This Week in AI

This Week in AI, JCal sits down with three CEOs building the infrastructure, intelligence, and interfaces for the next era of AI: Jeremy Fraenkel (CEO, Fundamental), Victor Riparbelli (CEO, Synthesia), and Nick Harris (CEO, Lightmatter). We break down what's actually happening beneath the AI hype: the data modality LLMs completely missed, why copper is the real bottleneck in AI data centers, OpenAI shutting down Sora, the build vs. buy debate for AI tools, and how close we really are to AGI.AI's Biggest Blind Spot, Tabular Data: LLMs transformed text, images, and code, but 70-80% of enterprise data lives in rows and columns.Copper Can't Keep Up: Nick explains why AI data centers are hitting a wall. GPUs compute faster than they can communicate. Lightmatter's photonic chips push 1.6 terabits per fiber and can 3x training speed.Why OpenAI Killed Sora & Anthropic's Focus is Winning: Victor breaks down why even OpenAI had to learn the lesson of focus, and why Claude Code has every founder talking.Vibe Coding Your Own CRM vs. Buying Salesforce: Jeremy reveals Fundamental built their own internal CRM using vibe coding. The panel debates when building beats buying and when it's a distraction.The Omnipresent CEO: Jason shares how he's using AI agents for root access to Slack, Gmail, and Notion, resurrecting former employees as AI personas, automating SDR workflows, and summarizing employee inboxes while they're on vacation.Are We Already at AGI?: Nick says the rate of progress is a double exponential. Jeremy argues AGI is a moving goalpost. Victor warns of "Future Shock" and societal disruption.🔗 Learn more about Fundamental: https://fundamental.tech🔗 Learn more about Synthesia: https://www.synthesia.io🔗 Learn more about Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.coThis Week In AI is made possible by:PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: paypalopen.comTimestamps:00:00 Welcome & intro to Jeremy Fraenkel, Victor Riparbelli, and Nick Harris01:47 What is Fundamental? Large tabular models explained07:01 Victor Riparbelli on Synthesia & why OpenAI killed Sora11:09 Claude Code dominance & the Lightspeed founder retreat12:08 Nick Harris on Lightmatter, photonics & the new Moore's Law14:38 Copper vs. fiber: why AI data centers are hitting a wall18:44 Reinventing video: interactive, real-time, personalized21:32 The economics of a custom AI movie23:55 Why Amazon, Google & Meta are building their own chips28:06 Tables have a bandwidth problem too32:27 When will compute be as cheap as storage?36:10 The future of software: every company gets a custom stack38:06 Vibe coding your own CRM vs. buying Salesforce45:57 Jason's quest for root access to Slack50:18 The omnipresent CEO: Doctor Manhattan meets Jesus CEO52:13 Resurrecting former employees as AI personas53:25 Victor's executive changelog for a 650-person company55:07 Whisper Flow & the Plaud Pin1:00:03 AGI: is it already here?1:03:37 Jeremy: we've only solved half the brain1:06:30 70% of Americans fear AI will impact jobs1:08:47 Future Shock & keeping the rope tight*Mentioned in the show:*Wisper Flow: https://wisperflow.aiPlaud Pin: https://www.plaud.aiAthena Executive Assistants: https://www.athenawow.comWHOOP: https://www.whoop.com"Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler: https://www.amazon.com/Future-ShockAlvin-Toffler/dp/0394425863Victor on TWiST, E1776: https://youtu.be/jxET4fq_2eANick on TWiST, E1787: https://youtu.be/FPW2nnEqfMsSubscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotifySubscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/appleThanks for watching!🤖 If you want to stay ahead of the curve on all things AI, make sure to join our community across all platforms:📩 Get the Weekly Newsletter: https://thisweekinai.ai/📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisWeekinAIPodcast📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinaipodcast

Chris Lattner, CEO of Modular, builds a unified software layer to run AI across Nvidia, AMD, and Apple chips. Jake Loosararian, CEO of Gecko Robotics, builds purpose-built robots for infrastructure inspection. They discuss GPU shortages and vendor lock-in. They debate purpose-built robots vs humanoids, China chip smuggling and geopolitical stakes, and why reindustrialization could spark big private equity opportunities.

Shiv Rao, cardiologist and CEO of Abridge, explains building a $5B AI healthcare company. He discusses why US healthcare is broken and how AI outperforms average clinicians. Topics include AI copilots that listen and prompt in real time, fixing clinician burnout, patient self-directed research, and go-to-market strategies for regulated health systems.

Philip Johnston, CEO of StarCloud, builds space-based data centers to rethink compute economics. Boris Sofman, CEO of Bedrock Robotics, retrofits excavators with autonomy to tackle construction labor gaps. Spiros Xanthos, founder of Resolve AI, automates running and debugging production software. They debate orbital compute, autonomous heavy equipment, and the risks of speeding up software with generative AI.

Anastasios Angelopoulos, creator of LM Arena (Berkeley-born model evaluation platform). Naveen Rao, founder of Unconventional AI (hardware visionary rethinking compute for huge efficiency gains). They unpack on-device open-source agents, rethinking chip and datacenter design for scale and efficiency, the surge in token and compute demand, and how AI reshapes labor and infrastructure.

Richard Socher, AI entrepreneur and investor building search and AI infrastructure. Tanay Kothari, founder of Whisper Flow, maker of AI voice dictation and automation. They tackle the viral Citrini doom post, why voice dictation finally works, new low-friction voice interfaces, how AI-first teams are being rebuilt, automating customer support at scale, open source vs proprietary models, and Taiwan chip risk.

Kash Ali, CEO of TaxGPT, a founder building agentic accounting workflows; Alex Elias, CEO of Qloo, an expert in taste-based consumer inference; Mitesh Agrawal, CEO of Positron AI, building chips for cheaper AI inference. They riff on OpenClaw’s agent revolution. Conversations cover automating hiring at scale, taste-infused agent decisions, inbox and Slack automation, and the hardware needs for large-context agents.

Andrius Useckas, CTO-level security expert who researches AI-agent exploits, and Aaron Walls, CEO focused on platform-driven penetration testing, break down OpenClaw risks. They describe real attack vectors like prompt injections, supply-chain and memory-based threats. They also discuss hosting tradeoffs, the “lethal trifecta” widening attack surfaces, and practical defenses such as sandboxes and input sanitization.

Google released Gemini 3.0 this week, and I’ve been hands-on with it every day since launch. After diving into all the new capabilities, performance upgrades, and quality-of-life improvements, I’ve distilled the most important updates you should know. In this breakdown, I walk through the biggest feature changes, what they mean in real-world use, and how Gemini 3.0 stacks up against the other frontier models.