & coordination
(00:42:08) - The engineering marvel of semiconductor fabrication
(00:43:56) - Getting ghosted by Intel vs. gifted pineapple cakes by TSMC
(00:48:46) - Other promising opportunities in AI hardware / infra
(00:52:44) - One of Tapa's unresolved rabbit holes
23 Oct 2024
Jeson Lee on Ikigai, idle talent, and choosing good quests
Jeson Lee (https://x.com/Jesonlee1128)is a repeat founder now building Savant (https://www.joinsavant.com/) (joinsavant.com (http://joinsavant.com)), a program for technical talent to build frontier ideas. Joins us as we catch up and cover:
00:29 Growing up in Malaysia
02:31 Uber for propane gas?
05:59 Moving to Silicon Valley
08:04 Helpful concepts: the Zone of Genius, Ikigai, personality-market fit
15:38 Using writing to catch gaps in your own thinking & get feedback from others
17:53 Introducing Savant: An accelerator for technical talent
21:56 Why aren't the right people working on the right problems?
23:27 How will the world be different if Savant were to succeed?
25:59 One thing that has inspired us lately
4 May 2024
Emile Riachi on dispute resolution, the art of travel, and political change in Lebanon
Emile Riachi is an aspiring lawyer, active Lebanese citizen, and curious traveller. Join us as we catch up and cover:
Field notes from Delhi, India
Emile’s unique travel style
Coming-of-age in Lebanon
Comparing higher ed systems in France vs. the US
International arbitration—what is it and why does it exists
What separates a great litigator from a merely good one
Lebanon’s current political landscape & a vision for the future
Reflections on early political activism, what it’d takes to enact change
Road safety & Ralph Nader’s legacy
What he’s learned from the leadership of Charles de Gaulle
Taking care of your mental health
…and more!
27 Jun 2023
Stuart Baker on Singapore as a startup, the future of news, and near-death experience
Stuart Baker is the co-founder of Airvue, an AI news assistant. Our wide-ranging conversation covers:
Playing rugby
Singapore as a startup
How our cities can be better
His recent move to SF
Playing positive sum games
What’s wrong with the news today & why he's building Airvue
The business & tech sides of the news industry
How AI changes the news
His near-death experience
Risk vs. fear
The trap of the deferred life plan
Getting unblocked & out of your head
Keystone habits
ADHD
...and much more!
23 Jun 2023
Alex Gerrese on early iPhone apps, self-driving cars, and growing up everywhere
Introducing the 1st member of House McAllister. Alex Gerrese--indie app maker, Apple fanboy, early riser.
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