$2.5B Chip Heist, The Future of American AI, and Purpose-Built Robots | This Week in AI Ep 6
About this episode
This episode discusses the implications of a chip heist, the future of American AI, and the advantages of purpose-built robots over humanoids.
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…
People in this episode
Host: Jason Calacanis
Guests: Jake Loosararian, Chris Lattner
Topics covered
- chip heist
- American AI
- purpose-built robots
- GPU shortage
- AI cold war
- reindustrialization
- private equity
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Gecko Robotics, Modular, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Google, Amazon, Supermicro
Products: Blackwell chips, Cuda, TPUs, Trainium
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