Jul 25, 2026

Why Large? Tiny LMs & Agents on Edge/Robotics — Cormac Brick, Google

Cormac Brick from Google AI Edge discusses how the increasing constraint of DRAM cost on edge devices necessitates the development and deployment of increasingly smaller AI models. He outlines the work of his team in optimizing models like Gemma, achieving 2.9 bits per weight for a 2 billion parameter model capable of running on a Raspberry Pi at 7.6 tokens/second, or on an NPU at 31 tokens/second decode for vision tasks. The talk delves into 'tiny models' (50M-500M parameters) that extend AI to older devices and enable features like robust voice-to-function calling via fine-tuning with synthetic data, exemplified by an offline voice dictation app.

Jul 25, 2026

What Big Tech Missed And How Startups Can Still Win

Alexandre LeBrun, CEO of AMI Labs, discusses his career building and selling AI companies, emphasizing his strategy of tackling problems "20 years too early." He delves into AMI Labs' contrarian bet on "world models" over traditional LLMs, highlighting their ability to learn directly from real-world sensory data, unlike LLMs which learn from human-written text. LeBrun explains how this approach is critical for developing intelligent robots and avoiding the pitfalls of Vision-Language Assistants (VLAs). He also touches upon the challenges of securing talent, data, and compute for such an ambitious project, the strategic choice of location, and the importance of holding an extremely large vision while solving a narrow problem for early founders.

Jul 25, 2026

Why Physical AI Is the Next Platform Shift

Encord Co-CEO Eric Landau reflects on his transition from a lucrative quant career to founding an AI startup, driven by a deep belief in AI's paradigm-shifting potential. He discusses Encord's slow, compounding path to product-market fit, the pivotal role of Physical AI, and the importance of embracing the emotional rollercoaster of startup life.

Jul 23, 2026

Building an Autonomous Delivery Experience with DoorDash Co-Founders Andy Fang and Stanley Tang

DoorDash co-founders Andy Fang and Stanley Tang discuss how AI and autonomous technology are transforming consumer behavior and delivery logistics. They detail the impact of "Ask DoorDash" on restaurant discovery and grocery orders, and the operational challenges and strategic advantages behind their autonomous delivery robot, Dot. The conversation highlights DoorDash's 'use case first' approach to autonomy, the critical role of data in scaling physical AI, and their surprising prediction that more Dashers, not fewer, will be part of DoorDash's future multimodal delivery strategy.

Jul 21, 2026

Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show

Applied Intuition discusses the emergence of physical AI, its mission to put intelligence on a billion machines, and its latest platform, Dana, designed to democratize autonomous system development. The conversation covers the vast scope of physical AI beyond automotive, the unique challenges of real-world deployment (safety, data, hardware), the current state and future of self-driving cars and trucks, and the transformative potential of humanoids and world models. They also touch upon the geopolitical landscape of AI and the global ambitions of Applied Intuition.

Jul 17, 2026

AI Can't Learn The Way Humans Do - This Could Fix That

This discussion explores world models as a promising path to solving sample efficiency in AI and achieving AGI. It contrasts deterministic control (Newtonian physics) with stochastic environments (RL), explaining the challenges posed by large action spaces in Go, self-driving, and robotics. The episode delves into how synthetic data, video diffusion models, and latent space architectures like JEPA are making world models practical, while also highlighting remaining open problems in physics modeling, real-time adaptation, and rich sensory integration.