Spark of Ages Why You Can't Build Sovereign AI Alone/David Keane, Akash Agarwal, Abhi Ingle - SCX.ai, SambaNova, Australia ~ Spark of Ages Ep 50
Australia needs control over its intelligence layer, not just its data. We explore SCX’s sovereign AI cloud, Project Magpie’s cultural reasoning, and why inference economics and time-to-market beat hype-driven buildouts.
• sovereign AI as control and context, not just security
• SCX’s inference cloud and partnership with SambaNova
• Project Magpie fine-tuning the reasoning layer for Australia
• training vs inference split to optimize cost and speed
• tokens per kilowatt as the core unit economics
• open source vs closed models in enterprise adoption
• retrofitting existing data centers with pre-assembled racks
• moving pilots to production through cost, control, and confidence
• regional strategy across Southeast Asia and exportable tokens
• agents shifting work to domain teams, doing more not just cutting costs
• candid MBA debate on value, narrative, and people skills
• playful Spark Tank on pickleball and rapid-fire personal insights
What if a nation’s most critical asset isn’t oil, power, or spectrum—but intelligence? We sit down with Southern Cross AI (SCX) founder David Keane, co-founder and CSO Akash Agrawal, and SambaNova’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer Abhi Ingle to unpack how a sovereign AI cloud can protect context, culture, and control while still competing on cost and speed. From Australia’s national needs to regional demand across Southeast Asia, we chart a pragmatic route from vision to working systems.
David explains why SCX is built around inference as a service and how Project Magpie fine-tunes the reasoning layer so models “think like an Australian,” reflecting local law, language, and norms. Abhi breaks down training vs inference in plain English, clarifying why pretraining might live on massive GPU clusters while high-throughput, energy-efficient inference thrives on SambaNova’s ASIC-based systems. Akash digs into enterprise realities—data sovereignty, runaway costs, and integration roadblocks—and makes the case for open source models you can fork, fine-tune, and operate within your perimeter.
We get practical about tokens per kilowatt as the new ROI, pre-assembled racks that drop into existing data centers, and managed services that cut time-to-market from years to months. We explore why most buyers don’t care which chip is under the hood—they care about latency, reliability, and price—and how that shifts competition from hardware logos to delivered outcomes.
Go to SCX.ai to experience the future of sovereign AI.
Remember, in order to win the “$1,000 token credit" you'll have to explain what a magpie is in the comments, and the team at SCX will judge the winner!
David Keane - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dakeane/
David serves as the Founder & CEO of SouthernCrossAI (SCX.ai), an Inference-as-a-Service platform dedicated to establishing sovereign, scalable, and cost-efficient AI infrastructure tailored for Australian requirements.
Akash Agarwal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagarwal/
Currently, Akash serves as the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of SouthernCrossAI (SCX.ai).
Abhi Ingle - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingle-abhi/
Abhi Ingle - Currently, Abhi serves as the Chief Product & Strategy Officer (CPSO) at S
Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Email us with any feedback for the show: sparkofages.podcast@position2.com