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The Compute 100 is the home for conversations about compute. The Compute 100 highlights 100 companies building across the semiconductor and compute value chain — 50 public, 50 private. It spans chip design, fabrication, advanced packaging, memory, power delivery, networking, and the software stack powering AI workloads. This podcast highlights conversations with the operators, builders, and investors shaping the new compute-centric economy. The podcast is hosted by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, early stage compute investors at Primary.
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- 2 days ago1h 11m
The Compute 100: Timothy Arcuri, Managing Director at UBS
Today’s guest is Timothy Arcuri, Managing Director at UBS.Timothy leads UBS' Equity Research efforts in semiconductors and semiconductor equipment in the US region. A former process engineer, Tim began his Wall Street career in 1998 and has spent nearly three decades studying chipmakers and their supply chains.Timothy has been covering the semiconductor landscape for over 20 years. His expertise is unmatched.Across the compute stack, we discuss:- The power and revenue needed to support semiconductor growth expectations- Who will pay a premium for faster inference- How hyperscalers balance Broadcom’s full-service model with greater control over chip design and memory procurement- What Cerebras’s OpenAI deal means for its cloud and hardware business model- Where equipment, packaging and materials create openings for startups- Political backlash and the industry’s dependence on a small number of customersTimestamps:0:00 Introduction1:13 Can power keep up with semiconductor expectations?7:55 From process engineering to Wall Street12:40 Measuring AI demand and pricing faster inference18:44 How AI is changing semiconductor research21:12 NVIDIA, AMD and Intel24:31 Custom chips, Broadcom and MediaTek28:57 Inference startups and Cerebras’s business model33:22 Micron, HBM and the memory cycle38:54 What long-term memory contracts change45:50 Equipment, packaging and fab economics53:56 Where new compute companies can compete1:02:27 Cobots, humanoids and demand for chips1:03:57 Political backlash and customer concentration1:08:07 NVIDIA’s installed base and what gets cut in a downturnThe Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary’s compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Follow us on X and check out our daily newsletter.This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Nothing discussed in this podcast constitutes investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, or a recommendation to make any investment. Any views expressed are as of the date of recording, are subject to change, and may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.
- 2 weeks ago1h 4m
The Compute 100: Barun Kar, CEO, and Rajiv Khemani, Executive Chairman at Upscale AI
Today’s guests are Barun Kar, CEO, and Rajiv Khemani, Executive Chairman at Upscale AI.Barun and Rajiv are multi-time founders in networking silicon. Between them they helped build Cavium, Innovium, Palo Alto Networks and Juniper’s MX series before co-founding Auradine, where they incubated Upscale AI before spinning it out. Upscale builds the switch silicon, systems and software that connect AI chips to each other using open standards.We dig into why AI clusters need a network built around memory reads and writes between chips, not the packet switching that cloud networks were designed for, and why Barun and Rajiv chose open standards over a proprietary fabric like NVLink. They explain how a networking startup works with hyperscalers on their custom chips, why it sells complete systems to new clouds and enterprises, and how the AI buildout could make networking a trillion dollar market.From switch silicon to supply chains, we discuss:How scale-up and scale-out networks workWhere copper, optics and optical switches fitWhy open standards matter for AI chipsWhat a network operating system doesHow Upscale secures its supply chainBuilding culture while scaling to 300 peopleTimestamps:0:00 Introduction1:05 Why AI needs a new network5:21 Why cloud-era chips fall short for AI9:05 Scale-up and scale-out inside an AI rack14:47 The Auradine spin-out and Upscale’s founding story19:30 Memory semantics versus packet switching26:14 From Cavium and Palo Alto Networks to Upscale30:50 Competition and the system-level advantage34:19 What a network operating system does35:24 Optics and optical switching40:33 Selling to hyperscalers, new clouds and enterprises46:04 How big AI networking could get49:04 Securing supply across the chain53:31 Building at the forefront of AI56:17 Beyond networking: what comes next1:02:23 Building culture in a fast-growing companyThe Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary’s compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Follow us on X and check out our daily newsletter.This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Nothing discussed in this podcast constitutes investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, or a recommendation to make any investment. Any views expressed are as of the date of recording, are subject to change, and may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.
- 3 weeks ago1h 10m
The Compute 100: Jascha Achterberg, Co-Founder & CTO, Callosum
Today’s guest is Jascha Achterberg, co-founder and CTO of Callosum. Jascha started with his Cambridge PhD collaborator Danyal Akarca (CEO), London-based Callosum is building infrastructure that matches complex AI workloads to specialized models and chips. The company has raised a $100 million seed round led by Atomico, with significant participation from Plural, DCVC, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund.Jascha’s bet is that the future of compute is heterogeneous: different chips working together on different parts of a problem. We’ll dig into the commercialization opportunity: discover where each architecture excels, help chipmakers find production workloads, and let enterprises adopt new compute without replacing the stack they already trust. It is all in pursuit of faster, cheaper, and more capable computing systems, which is the biggest prize in infrastructure today. Beyond the multichip future, we discuss: What neuroscience taught Jascha about designing computing systemsHow chipmakers discover what their hardware is best atWhere thermodynamic, biological, and quantum computing could fitHiring people who welcome having their ideas challengedBuilding an AI infrastructure company in LondonTimestamps:0:00 Introduction2:55 What heterogeneous computing actually means11:02 From PhD research to Callosum18:36 Turning heterogeneous compute into a product23:24 Sourcing compute and working with chipmakers28:53 Matching workloads to the right hardware34:24 What heterogeneous computing can do today38:29 The next waves of chips48:02 Building the team51:33 Why build in London?56:11 Helping enterprises upgrade their compute stacks1:01:04 Fundraising and building momentum1:03:40 Where specialization wins, and where it doesn’tAnd a few links mentioned in the show: Callosum’s recent results on heterogeneous inference deployments: https://www.callosum.com/blog/programmable-heterogeneityBlog post on Callosum’s theoretical research on heterogeneity across computing, economic, and biological systems: https://www.callosum.com/blog/the-principle-of-maximum-heterogeneityThe Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary’s compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).The Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary’s compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Follow us on X and check out our daily newsletter.This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Nothing discussed in this podcast constitutes investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, or a recommendation to make any investment. Any views expressed are as of the date of recording, are subject to change, and may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.
- Oct 6, 20261h 5m
The Compute 100: Austin Lyons, Analyst & Writer, Chipstrat
Today's guest is Austin Lyons, the writer behind Chipstrat.Austin started his career as an engineer — graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois under semiconductor physicist Eric Pop, followed by time at Intel. From there, he made the shift to analysis and writing, building Chipstrat into one of the most widely-read independent newsletters covering semiconductors, optics, networking, and physical AI. Austin is one of those rare people who can actually read the silicon and explain the market. When people want to know what is really happening in the compute stack, Austin's work is where many of them turn first.We're excited to have him on for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of the chip industry.Austin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinlyons/The Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary's compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Primary: https://www.primary.vc/Follow us on X and check out our daily newsletter.This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Nothing discussed in this podcast constitutes investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, or a recommendation to make any investment. Any views expressed are as of the date of recording, are subject to change, and may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.
- Sep 22, 20261h 9m
The Compute 100: Naveen Rao, Co-founder & CEO of Unconventional AI
Today's guest is Naveen Rao, co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI.Naveen has built two startups before Unconventional AI, both at critical inflection points in the AI market, often early to trends the world had yet to see. He founded Nervana, acquired by Intel for over $400M, then MosaicML, acquired by Databricks for $1.3B, after which he led AI at Databricks. Now he's after his magnum opus: chips inspired by the architecture of the brain that can run AI at a fraction of today's energy cost. As power becomes the defining constraint on scaling AI, Naveen's thesis is that biology-scale efficiency is the only path forward.Unconventional AI launched with nearly half a billion dollars at a $4.5B valuation — one of the largest seed rounds ever, backed by Lightspeed, a16z, Sequoia, Lux, DCVC, and Jeff Bezos. Our conversation covered Naveen’s career, the market moment for Unconventional, their early product releases, and his belief that the future of compute will mirror how the physical world computes. Thank you Naveen for joining us! Naveen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naveengrao/The Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary's compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Primary: https://www.primary.vc/Follow us on X and check out our daily newsletter.This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Nothing discussed in this podcast constitutes investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, or a recommendation to make any investment. Any views expressed are as of the date of recording, are subject to change, and may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.
- Aug 24, 20261h 0m
The Compute 100: Patrick Bowen, CEO of Neurophos
Today's guest is Patrick Bowen, CEO of Neurophos.Patrick's path into chips started at age nine, when a neighbor taught him to build radios from Radio Shack kits and handed him a college EE textbook, which Patrick read cover to cover, homework included. He later double-majored in physics and EE, then did his PhD at Duke under David R. Smith, the physicist who built the first real invisibility cloak out of metamaterials. As Patrick puts it, "there's no market for cloaks." But the trick behind them, engineering materials smaller than the wavelength of light, became the seed for Neurophos. The company shrinks optical modulators 10,000x smaller than what's on the market, packing a million onto a fingernail-sized chip instead of one the size of a card table. That density powers Neurophos's T100 optical processing unit, which aims for 50x more compute per wafer. Neurophos closed a $110M Series A backed by Microsoft's M12 earlier this year. We're thrilled to have Patrick on the podcast for a conversation about the physics case for optical over digital compute, why he's targeting the prefill half of inference over decode, and what it will take to make photonics real at data center scale.Patrick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ptbowen/The Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary's compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Primary: https://www.primary.vc/Follow us on X (https://x.com/thecompute100) and check out our daily newsletter (https://newsletter.thecompute100.com/).This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Nothing discussed in this podcast constitutes investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, or a recommendation to make any investment. Any views expressed are as of the date of recording, are subject to change, and may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.
- Jul 30, 202654 min
The Compute 100: Alex Ksendzovsky, CEO, and Jon Pomeraniec, COO of The Biological Computing Company
Today's guests are Alex Ksendzovsky and Jon Pomeraniec, co-founders of The Biological Computing Company (TBC).Check out the demo here! www.tbc.co/demoAlex and John are both neurosurgeon-neuroscientists who met about fifteen years ago and have done nearly everything together since. Alex is the godfather to John's two kids and signed his wedding documents, in Russian. The idea for TBC traces back to Alex's time as a philosophy student, when he pitched his neuroscience professor on encoding the S&P 500 into a dish of living neurons to predict the stock market. The professor said no. Years later, once they were both practicing neurosurgeons, Alex and John ran the experiment anyway. The market prediction didn't pan out, but it proved something bigger: that real-world data could be encoded into living neurons, processed, and decoded back out again. That became the premise for TBC: growing neurons on dishes wired to thousands of electrodes and deriving learning principles from them to make today's AI models faster, cheaper, and more efficient. The company came out of stealth this year having raised $50M at seed, grown from 5 people to 25, and signed its first paying customers for a neuron-derived video generation model. We're thrilled to have Alex and John on the podcast for a conversation about building the first company with real commercial access to biological compute, why the brain is still the best computer ever built, and what it will take to eventually put neurons directly in the compute loop.Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-ksendzovsky-31732711/Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-pomeraniec-785a294/The Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary's compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Primary: https://www.primary.vc/Follow us on X (https://x.com/thecompute100) and check out our daily newsletter (https://newsletter.thecompute100.com/).This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Nothing discussed in this podcast constitutes investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, or a recommendation to make any investment. Any views expressed are as of the date of recording, are subject to change, and may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.
- Jul 22, 202657 min
The Compute 100: Shahin Farshchi, General Partner at Lux Capital.
Today's guest is Shahin Farshchi, General Partner at Lux Capital.Shahin's path into venture started with a failed startup. After a PhD at UCLA designing low-noise amplifiers to capture brain signals, he bootstrapped a wireless biosignal monitoring company and learned the hard way that hospitals wanting a product and hospitals paying for one are very different things. A mentor told him he should raise venture money next time – his response: "What's venture capital?" With no network to speak of, he cold-emailed a list of VC firms offering to scout semiconductor deals. Lux Capital, the first hit on a Google search for "nanotechnology venture capital," wrote back the same day, and he joined full-time in 2006. Nearly 20 years later, he's one of the firm's most active investors in deep tech, backing companies like Majestic Labs, Cognichip, and Unconventional AI. Lux just closed Fund IX at $1.5B, its largest ever, bringing total AUM to roughly $7B. We're thrilled to have Shahin on the podcast for a conversation about the semiconductor cycle, the case for younger founders in chips, and the shrinking universe of venture-scale outcomes.Shahin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shahinf Lux Capital: https://www.luxcapital.com/The Compute 100 is led by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, compute-focused investors at Primary. Primary is a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm that backs founders building across markets including compute, industrials, healthcare and vertical AI. With $1.6B AUM and a 60+ person operating team, Primary delivers unparalleled support to teams across recruiting, finance, GTM, and brand. Primary's compute portfolio includes Etched, The Biological Computing Company, Haiqu, and Atero (acquired by Crusoe).Primary: https://www.primary.vc/Follow us on X (https://x.com/thecompute100) and check out our daily newsletter (https://newsletter.thecompute100.com/).
About The Compute 100
The Compute 100 is the home for conversations about compute. The Compute 100 highlights 100 companies building across the semiconductor and compute value chain — 50 public, 50 private. It spans chip design, fabrication, advanced packaging, memory, power delivery, networking, and the software stack powering AI workloads. This podcast highlights conversations with the operators, builders, and investors shaping the new compute-centric economy. The podcast is hosted by Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi, early stage compute investors at Primary.
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