Speaker 1: Let's just shift gears a little bit, talk chips more
Speaker 1: broadly and how there's some new entrance into the AI
Speaker 1: part of the equation. Jeff Bezos, for example, and Samsung
Speaker 1: are betting big on AI chip startup ten Store, announcing
Speaker 1: a seven hundred million dollar investment, which puts the company
Speaker 1: now in a two point six billion dollar valuation. Joining
Speaker 1: us to discuss is the CEO of the company, Jim Keller,
Speaker 1: who is himself a legend and chip making world. Of course,
Speaker 1: your resume includes know who's who of AMD, Apple, Tesla
Speaker 1: and indeed Intel. Jim, the money that you're raising, what
Speaker 1: is it that you're hoping to do. You're wanting to
Speaker 1: make a more cheaper operation and option out there for
Speaker 1: AI accelerator chips.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. We're building out the team, we're building
Speaker 2: out our products, We're starting to ship our products, and
Speaker 2: our real mission right now is to bring on developers
Speaker 2: and early customers.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the customers and what you offer that
Speaker 1: isn't in the market at the moment. Jim, what's your
Speaker 1: selling point?
Speaker 2: Well, we have a couple of things. We license our
Speaker 2: IP and we're building a business on that for both
Speaker 2: risk vice CPU and AI. We're selling low cost development
Speaker 2: systems like I'm really interested in hitting a much lower
Speaker 2: cost point. And then we open source to our whole
Speaker 2: AI compiler stack and people like the transparency. They can
Speaker 2: see exactly what the technology is doing. They actually it's
Speaker 2: turned into a great recruiting vehicle for our software engineers.
Speaker 1: Interesting. So let's just go first to the price points,
Speaker 1: a cheap offering. A lot of that's done by having
Speaker 1: less pricing components. For example, in videos, chips are incredibly expensive.
Speaker 1: We know people pay it because of what they offer
Speaker 1: the full stack in many ways, but they struggle from
Speaker 1: a choke perspective on how foundwidth memory chips in particular,
Speaker 1: you don't need them. Why don't you need them? Why
Speaker 1: don't you want them?
Speaker 2: Well, it's partly about choices. So there's two choices. One is,
Speaker 2: if you pick a really expensive memory technology, you'll never
Speaker 2: get the price down right, and so you need to
Speaker 2: then make technology decisions to lower your costs. So we
Speaker 2: have a tensor process or architecture, we keep the data
Speaker 2: on chip. More, we have a software stack that's very
Speaker 2: good at partitioning AI workloads across multiple chips, and then
Speaker 2: they can send information and compute packets to each other
Speaker 2: without having to go through memory, and that lowers the
Speaker 2: memory VANDTH required and also lets it scale more naturally
Speaker 2: across many chips.
Speaker 1: So I'm a new investor. You brought me on board.
Speaker 1: I'm interested Bezos Samsung. But you're saying, look, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this with more open architecture, with cheaper offerings.
Speaker 1: How much of the market shed do you have to get?
Speaker 1: What sort of price point are we looking at for
Speaker 1: your chip offering?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is really wild. The market is so big,
Speaker 2: Like the percent we have to get is actually pretty
Speaker 2: small to be a real value proposition. You know, next
Speaker 2: year we'll die and go to heaven if we make
Speaker 2: two hundred million dollars. We have already booked one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty million in revenue. I'm really interested in finding
Speaker 2: small players, early players, people who want to own their technology.
Speaker 2: People are excited about our software and hardware architecture, and
Speaker 2: you know, I want to grow organically from there. I
Speaker 2: think some people will focus on the big guys first.
Speaker 2: That's not how new technology introductions go. You focus on
Speaker 2: smaller players, people who need a differentiation, and that's what
Speaker 2: we're really that's our mission.
Speaker 1: So what therefore is the mission building in in terms
Speaker 1: of long term value of generative AI of AI applications.
Speaker 1: Do you think that we are in some sort of
Speaker 1: hype cycle? Do you think that actually this market is
Speaker 1: as big as manufacturing in.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, we are definitely in a hype cycle.
Speaker 2: There's going to be multiple and people say, well, Jim,
Speaker 2: you don't understand it's going to go down next year,
Speaker 2: and then it's going to go up, and it's going
Speaker 2: to down low pass filter all that stuff. Right, what's
Speaker 2: really going to happen is AI is going to dominate
Speaker 2: computing over the next ten years, and we're just starting
Speaker 2: and the hardware is going to change a lot. The
Speaker 2: software is going to change a lot. Like one day
Speaker 2: you read in the papers lms can do anything, and
Speaker 2: the next day you read they've hit a limit. Ignore
Speaker 2: all that stuff. We're just starting this. There's going to
Speaker 2: be massive transformations. So what I really wanted tense Torrent
Speaker 2: to have is great computer designers, general purpose CPUs, AI processors,
Speaker 2: chip design, system design, software design. And then the open
Speaker 2: source stuff is really interesting because that engages a community.
Speaker 2: People are really passionate about that to contribute back.
Speaker 1: This is where you're thinking about your own talent team.
Speaker 1: You've managed talent, as we said, sort of across the board.
Speaker 1: You began like you were integral to the chip design
Speaker 1: process in the US, and you think back to DC
Speaker 1: and then the work that you then did an AMD,
Speaker 1: moving to Apple, you were at Intel, and I just
Speaker 1: have to go there on this day that Pat Gelsinger
Speaker 1: hands in his well, hands his hat on off, he's
Speaker 1: going to re resigning. Many would say it's because they
Speaker 1: didn't get into AI quickly enough. That was prior to him.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the transition.
Speaker 2: Well, it's hard to say. So. I like Pat personally.
Speaker 2: I've met him a number of times. He's a smart guy.
Speaker 2: He really cares. I think the market focuses too much
Speaker 2: on stuff like execution and AI transition. The way you
Speaker 2: make money, get customers to build great products, like Steve
Speaker 2: Jobs is the best at this, focus on the product,
Speaker 2: make the best product you possibly can. And I think
Speaker 2: they need somebody way more hands on, really focus on product,
Speaker 2: and they need to stop talking about AI execution all
Speaker 2: the nonsense. Right when they make the best product, the
Speaker 2: best fab, the best chip, the best GP accelerator. They'll
Speaker 2: do fine.
Speaker 1: Jim. When you're thinking about all of the errors, you
Speaker 1: want to own. How much does US and China factor
Speaker 1: into your growth story?
Speaker 2: So, first of all, we are building open source software,
Speaker 2: risk five based technology. We think that's an open platform.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people interested in that. At the
Speaker 2: same time, you know, there are you know, restrictions by
Speaker 2: the US government and trade rules. We have really good
Speaker 2: lawyers and trade compliance people. We work very closely with
Speaker 2: those those guys. We want to do the right thing
Speaker 2: both for the business and for you know, being compliant
Speaker 2: to what's going on. And it's a changing world and
Speaker 2: we're very involved in that. Short run, our business possibilities
Speaker 2: are really big, and you know, if China plays in that,
Speaker 2: that'll be interesting. If it doesn't for you know, various reasons,
Speaker 2: that's fine.
Speaker 1: Got a big evaluation come back when you're executing on
Speaker 1: the latest round. Thank you, Jim Keller of ted Stone.
Speaker 1: All right, great to have you.