The Generalist
The Generalist Podcast features weekly conversations with visionary founders, prescient investors, and original thinkers. Each episode introduces new ideas, technologies, and markets, helping listeners prepare for the future. Hosted by Mario Gabriele, the show explores pockets of the future that are not yet evenly distributed.
Episodes
Jaan Tallinn would like us to survive
Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa, and a co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and Future of Life Institute. For more than fifteen years, he has been among the most consistent voices arguing that advanced AI poses an extinction-level risk to humanity.Jaan became interested in AI risk in 2008 after reading the work of Eliezer Yudkowsky, a founding
Periodic Labs: A chatbot walks into a laboratory
Liam Fedus and Dogus Cubuk are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Periodic Labs, a startup building “synthesis superintelligence.” In practice, that means an AI system that closes the loop between hypothesis, experiment, and learning.Liam previously led post-training at OpenAI, where he was one of the creators of ChatGPT. Dogus spent years at Google DeepMind leading a large team of chemists and materi
An Ex-SpaceX Engineer on Elon Musk, Starship, and Building a $1B-Valued Startup (Scott Morton, Founder & CEO of Revel)
Scott Morton is the founder and CEO of Revel, a software platform for testing and controlling complex hardware systems. Before founding the company in 2024, Scott spent nearly a decade at SpaceX building control software for Falcon 9 and Starship. That experience helped him recognize a broader problem: while rockets, nuclear systems, supersonic aircraft, and other advanced machines have grown incr
38x in Ten Months: Inside One of Fintech’s Fastest-Growing Infrastructure Companies (Farooq Malik, CEO of Rain)
Farooq Malik is the co-founder and CEO of Rain, a financial infrastructure company powered by stablecoins. Growing up in an immigrant family, Farooq saw firsthand the friction involved in moving money across borders. Alongside co-founder Charles Yoo-Naut, Farooq spent years building infrastructure before stablecoins became mainstream, betting that tokenized money would eventually become a foundati
AI Got Good at Language. Now It’s Learning the Language of Life. (Eric Nguyen, Co-Founder and CEO of Radical Numerics)
Eric Nguyen is the co-founder and CEO of Radical Numerics, an AI research lab that has raised $50 million to train models directly on biological data. Before starting the company, Eric helped develop Evo and Evo 2, large-scale genome language models trained on unlabeled DNA sequences. Radical Numerics is now building models that can connect information across DNA, RNA, proteins, epigenetics, and o
The Token Budget Problem Nobody Is Talking About (Matan Grinberg, Co-Founder & CEO of Factory)
Matan Grinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Factory, an AI company valued at $1.5 billion that helps enterprises like Nvidia, Morgan Stanley, and Adobe automate software development through “Droids,” intelligent agents designed to streamline software engineering. Before Factory, Matan spent more than a decade in theoretical physics, studying string theory at Princeton and UC Berkeley. His work now
Own or Be Owned: Why Every Company Needs Its Own AI Model (Yash Patil, Co-Founder & CEO of Applied Compute)
Yash Patil is the 23-year-old founder and CEO of Applied Compute, a $1.3 billion company helping businesses train custom AI models on their own data: smaller, cheaper, and purpose-built for the work they actually do. Before founding the company, Yash dropped out of Stanford and spent two years at OpenAI working on post-training infrastructure and Codex. He left with one core conviction: every comp
What America Is Missing Between Sanctions and Nuclear War (Bryon Hargis, Co-Founder & CEO of Castelion)
Bryon Hargis is the co-founder and CEO of Castelion, a defense startup building low-cost hypersonic missiles designed to be manufactured at scale. Before founding Castelion, Bryon spent more than a decade at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and nearly six years at SpaceX, where he worked on national security space programs and saw firsthand how iterative engineering and manufacturing speed
“Our Goal Is to Build an Electrical Engineer.” (Davide Asnaghi, Co-Founder & CEO of Diode)
Davide Asnaghi is the co-founder and CEO of Diode, a Brooklyn-based startup using AI to design and manufacture circuit boards in the United States.Before Diode, Davide worked on Apple’s Special Projects Group and spent time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen studying Asia’s electronics manufacturing ecosystem. That experience convinced him that PCB design, despite powering everything from smartphones and s
Investing Like A Mystic: How Cyan Banister Finds Outliers (Co-Founder of Long Journey Ventures)
Cyan Banister has built one of the most distinctive early-stage track records of the last fifteen years, with early bets on companies like Uber, SpaceX, DeepMind, Niantic, and Postmates. Today, she is co-founder and general partner at Long Journey Ventures, where she backs what she calls “magical weirdos.” Banister describes herself as a professional daydreamer, running constant thought experiment
The Future Of Drug Discovery Is 4 Billion Years Old (Viswa Colluru, Founder & CEO at Enveda)
For decades, drug discovery has shifted away from nature and toward biology-first approaches. Viswa Colluru believes that shift was a catastrophic mistake. His company, Enveda Biosciences, has raised over $500 million to build a “search engine for nature’s chemistry.” The mission is personal: he grew up around his father’s pharmacy in India and later lost his mother to a treatable cancer whose med
How a 20-Person Startup Won Gold at the Math Olympiad—Tying With OpenAI & DeepMind (Tudor Achim, CEO of Harmonic)
Tudor Achim is the co-founder and CEO of Harmonic, a startup working to solve one of AI’s hardest problems: mathematical reasoning. In July 2024, Harmonic achieved gold-medal-level performance on International Math Olympiad problems alongside systems from OpenAI and Google DeepMind—but with a key difference: every proof Harmonic submitted was formally verified. Tudor's path to Harmonic wound t
30% Of Network Engineers Are Retiring. What Happens Next? (Anil Varanasi, Co-Founder & CEO of Meter)
Anil Varanasi, co-founder and CEO of Meter, is building a new kind of networking company for the AI era. Alongside his brother Sunil, he has helped raise more than $250 million to challenge incumbents like Cisco with a vertically integrated approach spanning hardware, software, deployment, and ongoing operations, all delivered through a utility-style model. His view is that networking has remained
Why One Superintelligence Is More Dangerous Than a Thousand (Vincent Weisser, CEO & Co-Founder of Prime Intellect)
Much of the fear around AI centers on misalignment – the idea that powerful systems might act against human interests. Vincent Weisser worries about something different: what happens if advanced AI systems are perfectly aligned with the interests of a small group of institutions? That concern led him to co-found Prime Intellect, a startup building open infrastructure for training and deploying adv
Why Robots Still Struggle With Simple Tasks (And What Might Finally Change That) | Karol Hausman, Co-Founder & CEO of Physical Intelligence
Karol Hausman is the co-founder and CEO of Physical Intelligence, a robotics company building a general-purpose “AI brain for the physical world.” The company has raised more than $1 billion in funding to develop foundation models that allow robots to operate across many machines, environments, and tasks rather than being programmed for a single purpose. The core thesis: the same scaling dynamics
America’s Electric Power Grid Is Broken. This Startup Is Trying to Fix It. (Zach Dell, co-founder & CEO of Base)
For decades, America’s electrical system has rewarded utilities for building more infrastructure, not for lowering costs. The result is a grid that expanded but rarely improved. Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO of Base, is building a different kind of power company. In under three years, Base has grown into a vertically integrated business valued in the billions. It combines home batteries and softwa
Everyone Is Betting on Bigger LLMs. She's Betting They're Fundamentally Wrong. (Eve Bodnia, Founder & CEO of Logical Intelligence)
Eve Bodnia is the co-founder and CEO of Logical Intelligence, which is developing energy-based reasoning models (EBMs) as an alternative to large language models. She argues that LLMs, which operate by recognizing and recombining patterns within language space, are structurally incapable of genuine reasoning. Eve's alternative: Kona — an EBM that reasons in abstract latent space, learns rules abou
How Bolt Survived An 85% Revenue Crash And Became Europe's Ride-Hailing Champion (Markus Villig, Founder & CEO)
In 2013, on an Estonian island of just 10,000 residents, a teenager borrowed €5,000 from his parents and decided to take on Uber. Twelve years later, Markus Villig leads Bolt, a company operating in 50+ countries, generating nearly €3 billion in revenue, and standing as one of the only European tech companies competing at true global scale. Rather than going head-to-head with incumbents in their s
The Private Company Bringing Nuclear Enrichment Back to America (Scott Nolan, CEO of General Matter)
Roughly 20% of the U.S. power grid runs on nuclear energy. A quarter of the fuel behind it is headed toward a hard stop. In this episode, I sit down with Scott Nolan, founder and CEO of General Matter, to unpack why uranium enrichment has quietly become one of the most consequential industrial bottlenecks of the 21st century. While at Founders Fund, Scott spent over a year searching for an America
Programming Sunlight: How Reflect Orbital Is Building Satellites to Redirect Light From Space (Ben Nowack, Founder & CEO)
Most energy conversations start with scarcity. This one starts with abundance. Sunlight powers nearly everything on Earth, directly or indirectly. And yet we have almost no control over when or where we get it. Ben Nowack thinks that’s a solvable problem. Ben is the founder and CEO of Reflect Orbital, a company building satellites designed to redirect sunlight from space—not as a thought experimen
Nothing’s Carl Pei on Building a $1B Smartphone Company, Why He Left OnePlus After 10 Days of Retirement, and Why He Thinks About Death Every Week
Carl Pei is the founder of Nothing, the consumer electronics company known for its distinctive transparent design language across smartphones and audio products. Before launching Nothing in 2020, Carl co-founded OnePlus, where he spent seven years helping build it into a major smartphone brand. But Carl’s instincts as a builder showed up much earlier. As a teenager, he taught himself to code by bu
Why Being a Generalist VC Is a Competitive Advantage (Aydin Senkut, Founder & Managing Partner at Felicis Ventures)
Two decades ago, Aydin Senkut was a first-time fund manager with a thin track record to show prospective backers. LPs didn’t believe a solo GP, especially one without experience at a legacy firm, could build a lasting franchise. They were wrong. Today, Felicis is a Silicon Valley mainstay on its 10th fund, a $900M vehicle. Across its history, Felicis has backed a slew of winners, including Shopify
Joey Krug on Prediction Markets, Crypto Treasuries & the Next Era of On-Chain Finance (Partner at Founders Fund)
Prediction markets are no longer a fringe curiosity. They are becoming one of the most revealing instruments in modern finance. Platforms like Polymarket, once a niche corner of crypto, now regularly clear billions in monthly volume as traders speculate on everything from political outcomes to sports to cultural events. Few people saw this future as early, or as clearly, as Joey Krug.A decade befo
How a Solo Founder is Reshaping Global Finance (Parth Garg, CEO of Aspora)
In the summer of 2022, Parth Garg woke up in Bangalore to discover that his co-founder had fled the country and emailed their investors to tell them their company was dead. Just over three years later, Aspora is one of fintech’s fastest-growing startups. The company, which makes it faster and cheaper for India’s diaspora to send money home and access banking services, now processes close to half a
How Do You Build a New Singapore? Inside Próspera’s Bet on Private Governance (Erick Brimen, Founder & CEO)
What if you could redesign the rules of society? Not tweak the margins, but start over entirely. That’s the question driving Erick Brimen, founder and CEO of Próspera, a private charter city in Roatán, Honduras. Próspera is a radical experiment in governance: a platform that lets governments and entrepreneurs build cities with new legal systems, regulatory frameworks, and institutions from the gro
Why Psychedelics Might Be the Breakthrough That PTSD Patients Need (Kevin Ryan, The Godfather of NYC Tech)
Often called the godfather of NYC tech, Kevin Ryan is one of America’s most influential entrepreneurs and investors. He co-founded MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and Transcend Therapeutics, and continues to build and back new companies each year through AlleyCorp. Earlier in his career, he led DoubleClick from a 20-person startup to a global leader, taking it public before its acqui
The Trillion-Dollar AI Hardware Opportunity (Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield)
Navin Chaddha has spent three decades at the forefront of innovation—first as a founder, and now as managing partner at Mayfield, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest venture firms. A 17-time member of Forbes’ Midas List, Navin has guided generations of entrepreneurs through waves of technological change, from the dot-com boom to the AI era. At Mayfield, he champions a philosophy rooted in the firm’s fo
Biological Time Travel: How Cryopreservation Could Transform Medicine (Laura Deming, CEO & co-founder of Until)
From a child prodigy in a genetics lab to building a company that can pause life itself, Laura Deming has made a career out of chasing time. At just eight years old she became obsessed with aging. At eleven, she joined Cynthia Kenyon’s pioneering longevity lab. At seventeen, she launched The Longevity Fund—one of the first venture firms dedicated to extending human healthspan. Now, she’s tackling
"This feels like 1996": Why a16z's Martin Casado believes the AI boom still has years to run (General Partner)
Martin Casado has lived through multiple tech waves—first as a founder, now as a16z’s leading voice on AI and infrastructure. He helped pioneer software-defined networking, then moved from academia to entrepreneurship, and today backs founders building at the frontier of technology as a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In this conversation, Martin shares his unique perspective on the AI boo
How to be Agentic in the Age of AI (Cate Hall, CEO of Astera)
Cate Hall is the CEO of Astera, a private foundation focused on AI risk and frontier technology. Before leading Astera, Cate’s unconventional career path took her from practicing law (including work on Supreme Court briefs) to becoming the world’s top-ranked female poker player in 2016. After overcoming personal struggles with addiction, she co-founded Alvea, a biotech company developing shelf-sta
Can Humans Stay Smart in the Age of AI? (David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute)
David Krakauer is a leading complex systems researcher and the president of the Santa Fe Institute, a unique institution dedicated to studying complex systems across disciplines. In this episode, David challenges conventional wisdom about AI, arguing that large language models pose a more immediate threat to humanity than commonly discussed existential risks—not by destroying us directly, but by e
Building Beautiful Homes with Robots: The Future of Construction (Salar al Khafaji, CEO & Founder of Monumental)
Salar al Khafaji is the CEO and founder of Monumental, a company building autonomous robots that assemble buildings, starting with its bricklaying system. After selling his previous software company to Palantir, Salar took time to explore big industries ripe for disruption before landing on construction—a sector that represents a significant portion of GDP yet has seen decades of productivity stag
What Makes Something Alive? Assembly Theory and the Origins of Life (Sara Walker, Theoretical Physicist)
Sara Walker is a theoretical physicist who studies the origins of life and the author of Life as No One Knows It. As AI prompts us to rethink what consciousness, intelligence, and life really mean, Sara’s work offers a provocative framework for understanding these questions. In this conversation, Sara shares how she developed assembly theory—a revolutionary approach suggesting that complex objects
Reviving Forgotten Technologies: How Airships, Supersonic Flight, and Geothermal Energy Could Transform Our World (Eli Dourado, Head of Strategic Investments at Astera Institute)
Eli Dourado is Head of Strategic Investments at Astera Institute, a foundation funding transformative science and technology across energy, aerospace, AI, and other frontier sectors. Before joining Astera, he worked as a "regulatory hacker" at Boom Supersonic, where he helped navigate complex aviation regulations to make supersonic flight viable again.In our conversation, we explore:• How Eli's re
Inside General Catalyst’s $1B+ Bet on Fixing Healthcare (Hemant Taneja, CEO & Managing Partner)
Hemant Taneja is the CEO and Managing Partner of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm that has evolved into what he describes as a "strategic conglomerate with venture capital at its core." Under his leadership, GC has expanded beyond traditional investing to become an organization focused on transforming entire industries from healthcare to call centers to insurance.In this conversation, Hema
The Future of Crypto: Stablecoins, AI Integration, and the Path to Mass Adoption (Jesse Walden, Founder & Managing Partner at Variant)
Jesse Walden is the founder and managing partner of Variant Fund, an early-stage crypto fund backing projects like Uniswap, Phantom, World, Morpho, Flashbots, Farcaster, Blockaid, Blackbird, and many more. Before launching Variant in 2020, he was an investor at a16z crypto, where he supported early-stage builders shaping the future of Web3.In this episode, Jesse offers a wide-ranging view of where
AI Agents Are Here: What They Can Already Do—and What’s Next (Stanislas Polu & Harrison Chase)
What’s next for AI agents, and how will they change the way we work? In this conversation, Stanislas Polu (CEO of Dust, formerly research at OpenAI) and Harrison Chase (CEO of LangChain, one of the most influential open-source AI frameworks) unpack the current state and future of AI agents. They reflect on their early conversations in the pre-ChatGPT days, how the landscape has evolved, and where
The Decade of Data (Tomasz Tunguz)
Tomasz Tunguz has spent almost two decades turning data into investment insights. After an impressive run at Redpoint Ventures, where he backed Looker, Expensify, Monte Carlo, and more, Tomasz launched Theory Ventures in 2022. His debut fund, which closed at $238 million, was followed 19 months later by a $450 million second fund.Theory’s goal is simple but striking: to build an “investing corpor
Why the Real Computer Revolution Never Happened (Alan Kay & Anjan Katta)
I'm thrilled to share this very special episode of The Generalist—one I've been looking forward to for a long time. Today, we tackle one of the most urgent questions of our time: What should computing look like in the age of AI?I'm joined by two extraordinary guests: Alan Kay, a pioneer of modern computing whose vision helped shape the personal computer revolution, and Anjan Katta, founder of Dayl
No Rivals
Today’s podcast is a little different. Instead of a new interview, you’ll hear Part I of “No Rivals,” The Generalist’s definitive four-part deep dive into Founders Fund — Silicon Valley’s most controversial (and consistently top-performing) venture firm.—What’s inside Part I• How Peter Thiel and team set out to rewrite VC’s playbook• The contrarian philosophy behind their earliest bets• The people
Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity: Lessons from AI, Pandemics, and Nuclear Threats (Toby Ord, Author of "The Precipice")
How close are we to the end of humanity? Toby Ord, Senior Researcher at Oxford University’s AI Governance Initiative and author of The Precipice, argues that the odds of a civilization-ending catastrophe this century are roughly one in six. In this wide-ranging conversation, we unpack the risks that could end humanity’s story and explore why protecting future generations may be our greatest moral
Are We Alone In The Universe? Sara Seager on Exoplanets, Venus, and the Hunt for Alien Life (Astrophysicist and Planetary Scientist at MIT)
Why search for life beyond Earth? For MIT astrophysicist and MacArthur Genius Fellow Sara Seager, it’s not just a scientific question—it’s a deeply human one. Like creating art or studying philosophy, the search taps into our primal curiosity about who we are and whether we’re alone. Sara is a pioneer in the field of exoplanets: planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. Her early work was met w
Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading (Nadia Asparouhova, Writer & Researcher)
Some ideas spread like wildfire. Others vanish before they take root—too strange, too threatening, too forgettable. In this episode of The Generalist, I sit down with Nadia Asparouhova, author of Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading, to explore the category of “antimemes”: ideas that actively resist being remembered or shared. Drawing from science fiction, epidemiology, and her own unusua
Creating Stars in a Bottle: The Race to Commercialize Fusion Energy (Vinod Khosla & Bob Mumgaard)
While the world fights over chips, one company is building the power supply to run them all. In this episode of The Generalist, I'm joined by Bob Mumgaard, CEO and co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), and Vinod Khosla, legendary venture capitalist and founder of Khosla Ventures. With over 800 employees and $2 billion in funding, CFS has accelerated the timeline for commercial fusion fr
The Semiconductor Century with Chris Miller (Author of “Chip War”)
What really determines success in the age of AI? Is it better models or broader reach? Chris Miller, author of the bestselling book Chip War, explains how semiconductors have become the strategic center of gravity for global power, economics, and innovation. As a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, Chris has spent nearly a decade studying how chips are reshaping geopolitics and w
How Anduril Is Reimagining the Defense Industry: Faster Tech, Ethical AI, and a New Kind of Deterrence (Trae Stephens, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Anduril)
What happens when you apply Silicon Valley’s speed and innovation to reinvent defense technology? Trae Stephens, co-founder of Anduril, is running that experiment in real-time. His company creates software-driven, hardware-enabled autonomous systems designed to transform national security capabilities amid growing global tensions. In today's episode, Trae and I dive deep into the ethics of war
Inside Substack’s $650M Playbook for the Future of Media (Chris Best & Hamish McKenzie, Co-Founders)
In a world where attention is fragmented and algorithms rule the content landscape, Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie are taking a radically different approach with Substack. Rather than chasing clicks, Substack focuses on a simple yet powerful idea: creators should own their work and make money directly from their audience through paid subscriptions. With over 5 million paid subscriptions and tens o
Lessons from 20 Years of Venture Capital (Roelof Botha, Managing Partner & Steward at Sequoia Capital)
Sequoia Capital is synonymous with outstanding performance, backing companies like Apple, Google, Airbnb, and Stripe. In today’s episode, I chat with Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s Managing Partner, about what it takes to see the future first, capitalize on it intelligently once it arrives, and help founders build enduring companies. Roelof is especially well-placed to discuss such matters. Not only has
When Science Fiction Becomes Reality (Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder of Lux Capital)
Josh Wolfe is a co-founder of Lux Capital, where he funds the kinds of ventures that change everything: think gene-edited pig organs and technology that lets you “record” smells. His approach? Relentless curiosity. He reads dozens of newspapers daily to identify patterns, always staying a few steps ahead. In this episode of The Generalist, Josh shares how his firm backs companies that don’t just p
How AI Will Enhance Human Potential, Not Replace It (Reid Hoffman)
Science fiction has long warned of AI's dark side. Think: Robots turning against us, surveillance, and lost agency. But in this episode of The Generalist, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and AI pioneer, shares a more hopeful future. His book Superagency argues for AI optimism, grounded in real-world experience. We talk about how AI can fuel creativity and how to ensure technology works for us
Introducing The Generalist Podcast
Welcome to The Generalist – a podcast about the future brought to you by Mario Gabriele. This isn’t your typical innovation podcast. Each week, we go beyond the headlines and into the minds of the founders, investors, and thinkers who are building tomorrow’s world. From AI to space exploration, nuclear fusion to new media, stablecoins to semiconductors, these are the people living in the future to
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