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No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
30 episodes
What Chess.com Teaches US About Superhuman Capabilities, with CEO Erik Allebest
Ep 173 · Aug 13, 2026 · 46 min
In a world of infinite gaming and entertainment possibilities, how does a centuries-old game stay so popular? Chess.com co-founder and CEO Erik Allebest joins Sarah Guo to explain how the evolution of technology has kept people coming back to chess, even when machines can beat us at the game. Erik talks about how the desire to build a MySpace-like community for chess led to the purchase of a domain name from a bankruptcy sale back in 2005, and scaled into a community with 10 million daily active…
Chasing Trillion-Dollar Companies, Founder Ambition, Token Budgets, and Regulatory Capture with Sarah & Elad
Ep 172 · Aug 6, 2026 · 39 min
Is the tech industry moving too quickly, or are founders letting fear of AI labs stunt their ambitions? Sarah and Elad explore the current landscape of artificial intelligence, venture capital, and startup dynamics. They discuss the realities of building multi-trillion-dollar companies, shifting market sizes and outcome-based pricing models, and how founders are reacting to the rise of major AI labs. They also talk about what the framework for startup exits should look like, the potential for re…
Building an Autonomous Enterprise for Real-World Services with Netic Founder Melisa Tokmak
Ep 171 · Jul 31, 2026 · 34 min
When your AC fails in a heatwave, you don’t want a busy signal; you need a solution. Netic founder and CEO Melisa Tokmak joins host Elad Gil to explain how Netic’s autonomous AI platform acts as an intermediary between companies and customers, deploying agents to instantly handle essential services, from emergency home repairs to hospitality to pet care. Melisa describes the complexity of these real-world workloads, which have traditionally relied on large human support teams, and how over 70% o…
Building an Autonomous Delivery Experience with DoorDash Co-Founders Andy Fang and Stanley Tang
Ep 170 · Jul 23, 2026 · 49 min
DoorDash is not just a delivery company. From its inception, co-founders Andy Fang and Stanley Tang operated it as a robotics and autonomy company. Andy and Stanley join Sarah Guo to explain how autonomous tech and AI are reshaping consumer habits, commerce, and delivery. Andy and Stanley talk about the rollout of Ask DoorDash, a natural-language interface that’s driving both restaurant discovery and larger grocery orders. They also discuss Dot, their in-house autonomous delivery robot that has…
Travel Through the Lens of AI with with Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel
Ep 169 · Jul 9, 2026 · 41 min
When Glenn Fogel joined Priceline in 2000, the business was worth a few hundred million dollars. One week later, the Nasdaq peaked, eventually sending its stock down to a dollar a share. But over 25 years later, Booking Holdings has scaled over 1000x into an over $100 billion dollar global travel behemoth. Elad Gil is joined by Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel to discuss his career, from law school and Wall Street to working at Priceline through the dot-com crash, and to helping grow the busines…
How Nuclear Will Unlock Energy Abundance with Valar Atomics Founder Isaiah Taylor
Ep 168 · Jul 2, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
While the rest of the nuclear industry still relies on simulations and paper designs, Valar Atomics is busy splitting atoms. In fact, they just powered an NVIDIA Blackwell chip directly with a live nuclear reactor in order to power the world’s first nuclear powered website. Sarah Guo joins Valar Atomics founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor on-site at their reactor site in Utah to talk about how Valar is shifting nuclear energy from the theoretical to the practical by building and perfecting reactors vi…
Really Big Test-Time Compute in AI Changes Benchmarks, Safety and Research with OpenAI Research Scientist Noam Brown
Ep 167 · Jun 26, 2026 · 36 min
When a new AI model drops, it’s judged based on a static benchmark grid that doesn’t account for how long the model is allowed to think. How then should we measure a model’s true capability? OpenAI research scientist Noam Brown returns to talk with Sarah Guo about his latest essay on why the AI industry’s traditional benchmark grids are broken, and how large-scale test-time compute is fundamentally changing how models are evaluated. Noam explains how, if properly scaffolded, today’s models can r…
Re-engineering the Semiconductor Supply Chain with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan
Ep 166 · Jun 18, 2026 · 45 min
At 66 years old, instead of heading towards retirement, former Cadence CEO and legendary investor Lip-Bu Tan decided to take on the hardest job in tech: turning Intel around. Elad Gil and Sarah Guo sit down with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to talk about why he took the job and what “saving” Intel actually looks like. Tan explains how his experience in startup culture informed his decisions to drive Intel’s culture towards faster decisions, focus on customer satisfaction, and engineer accountability. He…
Biohub: The Future of Biology is Open-Source with Co-Founders Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, and Head of Science Alex Rives
Ep 165 · Jun 10, 2026 · 56 min
Biohub started with an ambitious goal of curing, preventing, and managing all disease by the end of the century. A decade later, thanks to the convergence of frontier AI and biological data, that goal may have been too conservative. In this episode, Elad Gil and Sarah Guo sit down with Biohub co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, alongside Biohub Head of Science Alex Rives. Together, they discuss Biohub’s $500 million virtual biology initiative, which integrates frontier AI with wet-la…
We Need An Ecosystem in AI, And Every Company Can Win A Place In It
Ep 164 · Jun 4, 2026 · 42 min
What does it mean for a business to truly operate at the AI frontier? In a special crossover episode at Microsoft Build, Sarah Guo and Elad Gil team up with Latent Space host “swyx” to talk with Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella about the future of AI platforms, software development, and the tech ecosystem. Satya reflects on the latest breakthroughs from Microsoft Build, the strategic shift toward multi-model harnesses, and why private evaluations (evals) are now a company’s most importan…
Building an AI Guardian for Enterprise with Onyx Security CEO Maxim Bar Kogan
Ep 163 · May 28, 2026 · 41 min
We are now closer than ever before to living in a world where AI agents are smart enough to run our power grids and manage water supplies. How do we keep them from going rogue? Sarah Guo sits down with Maxim Bar Kogan, founder and CEO of Onyx Securities, to explore the complexities of supervising and securing autonomous agents at the enterprise level. Maxim explains Onyx’s product as an AI control plane, which oversees the permissions and flexible contexts of agents while balancing latency, cost…
The Story Behind Cerebras’ $63 Billion IPO with Founder and CEO Andrew Feldman
Ep 162 · May 21, 2026 · 31 min
Companies in Silicon Valley from Nvidia to AMD are racing to fuel the AI revolution with postage stamp-sized AI chips. Meanwhile, a chip the size of a dinner plate just fueled a $63 billion IPO for Cerebras. Elad Gil and Sarah Guo sit down with Cerebras founder and CEO Andrew Feldman to discuss the company’s journey to making one of the largest tech go-publics in history. Andrew details the multi-year journey of pioneering wafer-scale AI computing, including surviving a brutal period of being ah…
Pax Silica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Tech Strategy with US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg
Ep 161 · May 14, 2026 · 38 min
Securing AI dominance requires more than just semiconductors; it demands a complete overhaul of how the West manages everything that goes into them, from rare earth minerals to actuators. Enter: Pax Silica. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg to discuss the launch and expansion of Pax Silica, a 14-country economic security coalition designed to secure the entire AI supply chain. Jacob talks about the creation of a forward-deployed i…
Amex Global Business Travel: The World’s First AI Take Private with Long Lake CEO Alexander Taubman
Ep 160 · May 11, 2026 · 22 min
The world’s first AI-take-private just proved that AI can revolutionize the real economy. Long Lake Management co-founder and CEO Alexander Taubman joins Elad Gil to discuss his firm’s agreement to acquire the legacy platform American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) in a deal valued at $6.3 billion. Alexander explains the mechanics of AI-driven roll-ups, and why Long Lake chooses to acquire and transform businesses rather than simply selling them software. He also talks about how Long…
Baseten CEO Tuhin Srivastava on the AI Inference Crunch, Custom Models, and Building the Inference Cloud
Ep 156 · May 1, 2026 · 43 min
Baseten CEO and co-founder Tuhin Srivastava sits down with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to discuss the rapid growth of AI inference demand, Baseten’s 30x growth, and why inference is becoming the strategic “last market.” Tuhin Srivastava argues the application layer will persist because companies with unique user signals can encode value into workflows and post-train specialized models, citing examples like Abridge and support workflows. The conversation covers GPU capacity constraints, Baseten’s mult…
SAP: Bringing the ‘Operating System’ of a Company into the AI Era with CTO Philipp Herzig
Ep 158 · Apr 23, 2026 · 46 min
More than fifty years ago, the modern idea of the standard enterprise software was birthed at SAP. Now, after managing companies through technological shifts from the mainframe to mobile, SAP is at the forefront of closing the AI adoption gap for their customers. SAP Chief Technology Officer Philipp Herzig joins Sarah Guo to talk about how SAP has remained a durable end-to-end “operating system” for its more than 400,000 customers from finance to supply chain. Philipp argues that the AI transiti…
Scaling Global Organizations in the Age of AI with ServiceNow Chairman and CEO Bill McDermott
Ep 157 · Apr 17, 2026 · 57 min
Few teens are business owners, but by age 16, Bill McDermott had purchased and was running a local deli. Now he runs leading global technology powerhouse ServiceNow, a company that is defining how the world’s largest organizations transform for the digital age. Sarah Guo sits down with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott to discuss his journey from child entrepreneur to CEO, and how he navigates his role as a leader in the age of AI. Bill argues that human connection is still a vital part of being a s…
The Agentic Economy: How AI Agents Will Transform the Financial System with Circle Co-Founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire
Ep 156 · Apr 9, 2026 · 44 min
AI agents can already collaborate, but they lack a trustworthy medium in which to store value and execute contracts. Enter Circle’s Arc Blockchain, an economic “operating system” designed for a world where machines drive the real economy. Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire joins Elad Gil to dive into the future of programmable money and the agentic economy. Jeremy explains why traditional banking fails to support the needs of AI agents, and how stablecoins like USDC facilitate an internet-…
AI for Atoms: How Periodic Labs is Revolutionizing Materials Engineering with Co-Founder Liam Fedus
Apr 3, 2026 · 29 min
What happens when you apply the scaling laws of large language models to the physical work of atoms? Elad Gil sits down with Liam Fedus, co-founder at Periodic Labs, which is pioneering an AI foundation lab for atoms. Liam discusses how he pivoted from dark matter physics research to the front lines of artificial intelligence, including stints at Google Brain and working on ChatGPT at OpenAI. He talks about how Periodic is connecting massive language models to the physical world to overcome data…
Andrej Karpathy on Code Agents, AutoResearch, and the Loopy Era of AI
Ep 154 · Mar 20, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
What happens when AI agents can design experiments, collect data, and improve — without a human in the loop? Andrej Karpathy joins Sarah Guo on the state of models, the future of engineering and education, thinking about impact on jobs, and his project AutoResearch: where agents close the loop on a piece of AI research (experimentation, training, and optimization, autonomously). 00:00 Andrej Karpathy Introduction 02:55 What Capability Limits Remain? 06:15 What Mastery of Coding Agents Looks Like…
From Coder to Manager: Navigating the Shift to Agentic Engineering with Notion Co-Founder Simon Last
Ep 153 · Mar 12, 2026 · 29 min
Notion isn’t designing AI agents that just use tools. Their agents can autonomously build their own integrations, as well as write the code needed to finish a task. Sarah Guo sits down with Notion Co-Founder Simon Last to explore Notion’s rapid evolution from a simple writing assistant to a sophisticated platform for custom AI agents. Simon discusses the technical hurdles of indexing disparate data from sources like Slack and Google Drive, as well as the internal shift toward using coding agents…
How Capital is Powering the AI Infrastructure Buildout with Magnetar Capital Managing Director Neil Tiwari
Ep 152 · Feb 26, 2026 · 36 min
By the end of 2026, AI capital expenditure is projected to hit nearly $700 billion. The question isn’t who has the best model, but who has the most creative financing to build out AI infrastructure and beyond. Sarah Guo is joined by Neil Tiwari, Managing Director at Magnetar Capital, a financial innovator helping the AI industry scale from billions to trillions of dollars in CapEx. Neil explains some of the debt structures used to finance massive GPU clusters, who is taking the risk, and how the…
From SaaS to AI-First: How Companies Are Reshaping Innovation
Ep 151 · Feb 19, 2026 · 41 min
In this episode of No Priors, Sarah and Elad dive into the evolving landscape of software, exploring how AI is transforming the traditional SaaS model. They discuss whether SaaS as we know it is coming to an end, what new business and sales strategies are emerging, and how AI is reshaping the way software is built, sold, and scaled. The conversation also examines whether or not these shifts are a good thing for both big and small companies, and how coders and software experts are reacting to abr…
Rivian’s Roadmap to AI Architecture and Autonomy with Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe
Ep 150 · Feb 12, 2026 · 32 min
Autonomous vehicle technology has moved past human-coded rules and into an era of neural networks and custom computer chips. And to solve the most difficult driving scenarios, electric vehicle company Rivian abandoned its original technology platform to build a vertically integrated data stack. Sarah Guo sits down with Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe to explore the seismic shift in the automotive industry toward AI-driven, software-defined vehicles . RJ discusses the move away from function o…
Introducing 4D Creation Open Beta: NPCs, 4D Worlds, and the Future of Gaming with Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki
Ep 149 · Feb 5, 2026 · 44 min
From “virtual doppelgängers” to “real-time dreaming,” online gaming platform Roblox is using AI technology to build the “Holodeck” envisioned in science fiction decades ago. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki at Roblox headquarters to explore the intersection of AI, physics simulation, and the future of human connection. Dave discusses the evolution of the 4D creation tool in Roblox, a high-fidelity simulation that enables thousands of people to interact in real-time w…
Why Cryopreservation is No Longer Science Fiction with Until Co-founder and CEO Laura Deming
Ep 148 · Jan 29, 2026 · 31 min
What if we could pause biological time to wait for a cure for a disease? Thanks to innovations and research in reversible cryopreservation, this possibility is no longer just science fiction. Sarah Guo sits down with Laura Deming, CEO and co-founder of biotech startup Until, to dive deep into the growing field of reversible cryopreservation. Laura talks about how her time as a Thiel Fellow as well as her founding of the Longevity Fund fueled her obsession with solving the “social blindspot” of a…
No Priors Live: Building Durable Software in the AI Age with MongoDB President & CEO CJ Desai
Ep 147 · Jan 22, 2026 · 37 min
Why are there only a handful of companies in the world with over $10 billion in pure-play software revenue? CJ Desai believes the reason is that products are replaceable, but platforms are forever. For No Priors’ very first live from MongoDB.local SF, Sarah Guo is joined by CJ Desai, CEO and President of software developer MongoDB, to discuss the shifting landscape of enterprise software. CJ discusses whether AI will erode the value of software, and what truly constitutes a “moat” in the age of…
AI and the Future of Warfare with US Under Secretary of War Emil Michael
Ep 146 · Jan 15, 2026 · 45 min
Today’s arms race looks a little different from those of the past. Under the Trump administration, the US Department of War (DoW) is deploying generative AI to millions of employees in order to maintain a strategic edge over our global adversaries. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering of the United States, to discuss the radical technological transformation of the US military. Emil outlines the architecture and launch of GenAI…
NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang on Reasoning Models, Robotics, and Refuting the “AI Bubble” Narrative
Ep 145 · Jan 8, 2026 · 1 hr 16 min
Even if ChatGPT never existed, the tech giant NVIDIA would still be winning. The end of Moore’s Law—says NVIDIA President, Founder, and CEO Jensen Huang—makes the shift to accelerated computing inevitable, regardless of any talk of an AI “bubble.” Sarah Guo and Elad Gil are joined by Jensen Huang for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of artificial intelligence as we begin 2026. Jensen reflects on the biggest surprises of 2025, including the rapid improvements in reasoning, as well as the pr…
The 2026 AI Forecast: Foundation Models, IPOs, and Robotics with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil
Ep 144 · Dec 19, 2025 · 41 min
Pundits are screaming about the so-called “AI bubble.” But historically slow-to-adopt industries like medicine and law are actually embracing AI at an unprecedented speed. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil look ahead to 2026, breaking down the major trends that will define the next era of AI technologies. They explore the future of AI foundational models, predicting breakthroughs in solving complex scientific problems. They share competing views on the timeline for robotics and self-driving cars, debating…
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