Naveen Rao
Naveen Rao is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and the co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI, a company developing new computing architectures designed to improve energy efficiency for artificial intelligence. He previously co-founded Nervana Systems, an AI accelerator company acquired by Intel in 2016, and MosaicML, a machine learning training platform acquired by Databricks in 2023, where he subsequently served as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence. He holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Brown University and has been recognized for his work bridging neuroscience and computing across multiple successful AI ventures.
“Volantis, which develops optical interconnects that use laser light to link AI processors with memory chips, raised an $88M round co-led by Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, with John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic, Susa Ventures, Dwarkesh Patel, Naveen Rao, and Sholto Douglas also investing.”
Source→“Volantis, a SF-based inference semiconductor company, raised $88m in Series A funding. Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures led, joined by John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic, Susa Ventures, Dwarkesh Patel, Naveen Rao, and Sholto Douglas.”
“Nervana, acq. by Intel for $400M+”
“nanojoules per image, building AI hardware thousands of times more energy efficient and why he believes software could become a de minimis part of the value stack.”
“We decided to actually join forces with Databricks. That was in 2023. And actually, that's a quarter of the total revenue of Databricks today”
Source→“You heard from Jensen up here, like the largest company in the world, a hardware company because of AI”
Source→“When I came there, we had about a $20 million business and it was, you know, $700 or $800 million when I left”
Source→“we're going to run out of energy pretty fast in like three years or so is my estimate”
Source→“About 50% of the cost of serving a token... every time you try something on ChatGPT, 50% of that cost is energy”
Source→“What we built is what's called a dynamical computer, which actually has compute and memory in one thing... we call this 4D computing”
Source→“This is actually the first physical dynamical computer ever built. We did this in five months... we taped out the design, meaning we sent it to the fab on June 1st”
Source→“I actually founded the first AI chip company called Nirvana Systems... I think I sold the company way too early to Intel”
Source→“I actually founded the first AI chip company called Nirvana Systems. So, this was in 2014... there was no AI, or at least not in the common vernacular”
Source→“The Naveen Rao company who was formerly with Databricks that we've known for a very long time.”
Source→AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.