Podcasts about Akshat

EP 387 - We're going back to the future this week with the excellent Akshat Rathi and his optimistic take on climate change.Akshat is a Bloomberg Senior Climate journalist, and the author of Climate Capitalism: Winning The Global Race To Zero Emissions.We spoke to him about his book, and:Why climate solutions investment needs to be made in the developing world and emerging markets to help them move away from coalWhy he felt it was so important to tell positive stories to help accelerate the fight against climate changeAndWhy he abandoned the idea of being a scientist (after getting a PhD) to become a storyteller in order to make a bigger positive impact on the worldAs you'd expect from someone who writes for Bloomberg, he's very balanced and very astute.He's happy to concede that climate change isn't the only crisis facing humanity, but if we don't fix it, it'll make the others a whole lot worse. You can't help feeling more positive after spending time in his company, so give it a go. *For Apple Podcast chapters, access them from the menu in the bottom right corner of your player*Spotify Video Chapters:00:00 BWB with Akshat Rathi00:49 Andy's Intro to Akshat01:53 The Importance of Climate Solutions02:23 Challenges in Climate Journalism07:23 Success Stories in Climate Action11:16 The Role of Governments and Big Businesses12:43 Akshat's Journey and Passion for Climate Journalism18:36 Global Investment in Climate Solutions28:19 Practical Steps for SMEs29:43 Economic Realities in India30:01 Air Conditioning Around the World30:41 Career Reflections and Journalism34:06 Work Culture and Balance38:40 Social Media and Its Impact42:32 Greenwashing and Corporate Responsibility45:10 Quickfire - Get To Know Akshatbusinesswithoutbullshit.meWatch and subscribe to us on YouTubeFollow us:InstagramTikTokLinkedinTwitterFacebookIf you'd like to be on the show, get in contact - mail@businesswithoutbullshit.meBWB is powered by Oury Clark

CAMB.AI is one of the most exciting companies operating at the intersection of AI, media, and sports, known for its cutting-edge voice and translation tech that brings content to life in over 140 languages. But what does it take to scale a global language-tech company, and how is this innovation reshaping the future of fan engagement?In this episode, we sat down with Avneesh Prakash, Co-Founder and CEO, and Akshat Prakash, Co-Founder and CTO of CAMB.AI, to explore their entrepreneurial journeys and vision for the future of AI in content localisation. From engineering roots and startup grit to joining the 2025 Comcast SportsTech cohort, Avneesh and Akshat share a behind-the-scenes look at what powers CAMB.AI's rapid rise.Tune in to learn more about:How CAMB.AI's AI-powered dubbing is different from traditional translation toolsWhy sports became a strategic sector for their businessThe company's plans for global expansion and new marketsWhat it means to build responsible and inclusive AILessons from launching and scaling a language-tech startupWe hope you enjoy this episode!If you had a good time listening, please support us by:Subscribing – it just takes a click!Giving us a 5-star rating on your listening platform to help us spread the wordFinally, if you want to learn more about what we do at LaSource, check out our website and LinkedIn page.LeCorner is a podcast dedicated to sports and digital. Every two weeks, we host a prominent guest in the sports industry to discuss digital innovation and strategic development.Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

In this episode of WP Builds, I talk with Akshat Choudhary, founder of Block Vault, about his new product, Airlift. Airlift is a WordPress optimisation tool that promises to speed up websites with the click of a button by automatically implementing performance enhancements like caching, CDN, and image optimisation. Akshat discusses the challenges and importance of making websites faster for user engagement and conversions. Although building Airlift took longer than anticipated, with three-and-a-half years of development, the goal is to make fast websites accessible to everyone, emphasising the impact on user experience and engagement. Go listen.

In today's episode, we take a dive through the founders journey and what it's like to run a massive crypto fund.Clearly, crypto cycles follow a pattern.Skepticism transforms into celebration, then a cooldown period, until something innovative emerges to change the landscape. Each of these cycle presents distinct opportunities.That is what we discuss in today's episode with Akshat Vaidya from Maelstorm. We cover navigating from early Bitcoin through the DeFi expansion into staking infrastructure and how one's approach tends to evolve with each market phase. Akshat has spent years in onchain investing—identifying overlooked value, recognizing cycle timing, and determining which innovations demonstrate staying power.We look at potential future directions for crypto. Liquid staking, onchain real-world assets, the increasing convergence between traditional venture capital and crypto markets.We touch on crypto M&A, selling businesses and psychedelics as well.Let's explore.The RollupJoin The Rollup Edge: https://members.therollup.coWebsite: https://therollup.co/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1P6ZeYd..Podcast: https://therollup.co/category/podcastFollow us on X: https://www.x.com/therollupcoFollow Rob on X: https://www.x.com/robbie_rollupFollow Andy on X: https://www.x.com/ayyyeandyJoin our TG group: https://t.me/+8ARkR_YZixE5YjBhThe Rollup Disclosures: https://therollup.co/the-rollup-discl

In this client success story, we sit down with Sanskriti and Akshat, a couple who transformed their approach to wealth building by investing in property through Lifestyle Property People.Hear how our end-to-end service helped them transition into an investor mindset, shifting from chasing money to creating it. Their investment journey is now focused on building a sustainable income stream for retirement and leaving a legacy for future generations.They share their experience of working with our approachable and knowledgeable team, who guided them through every step of the process, from sourcing the perfect property to navigating the legal complexities and managing the refurbishment.If you want to learn how to create financial freedom through property and understand how we can help, this podcast is for you! Enjoy the show?Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review as it will help us reach more people.  Got a question you want Shiv to answer?Email it along with your name to info@lifestylepp.co.uk Connect With UsWe specialise in helping people create profitable and hands-free property portfolios. We make the process of investing in property simple with our fully managed, end-to-end investing service where we help you source, purchase, refurbish, rent and manage buy-to-let properties in the North of England.If you want to invest in property but don't have the time or knowledge to do it yourself, our team can help. Visit our website www.lifestylepropertypeople.co.uk to find out more.Follow us on social media for more investing tips ⬇️Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/lifestylepropertypeople/Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/lifestylepropertypeopleuk/

Angad and Akshat join the pod for the second time to talk evolution of Dippy.ai and how they are using multiple subnets and integration within Bittensor's network to further the reach and capabilities of their viral roleplaying app. With a successful subnet (S11) and second subnet (S58) launched to add voice to their offering, this team is becoming a major force both in and outside of Bittensor. https://x.com/dippy_ai https://www.dippy.ai/ https://taostats.io/validators/bittensor-guru-podcast/ https://bittensor.guru    

In episode 132, Premal is joined by former podcast host and current friend Akshat Singhal. Their main topic of discussion is the 12-team College Football Playoff field. Did the committee get it right? What should they change according to Premal and Akshat? Akshat has a bone to pick with the Bengals. And you don't want to miss the duo of Buckeye fans issuing a ‘You Played Yourself' to Ryan Day after Ohio State's abysmal performance against their rival. Plus, they are picking the winners of the opening round CFP games.  And don't miss weighing in on the non-sports ‘You Played Yourself' and ‘Am I Hatin'?' Submit yours to be featured on our next episode, #1 podcast listeners! PREM BRULEE | prembruleepodcast@gmail.com | Twitter: @prem_brulee | Instagram: @premalthegreat Akshat Singhal | Twitter: @ASinghal31 | Instagram: @asinghal31

A few months ago I was lucky to get a chance to sit down with Akshat in Dubai Akshat is one of the people behind Arrayah Hacker House Hear more about his journey, and the vision behind starting Arrayah Hacker House Connect with Akshat here: X: https://x.com/lifeoftheshat LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshat418 Connect with the host Roohi here: X:https://x.com/roohi_kr LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/roohi-kazi-53174113b/

Akshat Rathi is a London-based senior reporter for Bloomberg News and author of the new book Climate Capitalism, which is the subject of his 2024 TED Talk. He also hosts Bloomberg Green's weekly Zero podcast and writes a weekly Zero newsletter, focused on climate change. Previously, Akshat was a senior reporter at Quartz and a science editor at The Conversation. His work has been cited widely, including in New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and The Guardian. Skip ahead to the following section(s): (0:00) Introduction & National Updates (10:40) Interview w/ Akshat Rathi (24:16) Q&A Discussion (40:05) October Actions October Action Sheet: https://cclusa.org/action-sheet  Take Action Make A Voting Plan: https://cclusa.org/vote  Pre-Call Video: https://vimeo.com/1018718136  More About Akshat: https://akshatrathi.com/ 

We can blame capitalism for worsening the climate crisis, says journalist Akshat Rathi, but we can also use it to create the solutions we need for the mess we're in. He details how “climate capitalism” — the strategic use of market forces and government policies to make polluting the planet cost more than advancing climate solutions — can flip the script and actually make sustainability profitable.

We can blame capitalism for worsening the climate crisis, says journalist Akshat Rathi, but we can also use it to create the solutions we need for the mess we're in. He details how “climate capitalism” — the strategic use of market forces and government policies to make polluting the planet cost more than advancing climate solutions — can flip the script and actually make sustainability profitable.

We can blame capitalism for worsening the climate crisis, says journalist Akshat Rathi, but we can also use it to create the solutions we need for the mess we're in. He details how “climate capitalism” — the strategic use of market forces and government policies to make polluting the planet cost more than advancing climate solutions — can flip the script and actually make sustainability profitable.

Today's episode is with Akshat and Varvara the founders of 100 Hands Handmade Shirts based in Amsterdam. Akshat has a hertiage background from family who are in textiles in India both come from a background of investment bankers who have turned their hands to a trade with the most talented artisans craftsman based in India who have these exceptional tailors in the art of bespoke. Join Akshat & Varvara and myself on a conversation in how 100 Hands have become one the most prestigious center of mens bespoke shirts in this trade who have made their name throughout within the menswear industry. After talking with them both you totally understand how 100 Hands shirt is not just a shirt. You can find 100 Hands here www.100hands.nl Today episode was hosted, presented and researched by Sarmilla, music by Charles J.

A bit of a different vibe from our typical technical content as we dive into the perspective of one of the most well known crypto funds, built by Arthur Hayes, ex-CEO of BitMEX. If you've been in the space for a while, you know that market swings are extremely frequent and can be quite volatile. The key to thriving in this environment isn't about trying to predict the next big move but about understanding how to manage risk, maintain discipline, and stay informed...which is easier said than done. None of this content is to be perceived as financial advice, but we did talk more about markets than we usually do. In our conversation, we explore the transition from BitMEX's meteoric rise to its current focus, as competition from new market entrants like Binance and FTX reshaped the landscape. Akshat reminisces about the unique, egalitarian culture at BitMEX, where humility and inclusivity were the foundations of success. We'll also talk about philosophy and strategy of Maelstorm. Akshat explains how they're building a 100-year portfolio, targeting early-stage crypto projects that align with their pillars of entropy, trustless decentralization, and new models for internet monetization. The time horizon on these investments was really interesting and shifted our perspective away from typical 3-5 year cyclical journey. Enjoy this deep dive into the thought process of a successful fund manager in the volatile crypto space. Website: https://therollup.co/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1P6ZeYd.. Podcast: https://therollup.co/category/podcast Follow us on X: https://www.x.com/therollupco Follow Rob on X: https://www.x.com/robbie_rollup Follow Andy on X: https://www.x.com/ayyyeandy Join our TG group: https://t.me/+8ARkR_YZixE5YjBh The Rollup Disclosures: https://therollup.co/the-rollup-discl

In this monolog, Akshat ponders about the spatiotemporal underpinnings of cytokine concentrations in tissue niches...and how it all appears to function like a gossip network.

In this episode, Akshat outlines the salient features of CAR or TCR-engineered T cells, and deigns to ponder: is one modality just objectively better than the other?

In this episode, we talk to Akshat Rathi, award-winning senior climate reporter for Bloomberg News. Rathi is the host of Bloomberg's podcast Zero that explores the policies, tactics and clean technologies pushing for a zero emissions future. He is also the author of the book Climate Capitalism, which tracks the unlikely heroes driving the fight against climate change.Rathi argues that for years the aviation industry has sheltered behind the label of being “hard to decarbonise”, which is not only a misconception, but has also stalled the industry's progress towards net zero emissions. He advocates for correctly pricing flights to account for their true environmental cost, a move that could bring an end to “ridiculously” cheap flight tickets.Rathi also discusses the potential of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) in decarbonising aviation and the need to overcome cost barriers through policy support and corporate commitment. Further, he delves into the role of electric aviation in transforming short-haul travel and regional aviation.In Rathi's view, the aviation industry stands at a crossroads, and the choices made now will determine not just the future of flying, but our ability to meet global climate targets. As he puts it, “We have to start to think about those technologies, because we do need decarbonised solutions.”If you LOVED this episode you'll also love the conversation we had with Dan Rutherford, Senior Director of Research at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), who shares the latest developments, partnerships, and challenges in reducing aviation emissions and achieving net zero by 2050. Check it out here.Learn more about the innovators who are navigating the industry's challenges to make sustainable aviation a reality, in our new book ‘Sustainability in the Air'. Click here to learn more.Feel free to reach out via email to podcast@simpliflying.com. For more content on sustainable aviation, visit our website green.simpliflying.com and join the movement. It's about time.Links & More:Zero - BloombergThe Airline Industry's Biggest Climate Challenge: A Lack of Clean Fuel - Bloomberg ‘Magical thinking': hopes for sustainable jet fuel not realistic, report finds - The Guardian How to rethink tourism and aviation for a greener future - SimpliFlying

Akshat Gupta is a national bestselling author, a TEDx speaker and an excelling screenwriter and dialogue writer in the Indian film industry. The Hidden Hindu series, authored by him, has sold over 1 lakh copies, with each book a national bestseller. Akshat is well known in the publishing industry, as well as in the Indian film industry, with a number of films and web-series signed on his name.

In episode 153 of PG Radio, we discuss spirituality, history, and mythology with our special guest, Akshat Gupta. Join us as we uncover the layers of ancient Indian wisdom, intriguing legends, and fascinating stories that continue to shape the cultural fabric of India. Akshat Gupta, a prolific storyteller and cultural historian, guides us through a captivating journey that spans sacred symbols, reincarnation tales, the origins of Vedas and much more. This is what we talked about: 00:00 - Why are "peepal" and Banyan trees sacred? 13:03 - Akshat tells us a scary story 16:50 - Reincarnation story of Akshat 25:15 - Origin of Vedas 28:05 - Lost Technologies of Ancient India 41:00 - Connection between Ramayana and Mahabharata 50:06 - Naga Sadhus and their war stories 1:04:30 - Akshat tells an interesting story about a big business family

21. Khushwant Singh Lit Fest: Indian, Pakistani & Bangladeshi authors - In this special We'd Like A Word India episode at the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival, co-hosts Paul Waters & Jonathan Kennedy (standing in for Stevyn Colgan) hear ideas from top authors of fiction, non-fiction, memoir & poetry & other experts. WARNING - one of our interviewees (Farrukh Dhondy) gets a bit sweary. WHO IS JONATHAN KENNEDY? WHY IS HE HERE? AND WHERE IS STEVYN COLGAN? Jonathan was Director of Arts in India for 5 years for the British Council. He's been everywhere in India and knows everyone there involved in culture. He was also for 12 years the Executive Director of Tara Arts, looking at the world through a South Asian lens. Jonathan is doing some India & South Asian episodes of We'd Like A Word with us. We'll drop them in every now & then. Normal service will be resumed with Steve & Paul shortly. Our guests on this WLAW KSLF episode include Harinder Singh, who with The Singh Twins & Gopinder Kaur has created the book Jewels of Sikh Wisdom; Pinky Lilani, cook, networker extraordinaire, founder of Asian Women of Achievement, & author of Some Kind of Wonderful; Nadia Kabir Barb of The Whole Kahani south Asian women's writers' collective & author of the short story collection, Truth or Dare; Farrukh Dhondy, author, playwright, media executive & activist - who writes about his bookish relationship with the notorious serial killer Charles Sobraj; Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi & her debut novel, The Centre; sisters Shirin & Marina Wheeler who write separately about their parents - Shirin on her father, the iconic journalist Charles Wheeler - Witness to the Twentieth Century, & Marina on her mother, Dip - The Lost Homestead - My Mother, Partition and the Punjab; poet Imtiaz Dharker on her latest collection, Shadow Reader; Aneysha Minocha, founder & CEO of Quantaco, the green tech, clean tech carbon-reducing start-up that grabbing attention; & Akshat rathi, author of Climate Capitalism, also senior reporter for Bloomberg news & host of the Zero podcast on climate change. Phew - that's loads! What is the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival? The Indian version happens in breathtakingly spectacular surroundings inside the military cantonment in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Paul's been there. This recording is at the London spin-off at the Brunei Gallery at SOAS - the School of Oriental and African Studies. Khushwant Singh was one of India's most prolific authors, a scholar, journalist, iconoclast & dubbed "the most honest man in India." The festival is keen to promote closer ties between India & Pakistan; equal opportunities for women worldwide; & disseminating the values of democracy, tolerance, compassion in a world that is increasingly more polarised. We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, & audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul, Steve & our guests. We're on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com Yes, we're embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books. Paul is writing a new cosy mystery series set in contemporary Delhi - more on that anon. And if you're still stuck for something to read now, may we recommend Blackwatertown, the thriller by Paul Waters or Cockerings, the comic classic by Stevyn Colgan.

Akshat Goenka is a Partner at Moonfire. Enabling European entrepreneurs to dream big and execute fully on their bold ideas at the very earliest stages of their journeys is Moonfire's passion and cause. Moonfire can help entrepreneurs at the very start of their journeys to create the right foundations to drive growth exponentially. Moonfire lights a fire within seed stage investing in Europe to help entrepreneurs grow their boundless ambition and burning creativity. In partnering with Moonfire, companies benefit from Mattias Ljungman's extensive experience including 13 years as a Co-Founder of Atomico with investments in like Supercell, viagogo, Klarna and Rovio. Moonfire focuses on reimagining finance & money, realising the future of work, new frontiers in gaming and transforming healthcare.Akshat joins James Pringle and Hector Mason to discuss Moonfire's data-driven approach, Moonfire's ambition, the future of capital allocation, & so much more. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date!

Microsoft's recent push to capitalize on artificial intelligence has made it the world's most valuable company. But according to new figures, that ambition is coming  at the expense of its climate goals. In 2020, the company pledged to be carbon-negative by the end of the decade. Instead, its emissions rose 30% between 2020 and 2023. Microsoft President Brad Smith says the company isn't giving up on its green goals — and that the good AI can do for the world will outweigh its environmental impact.  Akshat tells Zero producer Mythili Rao about his conversation with Smith, and how other tech giants will be making similar calculations. Explore further: Past episode  with BNEF's Jenny Chase on how to triple renewable energy by 2030 Past episode with Notre Dame professor Emily Grubert about the possibility of carbon capture Past episode with Electra CEO Sandeep Nijhawan on making zero emissions steel Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Dina Bass, and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the Manufacturing Culture Podcast, host Jim Mayer interviews Akshat Thirani, CEO and founder of Amper Technologies, and Katrina Keys, a visionary in transforming organizational culture. They discuss the role of Amper in revolutionizing how manufacturers track and improve their operations and how it helps transform the culture within their customers. The culture at Amper is characterized by values such as embracing reality, obsessing over customer success, and being lean. They share stories of customers who have implemented Amper and experienced a shift in their culture, such as valuing operators as key contributors and improving resource allocation. The conversation covered various manufacturing, culture, and employee engagement topics. The guests discussed the importance of trust and teamwork in manufacturing, as well as the role of technology in customers' learning journey. They also discussed the future of manufacturing, emphasizing the need for efficiency, automation, and connectivity. The guests highlighted the significance of employee engagement and company culture, as well as how Amper's platform facilitates feedback and communication between the shop floor and management. They concluded by encouraging listeners to focus on improving systems and creating a winning culture in manufacturing.TakeawaysAmper Technologies helps manufacturers track and improve their operations by providing real-time data and enabling teams to make better decisions.Implementing Amper can lead to a shift in culture within manufacturing companies, such as valuing operators as key contributors and improving resource allocation.The culture at Amper is characterized by values such as embracing reality, obsessing over customer success, and being lean.Amper's dispersed workforce focuses on autonomy, collaboration, and communication to maintain a healthy culture.Customers have experienced aha moments when implementing Amper, such as realizing the importance of operators and gaining visibility into machine utilization. Trust and teamwork are crucial in manufacturing, where efficiency and safety are paramount.Technology plays a significant role in the learning journey of manufacturing customers.The future of manufacturing will involve increased efficiency, automation, and connectivity.Employee engagement and company culture are intertwined concepts that contribute to a successful manufacturing environment.Amper's platform facilitates feedback and communication between the shop floor and management.Improving systems is essential for creating a winning culture in manufacturing.Connect with Akshat on LinkedinConnect with Katrina on LinkedinVisit the Amper on their websitePartnersNeed to make your manufacturing business stand out? Discover Marketing Metal, the specialized marketing agency for the manufacturing industry. Whether you operate a machine shop, fab shop, or a custom manufacturing firm, Marketing Metal has the expertise to build your brand and craft marketing strategies that cut through the noise. Ready to elevate your business? Visit themfgconnector.com today and learn how Marketing Metal can help you succeed.Are your tools organized and protected? Discover Kaiser Manufacturing, the ultimate solution in tool management. Their Kaizen Shadow Foam® allows you to create custom foam inserts tailored exactly for your needs, and their Tool Caddy offers a safe, compact storage option for all your tool holders. Improve your efficiency and protect your investments with Kaiser Manufacturing. Visit themfgconnector.com today and start organizing like a pro!

Angad and Akshat join the pod from the team at Impel which recently launched on Bittensor's Subnet 11 to incentivize decentralized creation of roleplay models for their app Dippy.ai. Get to know the team, the killer pedigree and their bold objective of becoming the open source leaders in roleplaying LLMs. Video link below.  https://x.com/KeithSingery/status/1790128752522858577 https://www.tryimpel.com/ https://twitter.com/impel_ai https://twitter.com/dippy_ai https://www.dippy.ai/ https://taostats.io/validators/bittensor-guru-podcast/ https://bittensor.guru

“Climate Capitalism is an antidote to the dominant narrative that because we've ignored the climate crisis for so long, it will soon be too late. While it's true that we've not done enough yet, we're nowhere close to being too late.” So says , Bloomberg's senior climate reporter and host of the podcast Zero, in his new book Climate Capitalism, which looks at ways business and industry and finance can make, and in some cases are making, real progress on climate change. Mentioned in this episode: Links: Related podcasts: Check out all our podcasts on : - - : - : - : Join the :

In this episode, Gil Jenkins sits down with Akshat Rathi, a senior climate reporter at Bloomberg News and the host of Bloomberg Green's Zero podcast, to discuss his new book, "Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of our Age," which was released on March 12 in the U.S. "Climate Capitalism" takes readers across five continents, tracking the unlikely heroes driving the fight against climate change. The stories within the book reveal how people, policy, and technology are converging to create a green economy that is not only possible but profitable. Akshat and Gil explore key chapters from the book, touching on stories like that of Wan Gang, a Chinese bureaucrat who played a pivotal role in the rapid expansion of electric vehicles in China. They also discuss India's significant progress toward solar power since 2015, the transformative influence of the International Energy Agency, and the UK's legally binding decarbonization commitments, among other topics.Links: About the BookAkshat on XAkshat on LinkedInZero PodcastEpisode recorded March 8, 2024 Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

For more than a century, extractive industry and capitalism have dominated the developed world's economies. Some of the biggest companies in the world produce and sell oil and gas, and those commodities have made countries and people very wealthy. But they're also a major source of pollution and contributor to the climate crisis. In response, many of these companies have started investing in renewable energy, others have completely shifted their focus to clean solutions.  Akshat Rathi's new book Climate Capitalism delves into this shift and argues that saving the earth is economically more advantageous than destroying it.  So, what is climate capitalism? How can this new approach facilitate climate innovation and economic growth? And what will it take to move away from traditional capitalism?  This week host Bill Loveless talks with Akshat about his new book and how reforming the current economic system can address climate change and be profitable. Akshat is a senior climate reporter for Bloomberg News. Prior to Bloomberg, he was a senior reporter at Quartz and a science editor at The Conversation. His new book, Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of our Age has been named one of the best books of the year by the The London Times and The Economic Times. 

It is now cheaper to save the world than destroy it. But is capitalism up to the challenge of preventing the climate crisis?  In his new book Climate Capitalism, Zero host Akshat Rathi introduces a dozen people who are already steering capitalism to solve the climate crisis: from the engineer who shaped China's electric car policies and the politician who helped make net-zero a UK law to the CEO who fought off a takeover attempt so he could stick with a sustainability strategy. Akshat argues that not only is capitalism capable of taking on the climate crisis, but harnessing it is the only way to solve the climate crisis in the time we have available.  And yet while some improvements have been made over the past few years, the world is off track to meet its 2050 climate targets. So today on Zero, Bloomberg's Greener Living editor Kira Bindrim sits down with Akshat to discuss his new book, and asks him: If climate capitalism is so doable, why does it seem so difficult?  Read more:  Order Akshat's new book, Climate Capitalism Listen to the interview with Fatih Birol that Akshat mentions  Hear Akshat and Kira talk about the reality of carbon footprints Read a transcript of this episode Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Anna Mazarakis, Gilda di Carli and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions, Akshat Rathi tells the stories of people around the world who are building impactful solutions to tackle climate change.Rathi is a senior reporter for Bloomberg News, focusing on climate and energy. He also hosts the weekly Zero podcast, in which he talks to the people leading the fight for a zero-emissions future. In his new book, Rathi argues that the best way to cut carbon pollution is by harnessing capitalism. Combating climate change requires a combination of smart policies, financing, technological innovations, and leadership—without killing markets or competition.Together with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Rathi discusses the essence of climate capitalism, how to scale up individual success stories, and how to navigate the challenging political context. Key topics discussed: 02:09 | Definition of climate capitalism07:19 | Success stories: Chinese EVs, Orsted11:31 | The need to combine tech, policies, and finance12:52 | How to scale case studies to big solutions16:24 | Navigating a polarized political context18:45 | Making climate solutions profitable24:06 | Where CEOs should startThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

We're back with Dr. Akshat Jain who shares highlights in bleeding disorder research from ASH 2023, plus the differences between hemophilia A vs hemophilia B gene therapies with Dr. Mark Redding. We close out with our latest Elite Athletes segments featuring bleeding disorder community legend, Perry Parker. Don't miss it!   Show Notes: Subscribe: The BloodStream Podcast   Presenting Sponsor: Takeda, visit bleedingdisorders.com to learn more.   Connect with BloodStream Media: BloodStreamMedia.com BloodStream on Facebook  BloodStream on Twitter   

In this Monolog, Akshat discusses how the liver "speaks" both immunity and metabolism via bile to control hepatic tumors. Liver X Receptors also make an appearance.

The climate clock is ticking faster and faster. How can we use capitalism to undo the bad stuff that capitalism did and maybe even make things better? That's today's big (loaded) question, and my returning guest is Akshat Rathi. Akshat is a London-based senior reporter, newsletter writer, and podcaster for Bloomberg News.Akshat has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford, and a BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. Akshat was previously a senior reporter at Quartz and a science editor at The Conversation. He is here today to talk about his first book, Climate Capitalism.This wonderful book tells the stories of people building solutions at scale to tackle one of humanity's greatest challenges. Some solutions we've already built, like solar and batteries, and some we're still working on because they take a lot of work, and money, and politics.In a world where journalism is going bye-bye, and the climate clock is ticking, but we've made so much progress, and we can make so much more, Akshat's reporting in this book couldn't be more timely, as we seek to answer the question, where are we on this timeline?-----------Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.comNew here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.-----------INI Book Club:The Long View by Richard FisherFind all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-clubLinks:Order Climate Capitalism in the US/Canada (out March 12) Order Climate Capitalism in the UK (out now)Order Climate Capitalism in India (out now)Order Climate Capitalism in the rest of the worldListen to Akshat on his podcast Zero, and subscribe to his newsletterRead about the Biden Administration's regulations on the social costs of climate change here and hereFollow us:Subscribe to our newsletter at

We're writing this one day after the monster release of OpenAI's Sora and Gemini 1.5. We covered this on ‘s ThursdAI space, so head over there for our takes.IRL: We're ONE WEEK away from Latent Space: Final Frontiers, the second edition and anniversary of our first ever Latent Space event! Also: join us on June 25-27 for the biggest AI Engineer conference of the year!Online: All three Discord clubs are thriving. Join us every Wednesday/Friday!Almost 12 years ago, while working at Spotify, Erik Bernhardsson built one of the first open source vector databases, Annoy, based on ANN search. He also built Luigi, one of the predecessors to Airflow, which helps data teams orchestrate and execute data-intensive and long-running jobs. Surprisingly, he didn't start yet another vector database company, but instead in 2021 founded Modal, the “high-performance cloud for developers”. In 2022 they opened doors to developers after their seed round, and in 2023 announced their GA with a $16m Series A.More importantly, they have won fans among both household names like Ramp, Scale AI, Substack, and Cohere, and newer startups like (upcoming guest!) Suno.ai and individual hackers (Modal was the top tool of choice in the Vercel AI Accelerator):We've covered the nuances of GPU workloads, and how we need new developer tooling and runtimes for them (see our episodes with Chris Lattner of Modular and George Hotz of tiny to start). In this episode, we run through the major limitations of the actual infrastructure behind the clouds that run these models, and how Erik envisions the “postmodern data stack”. In his 2021 blog post “Software infrastructure 2.0: a wishlist”, Erik had “Truly serverless” as one of his points:* The word cluster is an anachronism to an end-user in the cloud! I'm already running things in the cloud where there's elastic resources available at any time. Why do I have to think about the underlying pool of resources? Just maintain it for me.* I don't ever want to provision anything in advance of load.* I don't want to pay for idle resources. Just let me pay for whatever resources I'm actually using.* Serverless doesn't mean it's a burstable VM that saves its instance state to disk during periods of idle.Swyx called this Self Provisioning Runtimes back in the day. Modal doesn't put you in YAML hell, preferring to colocate infra provisioning right next to the code that utilizes it, so you can just add GPU (and disk, and retries…):After 3 years, we finally have a big market push for this: running inference on generative models is going to be the killer app for serverless, for a few reasons:* AI models are stateless: even in conversational interfaces, each message generation is a fully-contained request to the LLM. There's no knowledge that is stored in the model itself between messages, which means that tear down / spin up of resources doesn't create any headaches with maintaining state.* Token-based pricing is better aligned with serverless infrastructure than fixed monthly costs of traditional software.* GPU scarcity makes it really expensive to have reserved instances that are available to you 24/7. It's much more convenient to build with a serverless-like infrastructure.In the episode we covered a lot more topics like maximizing GPU utilization, why Oracle Cloud rocks, and how Erik has never owned a TV in his life. Enjoy!Show Notes* Modal* ErikBot* Erik's Blog* Software Infra 2.0 Wishlist* Luigi* Annoy* Hetzner* CoreWeave* Cloudflare FaaS* Poolside AI* Modular Inference EngineChapters* [00:00:00] Introductions* [00:02:00] Erik's OSS work at Spotify: Annoy and Luigi* [00:06:22] Starting Modal* [00:07:54] Vision for a "postmodern data stack"* [00:10:43] Solving container cold start problems* [00:12:57] Designing Modal's Python SDK* [00:15:18] Self-Revisioning Runtime* [00:19:14] Truly Serverless Infrastructure* [00:20:52] Beyond model inference* [00:22:09] Tricks to maximize GPU utilization* [00:26:27] Differences in AI and data science workloads* [00:28:08] Modal vs Replicate vs Modular and lessons from Heroku's "graduation problem"* [00:34:12] Creating Erik's clone "ErikBot"* [00:37:43] Enabling massive parallelism across thousands of GPUs* [00:39:45] The Modal Sandbox for agents* [00:43:51] Thoughts on the AI Inference War* [00:49:18] Erik's best tweets* [00:51:57] Why buying hardware is a waste of money* [00:54:18] Erik's competitive programming backgrounds* [00:59:02] Why does Sweden have the best Counter Strike players?* [00:59:53] Never owning a car or TV* [01:00:21] Advice for infrastructure startupsTranscriptAlessio [00:00:00]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO-in-Residence at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol AI.Swyx [00:00:14]: Hey, and today we have in the studio Erik Bernhardsson from Modal. Welcome.Erik [00:00:19]: Hi. It's awesome being here.Swyx [00:00:20]: Yeah. Awesome seeing you in person. I've seen you online for a number of years as you were building on Modal and I think you're just making a San Francisco trip just to see people here, right? I've been to like two Modal events in San Francisco here.Erik [00:00:34]: Yeah, that's right. We're based in New York, so I figured sometimes I have to come out to capital of AI and make a presence.Swyx [00:00:40]: What do you think is the pros and cons of building in New York?Erik [00:00:45]: I mean, I never built anything elsewhere. I lived in New York the last 12 years. I love the city. Obviously, there's a lot more stuff going on here and there's a lot more customers and that's why I'm out here. I do feel like for me, where I am in life, I'm a very boring person. I kind of work hard and then I go home and hang out with my kids. I don't have time to go to events and meetups and stuff anyway. In that sense, New York is kind of nice. I walk to work every morning. It's like five minutes away from my apartment. It's very time efficient in that sense. Yeah.Swyx [00:01:10]: Yeah. It's also a good life. So we'll do a brief bio and then we'll talk about anything else that people should know about you. Actually, I was surprised to find out you're from Sweden. You went to college in KTH and your master's was in implementing a scalable music recommender system. Yeah.Erik [00:01:27]: I had no idea. Yeah. So I actually studied physics, but I grew up coding and I did a lot of programming competition and then as I was thinking about graduating, I got in touch with an obscure music streaming startup called Spotify, which was then like 30 people. And for some reason, I convinced them, why don't I just come and write a master's thesis with you and I'll do some cool collaborative filtering, despite not knowing anything about collaborative filtering really. But no one knew anything back then. So I spent six months at Spotify basically building a prototype of a music recommendation system and then turned that into a master's thesis. And then later when I graduated, I joined Spotify full time.Swyx [00:02:00]: So that was the start of your data career. You also wrote a couple of popular open source tooling while you were there. Is that correct?Erik [00:02:09]: No, that's right. I mean, I was at Spotify for seven years, so this is a long stint. And Spotify was a wild place early on and I mean, data space is also a wild place. I mean, it was like Hadoop cluster in the like foosball room on the floor. It was a lot of crude, like very basic infrastructure and I didn't know anything about it. And like I was hired to kind of figure out data stuff. And I started hacking on a recommendation system and then, you know, got sidetracked in a bunch of other stuff. I fixed a bunch of reporting things and set up A-B testing and started doing like business analytics and later got back to music recommendation system. And a lot of the infrastructure didn't really exist. Like there was like Hadoop back then, which is kind of bad and I don't miss it. But I spent a lot of time with that. As a part of that, I ended up building a workflow engine called Luigi, which is like briefly like somewhat like widely ended up being used by a bunch of companies. Sort of like, you know, kind of like Airflow, but like before Airflow. I think it did some things better, some things worse. I also built a vector database called Annoy, which is like for a while, it was actually quite widely used. In 2012, so it was like way before like all this like vector database stuff ended up happening. And funny enough, I was actually obsessed with like vectors back then. Like I was like, this is going to be huge. Like just give it like a few years. I didn't know it was going to take like nine years and then there's going to suddenly be like 20 startups doing vector databases in one year. So it did happen. In that sense, I was right. I'm glad I didn't start a startup in the vector database space. I would have started way too early. But yeah, that was, yeah, it was a fun seven years as part of it. It was a great culture, a great company.Swyx [00:03:32]: Yeah. Just to take a quick tangent on this vector database thing, because we probably won't revisit it but like, has anything architecturally changed in the last nine years?Erik [00:03:41]: I'm actually not following it like super closely. I think, you know, some of the best algorithms are still the same as like hierarchical navigable small world.Swyx [00:03:51]: Yeah. HNSW.Erik [00:03:52]: Exactly. I think now there's like product quantization, there's like some other stuff that I haven't really followed super closely. I mean, obviously, like back then it was like, you know, it's always like very simple. It's like a C++ library with Python bindings and you could mmap big files and into memory and like they had some lookups. I used like this kind of recursive, like hyperspace splitting strategy, which is not that good, but it sort of was good enough at that time. But I think a lot of like HNSW is still like what people generally use. Now of course, like databases are much better in the sense like to support like inserts and updates and stuff like that. I know I never supported that. Yeah, it's sort of exciting to finally see like vector databases becoming a thing.Swyx [00:04:30]: Yeah. Yeah. And then maybe one takeaway on most interesting lesson from Daniel Ek?Erik [00:04:36]: I mean, I think Daniel Ek, you know, he started Spotify very young. Like he was like 25, something like that. And that was like a good lesson. But like he, in a way, like I think he was a very good leader. Like there was never anything like, no scandals or like no, he wasn't very eccentric at all. It was just kind of like very like level headed, like just like ran the company very well, like never made any like obvious mistakes or I think it was like a few bets that maybe like in hindsight were like a little, you know, like took us, you know, too far in one direction or another. But overall, I mean, I think he was a great CEO, like definitely, you know, up there, like generational CEO, at least for like Swedish startups.Swyx [00:05:09]: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, we should probably move to make our way towards Modal. So then you spent six years as CTO of Better. You were an early engineer and then you scaled up to like 300 engineers.Erik [00:05:21]: I joined as a CTO when there was like no tech team. And yeah, that was a wild chapter in my life. Like the company did very well for a while. And then like during the pandemic, yeah, it was kind of a weird story, but yeah, it kind of collapsed.Swyx [00:05:32]: Yeah, laid off people poorly.Erik [00:05:34]: Yeah, yeah. It was like a bunch of stories. Yeah. I mean, the company like grew from like 10 people when I joined at 10,000, now it's back to a thousand. But yeah, they actually went public a few months ago, kind of crazy. They're still around, like, you know, they're still, you know, doing stuff. So yeah, very kind of interesting six years of my life for non-technical reasons, like I managed like three, four hundred, but yeah, like learning a lot of that, like recruiting. I spent all my time recruiting and stuff like that. And so managing at scale, it's like nice, like now in a way, like when I'm building my own startup. It's actually something I like, don't feel nervous about at all. Like I've managed a scale, like I feel like I can do it again. It's like very different things that I'm nervous about as a startup founder. But yeah, I started Modal three years ago after sort of, after leaving Better, I took a little bit of time off during the pandemic and, but yeah, pretty quickly I was like, I got to build something. I just want to, you know. Yeah. And then yeah, Modal took form in my head, took shape.Swyx [00:06:22]: And as far as I understand, and maybe we can sort of trade off questions. So the quick history is started Modal in 2021, got your seed with Sarah from Amplify in 2022. You just announced your Series A with Redpoint. That's right. And that brings us up to mostly today. Yeah. Most people, I think, were expecting you to build for the data space.Erik: But it is the data space.Swyx:: When I think of data space, I come from like, you know, Snowflake, BigQuery, you know, Fivetran, Nearby, that kind of stuff. And what Modal became is more general purpose than that. Yeah.Erik [00:06:53]: Yeah. I don't know. It was like fun. I actually ran into like Edo Liberty, the CEO of Pinecone, like a few weeks ago. And he was like, I was so afraid you were building a vector database. No, I started Modal because, you know, like in a way, like I work with data, like throughout my most of my career, like every different part of the stack, right? Like I thought everything like business analytics to like deep learning, you know, like building, you know, training neural networks, the scale, like everything in between. And so one of the thoughts, like, and one of the observations I had when I started Modal or like why I started was like, I just wanted to make, build better tools for data teams. And like very, like sort of abstract thing, but like, I find that the data stack is, you know, full of like point solutions that don't integrate well. And still, when you look at like data teams today, you know, like every startup ends up building their own internal Kubernetes wrapper or whatever. And you know, all the different data engineers and machine learning engineers end up kind of struggling with the same things. So I started thinking about like, how do I build a new data stack, which is kind of a megalomaniac project, like, because you kind of want to like throw out everything and start over.Swyx [00:07:54]: It's almost a modern data stack.Erik [00:07:55]: Yeah, like a postmodern data stack. And so I started thinking about that. And a lot of it came from like, like more focused on like the human side of like, how do I make data teams more productive? And like, what is the technology tools that they need? And like, you know, drew out a lot of charts of like, how the data stack looks, you know, what are different components. And it shows actually very interesting, like workflow scheduling, because it kind of sits in like a nice sort of, you know, it's like a hub in the graph of like data products. But it was kind of hard to like, kind of do that in a vacuum, and also to monetize it to some extent. I got very interested in like the layers below at some point. And like, at the end of the day, like most people have code to have to run somewhere. So I think about like, okay, well, how do you make that nice? Like how do you make that? And in particular, like the thing I always like thought about, like developer productivity is like, I think the best way to measure developer productivity is like in terms of the feedback loops, like how quickly when you iterate, like when you write code, like how quickly can you get feedback. And at the innermost loop, it's like writing code and then running it. And like, as soon as you start working with the cloud, like it's like takes minutes suddenly, because you have to build a Docker container and push it to the cloud and like run it, you know. So that was like the initial focus for me was like, I just want to solve that problem. Like I want to, you know, build something less, you run things in the cloud and like retain the sort of, you know, the joy of productivity as when you're running things locally. And in particular, I was quite focused on data teams, because I think they had a couple unique needs that wasn't well served by the infrastructure at that time, or like still is in like, in particular, like Kubernetes, I feel like it's like kind of worked okay for back end teams, but not so well for data teams. And very quickly, I got sucked into like a very deep like rabbit hole of like...Swyx [00:09:24]: Not well for data teams because of burstiness. Yeah, for sure.Erik [00:09:26]: So like burstiness is like one thing, right? Like, you know, like you often have this like fan out, you want to like apply some function over very large data sets. Another thing tends to be like hardware requirements, like you need like GPUs and like, I've seen this in many companies, like you go, you know, data scientists go to a platform team and they're like, can we add GPUs to the Kubernetes? And they're like, no, like, that's, you know, complex, and we're not gonna, so like just getting GPU access. And then like, I mean, I also like data code, like frankly, or like machine learning code like tends to be like, super annoying in terms of like environments, like you end up having like a lot of like custom, like containers and like environment conflicts. And like, it's very hard to set up like a unified container that like can serve like a data scientist, because like, there's always like packages that break. And so I think there's a lot of different reasons why the technology wasn't well suited for back end. And I think the attitude at that time is often like, you know, like you had friction between the data team and the platform team, like, well, it works for the back end stuff, you know, why don't you just like, you know, make it work. But like, I actually felt like data teams, you know, or at this point now, like there's so much, so many people working with data, and like they, to some extent, like deserve their own tools and their own tool chains, and like optimizing for that is not something people have done. So that's, that's sort of like very abstract philosophical reason why I started Model. And then, and then I got sucked into this like rabbit hole of like container cold start and, you know, like whatever, Linux, page cache, you know, file system optimizations.Swyx [00:10:43]: Yeah, tell people, I think the first time I met you, I think you told me some numbers, but I don't remember, like, what are the main achievements that you were unhappy with the status quo? And then you built your own container stack?Erik [00:10:52]: Yeah, I mean, like, in particular, it was like, in order to have that loop, right? You want to be able to start, like take code on your laptop, whatever, and like run in the cloud very quickly, and like running in custom containers, and maybe like spin up like 100 containers, 1000, you know, things like that. And so container cold start was the initial like, from like a developer productivity point of view, it was like, really, what I was focusing on is, I want to take code, I want to stick it in container, I want to execute in the cloud, and like, you know, make it feel like fast. And when you look at like, how Docker works, for instance, like Docker, you have this like, fairly convoluted, like very resource inefficient way, they, you know, you build a container, you upload the whole container, and then you download it, and you run it. And Kubernetes is also like, not very fast at like starting containers. So like, I started kind of like, you know, going a layer deeper, like Docker is actually like, you know, there's like a couple of different primitives, but like a lower level primitive is run C, which is like a container runner. And I was like, what if I just take the container runner, like run C, and I point it to like my own root file system, and then I built like my own virtual file system that exposes files over a network instead. And that was like the sort of very crude version of model, it's like now I can actually start containers very quickly, because it turns out like when you start a Docker container, like, first of all, like most Docker images are like several gigabytes, and like 99% of that is never going to be consumed, like there's a bunch of like, you know, like timezone information for like Uzbekistan, like no one's going to read it. And then there's a very high overlap between the files are going to be read, there's going to be like lib torch or whatever, like it's going to be read. So you can also cache it very well. So that was like the first sort of stuff we started working on was like, let's build this like container file system. And you know, coupled with like, you know, just using run C directly. And that actually enabled us to like, get to this point of like, you write code, and then you can launch it in the cloud within like a second or two, like something like that. And you know, there's been many optimizations since then, but that was sort of starting point.Alessio [00:12:33]: Can we talk about the developer experience as well, I think one of the magic things about Modal is at the very basic layers, like a Python function decorator, it's just like stub and whatnot. But then you also have a way to define a full container, what were kind of the design decisions that went into it? Where did you start? How easy did you want it to be? And then maybe how much complexity did you then add on to make sure that every use case fit?Erik [00:12:57]: I mean, Modal, I almost feel like it's like almost like two products kind of glued together. Like there's like the low level like container runtime, like file system, all that stuff like in Rust. And then there's like the Python SDK, right? Like how do you express applications? And I think, I mean, Swix, like I think your blog was like the self-provisioning runtime was like, to me, always like to sort of, for me, like an eye-opening thing. It's like, so I didn't think about like...Swyx [00:13:15]: You wrote your post four months before me. Yeah? The software 2.0, Infra 2.0. Yeah.Erik [00:13:19]: Well, I don't know, like convergence of minds. I guess we were like both thinking. Maybe you put, I think, better words than like, you know, maybe something I was like thinking about for a long time. Yeah.Swyx [00:13:29]: And I can tell you how I was thinking about it on my end, but I want to hear you say it.Erik [00:13:32]: Yeah, yeah, I would love to. So to me, like what I always wanted to build was like, I don't know, like, I don't know if you use like Pulumi. Like Pulumi is like nice, like in the sense, like it's like Pulumi is like you describe infrastructure in code, right? And to me, that was like so nice. Like finally I can like, you know, put a for loop that creates S3 buckets or whatever. And I think like Modal sort of goes one step further in the sense that like, what if you also put the app code inside the infrastructure code and like glue it all together and then like you only have one single place that defines everything and it's all programmable. You don't have any config files. Like Modal has like zero config. There's no config. It's all code. And so that was like the goal that I wanted, like part of that. And then the other part was like, I often find that so much of like my time was spent on like the plumbing between containers. And so my thing was like, well, if I just build this like Python SDK and make it possible to like bridge like different containers, just like a function call, like, and I can say, oh, this function runs in this container and this other function runs in this container and I can just call it just like a normal function, then, you know, I can build these applications that may span a lot of different environments. Maybe they fan out, start other containers, but it's all just like inside Python. You just like have this beautiful kind of nice like DSL almost for like, you know, how to control infrastructure in the cloud. So that was sort of like how we ended up with the Python SDK as it is, which is still evolving all the time, by the way. We keep changing syntax quite a lot because I think it's still somewhat exploratory, but we're starting to converge on something that feels like reasonably good now.Swyx [00:14:54]: Yeah. And along the way you, with this expressiveness, you enabled the ability to, for example, attach a GPU to a function. Totally.Erik [00:15:02]: Yeah. It's like you just like say, you know, on the function decorator, you're like GPU equals, you know, A100 and then or like GPU equals, you know, A10 or T4 or something like that. And then you get that GPU and like, you know, you just run the code and it runs like you don't have to, you know, go through hoops to, you know, start an EC2 instance or whatever.Swyx [00:15:18]: Yeah. So it's all code. Yeah. So one of the reasons I wrote Self-Revisioning Runtimes was I was working at AWS and we had AWS CDK, which is kind of like, you know, the Amazon basics blew me. Yeah, totally. And then, and then like it creates, it compiles the cloud formation. Yeah. And then on the other side, you have to like get all the config stuff and then put it into your application code and make sure that they line up. So then you're writing code to define your infrastructure, then you're writing code to define your application. And I was just like, this is like obvious that it's going to converge, right? Yeah, totally.Erik [00:15:48]: But isn't there like, it might be wrong, but like, was it like SAM or Chalice or one of those? Like, isn't that like an AWS thing that where actually they kind of did that? I feel like there's like one.Swyx [00:15:57]: SAM. Yeah. Still very clunky. It's not, not as elegant as modal.Erik [00:16:03]: I love AWS for like the stuff it's built, you know, like historically in order for me to like, you know, what it enables me to build, but like AWS is always like struggle with developer experience.Swyx [00:16:11]: I mean, they have to not break things.Erik [00:16:15]: Yeah. Yeah. And totally. And they have to build products for a very wide range of use cases. And I think that's hard.Swyx [00:16:21]: Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's easier to design for. Yeah. So anyway, I was, I was pretty convinced that this, this would happen. I wrote, wrote that thing. And then, you know, I imagine my surprise that you guys had it on your landing page at some point. I think, I think Akshad was just like, just throw that in there.Erik [00:16:34]: Did you trademark it?Swyx [00:16:35]: No, I didn't. But I definitely got sent a few pitch decks with my post on there and it was like really interesting. This is my first time like kind of putting a name to a phenomenon. And I think this is a useful skill for people to just communicate what they're trying to do.Erik [00:16:48]: Yeah. No, I think it's a beautiful concept.Swyx [00:16:50]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, obviously you implemented it. What became more clear in your explanation today is that actually you're not that tied to Python.Erik [00:16:57]: No. I mean, I, I think that all the like lower level stuff is, you know, just running containers and like scheduling things and, you know, serving container data and stuff. So like one of the benefits of data teams is obviously like they're all like using Python, right? And so that made it a lot easier. I think, you know, if we had focused on other workloads, like, you know, for various reasons, we've like been kind of like half thinking about like CI or like things like that. But like, in a way that's like harder because like you also, then you have to be like, you know, multiple SDKs, whereas, you know, focusing on data teams, you can only, you know, Python like covers like 95% of all teams. That made it a lot easier. But like, I mean, like definitely like in the future, we're going to have others support, like supporting other languages. JavaScript for sure is the obvious next language. But you know, who knows, like, you know, Rust, Go, R, whatever, PHP, Haskell, I don't know.Swyx [00:17:42]: You know, I think for me, I actually am a person who like kind of liked the idea of programming language advancements being improvements in developer experience. But all I saw out of the academic sort of PLT type people is just type level improvements. And I always think like, for me, like one of the core reasons for self-provisioning runtimes and then why I like Modal is like, this is actually a productivity increase, right? Like, it's a language level thing, you know, you managed to stick it on top of an existing language, but it is your own language, a DSL on top of Python. And so language level increase on the order of like automatic memory management. You know, you could sort of make that analogy that like, maybe you lose some level of control, but most of the time you're okay with whatever Modal gives you. And like, that's fine. Yeah.Erik [00:18:26]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's how I look at about it too. Like, you know, you look at developer productivity over the last number of decades, like, you know, it's come in like small increments of like, you know, dynamic typing or like is like one thing because not suddenly like for a lot of use cases, you don't need to care about type systems or better compiler technology or like, you know, the cloud or like, you know, relational databases. And, you know, I think, you know, you look at like that, you know, history, it's a steadily, you know, it's like, you know, you look at the developers have been getting like probably 10X more productive every decade for the last four decades or something that was kind of crazy. Like on an exponential scale, we're talking about 10X or is there a 10,000X like, you know, improvement in developer productivity. What we can build today, you know, is arguably like, you know, a fraction of the cost of what it took to build it in the eighties. Maybe it wasn't even possible in the eighties. So that to me, like, that's like so fascinating. I think it's going to keep going for the next few decades. Yeah.Alessio [00:19:14]: Yeah. Another big thing in the infra 2.0 wishlist was truly serverless infrastructure. The other on your landing page, you called them native cloud functions, something like that. I think the issue I've seen with serverless has always been people really wanted it to be stateful, even though stateless was much easier to do. And I think now with AI, most model inference is like stateless, you know, outside of the context. So that's kind of made it a lot easier to just put a model, like an AI model on model to run. How do you think about how that changes how people think about infrastructure too? Yeah.Erik [00:19:48]: I mean, I think model is definitely going in the direction of like doing more stateful things and working with data and like high IO use cases. I do think one like massive serendipitous thing that happened like halfway, you know, a year and a half into like the, you know, building model was like Gen AI started exploding and the IO pattern of Gen AI is like fits the serverless model like so well, because it's like, you know, you send this tiny piece of information, like a prompt, right, or something like that. And then like you have this GPU that does like trillions of flops, and then it sends back like a tiny piece of information, right. And that turns out to be something like, you know, if you can get serverless working with GPU, that just like works really well, right. So I think from that point of view, like serverless always to me felt like a little bit of like a solution looking for a problem. I don't actually like don't think like backend is like the problem that needs to serve it or like not as much. But I look at data and in particular, like things like Gen AI, like model inference, like it's like clearly a good fit. So I think that is, you know, to a large extent explains like why we saw, you know, the initial sort of like killer app for model being model inference, which actually wasn't like necessarily what we're focused on. But that's where we've seen like by far the most usage. Yeah.Swyx [00:20:52]: And this was before you started offering like fine tuning of language models, it was mostly stable diffusion. Yeah.Erik [00:20:59]: Yeah. I mean, like model, like I always built it to be a very general purpose compute platform, like something where you can run everything. And I used to call model like a better Kubernetes for data team for a long time. What we realized was like, yeah, that's like, you know, a year and a half in, like we barely had any users or any revenue. And like we were like, well, maybe we should look at like some use case, trying to think of use case. And that was around the same time stable diffusion came out. And the beauty of model is like you can run almost anything on model, right? Like model inference turned out to be like the place where we found initially, well, like clearly this has like 10x like better agronomics than anything else. But we're also like, you know, going back to my original vision, like we're thinking a lot about, you know, now, okay, now we do inference really well. Like what about training? What about fine tuning? What about, you know, end-to-end lifecycle deployment? What about data pre-processing? What about, you know, I don't know, real-time streaming? What about, you know, large data munging, like there's just data observability. I think there's so many things, like kind of going back to what I said about like redefining the data stack, like starting with the foundation of compute. Like one of the exciting things about model is like we've sort of, you know, we've been working on that for three years and it's maturing, but like this is so many things you can do like with just like a better compute primitive and also go up to stack and like do all this other stuff on top of it.Alessio [00:22:09]: How do you think about or rather like I would love to learn more about the underlying infrastructure and like how you make that happen because with fine tuning and training, it's a static memory. Like you exactly know what you're going to load in memory one and it's kind of like a set amount of compute versus inference, just like data is like very bursty. How do you make batches work with a serverless developer experience? You know, like what are like some fun technical challenge you solve to make sure you get max utilization on these GPUs? What we hear from people is like, we have GPUs, but we can really only get like, you know, 30, 40, 50% maybe utilization. What's some of the fun stuff you're working on to get a higher number there?Erik [00:22:48]: Yeah, I think on the inference side, like that's where we like, you know, like from a cost perspective, like utilization perspective, we've seen, you know, like very good numbers and in particular, like it's our ability to start containers and stop containers very quickly. And that means that we can auto scale extremely fast and scale down very quickly, which means like we can always adjust the sort of capacity, the number of GPUs running to the exact traffic volume. And so in many cases, like that actually leads to a sort of interesting thing where like we obviously run our things on like the public cloud, like AWS GCP, we run on Oracle, but in many cases, like users who do inference on those platforms or those clouds, even though we charge a slightly higher price per GPU hour, a lot of users like moving their large scale inference use cases to model, they end up saving a lot of money because we only charge for like with the time the GPU is actually running. And that's a hard problem, right? Like, you know, if you have to constantly adjust the number of machines, if you have to start containers, stop containers, like that's a very hard problem. Starting containers quickly is a very difficult thing. I mentioned we had to build our own file system for this. We also, you know, built our own container scheduler for that. We've implemented recently CPU memory checkpointing so we can take running containers and snapshot the entire CPU, like including registers and everything, and restore it from that point, which means we can restore it from an initialized state. We're looking at GPU checkpointing next, it's like a very interesting thing. So I think with inference stuff, that's where serverless really shines because you can drive, you know, you can push the frontier of latency versus utilization quite substantially, you know, which either ends up being a latency advantage or a cost advantage or both, right? On training, it's probably arguably like less of an advantage doing serverless, frankly, because you know, you can just like spin up a bunch of machines and try to satisfy, like, you know, train as much as you can on each machine. For that area, like we've seen, like, you know, arguably like less usage, like for modal, but there are always like some interesting use case. Like we do have a couple of customers, like RAM, for instance, like they do fine tuning with modal and they basically like one of the patterns they have is like very bursty type fine tuning where they fine tune 100 models in parallel. And that's like a separate thing that modal does really well, right? Like you can, we can start up 100 containers very quickly, run a fine tuning training job on each one of them for that only runs for, I don't know, 10, 20 minutes. And then, you know, you can do hyper parameter tuning in that sense, like just pick the best model and things like that. So there are like interesting training. I think when you get to like training, like very large foundational models, that's a use case we don't support super well, because that's very high IO, you know, you need to have like infinite band and all these things. And those are things we haven't supported yet and might take a while to get to that. So that's like probably like an area where like we're relatively weak in. Yeah.Alessio [00:25:12]: Have you cared at all about lower level model optimization? There's other cloud providers that do custom kernels to get better performance or are you just given that you're not just an AI compute company? Yeah.Erik [00:25:24]: I mean, I think like we want to support like a generic, like general workloads in a sense that like we want users to give us a container essentially or a code or code. And then we want to run that. So I think, you know, we benefit from those things in the sense that like we can tell our users, you know, to use those things. But I don't know if we want to like poke into users containers and like do those things automatically. That's sort of, I think a little bit tricky from the outside to do, because we want to be able to take like arbitrary code and execute it. But certainly like, you know, we can tell our users to like use those things. Yeah.Swyx [00:25:53]: I may have betrayed my own biases because I don't really think about modal as for data teams anymore. I think you started, I think you're much more for AI engineers. My favorite anecdotes, which I think, you know, but I don't know if you directly experienced it. I went to the Vercel AI Accelerator, which you supported. And in the Vercel AI Accelerator, a bunch of startups gave like free credits and like signups and talks and all that stuff. The only ones that stuck are the ones that actually appealed to engineers. And the top usage, the top tool used by far was modal.Erik [00:26:24]: That's awesome.Swyx [00:26:25]: For people building with AI apps. Yeah.Erik [00:26:27]: I mean, it might be also like a terminology question, like the AI versus data, right? Like I've, you know, maybe I'm just like old and jaded, but like, I've seen so many like different titles, like for a while it was like, you know, I was a data scientist and a machine learning engineer and then, you know, there was like analytics engineers and there was like an AI engineer, you know? So like, to me, it's like, I just like in my head, that's to me just like, just data, like, or like engineer, you know, like I don't really, so that's why I've been like, you know, just calling it data teams. But like, of course, like, you know, AI is like, you know, like such a massive fraction of our like workloads.Swyx [00:26:59]: It's a different Venn diagram of things you do, right? So the stuff that you're talking about where you need like infinite bands for like highly parallel training, that's not, that's more of the ML engineer, that's more of the research scientist and less of the AI engineer, which is more sort of trying to put, work at the application.Erik [00:27:16]: Yeah. I mean, to be fair to it, like we have a lot of users that are like doing stuff that I don't think fits neatly into like AI. Like we have a lot of people using like modal for web scraping, like it's kind of nice. You can just like, you know, fire up like a hundred or a thousand containers running Chromium and just like render a bunch of webpages and it takes, you know, whatever. Or like, you know, protein folding is that, I mean, maybe that's, I don't know, like, but like, you know, we have a bunch of users doing that or, or like, you know, in terms of, in the realm of biotech, like sequence alignment, like people using, or like a couple of people using like modal to run like large, like mixed integer programming problems, like, you know, using Gurobi or like things like that. So video processing is another thing that keeps coming up, like, you know, let's say you have like petabytes of video and you want to just like transcode it, like, or you can fire up a lot of containers and just run FFmpeg or like, so there are those things too. Like, I mean, like that being said, like AI is by far our biggest use case, but you know, like, again, like modal is kind of general purpose in that sense.Swyx [00:28:08]: Yeah. Well, maybe I'll stick to the stable diffusion thing and then we'll move on to the other use cases for AI that you want to highlight. The other big player in my mind is replicate. Yeah. In this, in this era, they're much more, I guess, custom built for that purpose, whereas you're more general purpose. How do you position yourself with them? Are they just for like different audiences or are you just heads on competing?Erik [00:28:29]: I think there's like a tiny sliver of the Venn diagram where we're competitive. And then like 99% of the area we're not competitive. I mean, I think for people who, if you look at like front-end engineers, I think that's where like really they found good fit is like, you know, people who built some cool web app and they want some sort of AI capability and they just, you know, an off the shelf model is like perfect for them. That's like, I like use replicate. That's great. I think where we shine is like custom models or custom workflows, you know, running things at very large scale. We need to care about utilization, care about costs. You know, we have much lower prices because we spend a lot more time optimizing our infrastructure, you know, and that's where we're competitive, right? Like, you know, and you look at some of the use cases, like Suno is a big user, like they're running like large scale, like AI. Oh, we're talking with Mikey.Swyx [00:29:12]: Oh, that's great. Cool.Erik [00:29:14]: In a month. Yeah. So, I mean, they're, they're using model for like production infrastructure. Like they have their own like custom model, like custom code and custom weights, you know, for AI generated music, Suno.AI, you know, that, that, those are the types of use cases that we like, you know, things that are like very custom or like, it's like, you know, and those are the things like it's very hard to run and replicate, right? And that's fine. Like I think they, they focus on a very different part of the stack in that sense.Swyx [00:29:35]: And then the other company pattern that I pattern match you to is Modular. I don't know.Erik [00:29:40]: Because of the names?Swyx [00:29:41]: No, no. Wow. No, but yeah, yes, the name is very similar. I think there's something that might be insightful there from a linguistics point of view. Oh no, they have Mojo, the sort of Python SDK. And they have the Modular Inference Engine, which is their sort of their cloud stack, their sort of compute inference stack. I don't know if anyone's made that comparison to you before, but like I see you evolving a little bit in parallel there.Erik [00:30:01]: No, I mean, maybe. Yeah. Like it's not a company I'm like super like familiar, like, I mean, I know the basics, but like, I guess they're similar in the sense like they want to like do a lot of, you know, they have sort of big picture vision.Swyx [00:30:12]: Yes. They also want to build very general purpose. Yeah. So they're marketing themselves as like, if you want to do off the shelf stuff, go out, go somewhere else. If you want to do custom stuff, we're the best place to do it. Yeah. Yeah. There is some overlap there. There's not overlap in the sense that you are a closed source platform. People have to host their code on you. That's true. Whereas for them, they're very insistent on not running their own cloud service. They're a box software. Yeah. They're licensed software.Erik [00:30:37]: I'm sure their VCs at some point going to force them to reconsider. No, no.Swyx [00:30:40]: Chris is very, very insistent and very convincing. So anyway, I would just make that comparison, let people make the links if they want to. But it's an interesting way to see the cloud market develop from my point of view, because I came up in this field thinking cloud is one thing, and I think your vision is like something slightly different, and I see the different takes on it.Erik [00:31:00]: Yeah. And like one thing I've, you know, like I've written a bit about it in my blog too, it's like I think of us as like a second layer of cloud provider in the sense that like I think Snowflake is like kind of a good analogy. Like Snowflake, you know, is infrastructure as a service, right? But they actually run on the like major clouds, right? And I mean, like you can like analyze this very deeply, but like one of the things I always thought about is like, why does Snowflake arbitrarily like win over Redshift? And I think Snowflake, you know, to me, one, because like, I mean, in the end, like AWS makes all the money anyway, like and like Snowflake just had the ability to like focus on like developer experience or like, you know, user experience. And to me, like really proved that you can build a cloud provider, a layer up from, you know, the traditional like public clouds. And in that layer, that's also where I would put Modal, it's like, you know, we're building a cloud provider, like we're, you know, we're like a multi-tenant environment that runs the user code. But we're also building on top of the public cloud. So I think there's a lot of room in that space, I think is very sort of interesting direction.Alessio [00:31:55]: How do you think of that compared to the traditional past history, like, you know, you had AWS, then you had Heroku, then you had Render, Railway.Erik [00:32:04]: Yeah, I mean, I think those are all like great. I think the problem that they all faced was like the graduation problem, right? Like, you know, Heroku or like, I mean, like also like Heroku, there's like a counterfactual future of like, what would have happened if Salesforce didn't buy them, right? Like, that's a sort of separate thing. But like, I think what Heroku, I think always struggled with was like, eventually companies would get big enough that you couldn't really justify running in Heroku. So they would just go and like move it to, you know, whatever AWS or, you know, in particular. And you know, that's something that keeps me up at night too, like, what does that graduation risk like look like for modal? I always think like the only way to build a successful infrastructure company in the long run in the cloud today is you have to appeal to the entire spectrum, right? Or at least like the enterprise, like you have to capture the enterprise market. But the truly good companies capture the whole spectrum, right? Like I think of companies like, I don't like Datadog or Mongo or something that were like, they both captured like the hobbyists and acquire them, but also like, you know, have very large enterprise customers. I think that arguably was like where I, in my opinion, like Heroku struggle was like, how do you maintain the customers as they get more and more advanced? I don't know what the solution is, but I think there's, you know, that's something I would have thought deeply if I was at Heroku at that time.Alessio [00:33:14]: What's the AI graduation problem? Is it, I need to fine tune the model, I need better economics, any insights from customer discussions?Erik [00:33:22]: Yeah, I mean, better economics, certainly. But although like, I would say like, even for people who like, you know, needs like thousands of GPUs, just because we can drive utilization so much better, like we, there's actually like a cost advantage of staying on modal. But yeah, I mean, certainly like, you know, and like the fact that VCs like love, you know, throwing money at least used to, you know, add companies who need it to buy GPUs. I think that didn't help the problem. And in training, I think, you know, there's less software differentiation. So in training, I think there's certainly like better economics of like buying big clusters. But I mean, my hope it's going to change, right? Like I think, you know, we're still pretty early in the cycle of like building AI infrastructure. And I think a lot of these companies over in the long run, like, you know, they're, except it may be super big ones, like, you know, on Facebook and Google, they're always going to build their own ones. But like everyone else, like some extent, you know, I think they're better off like buying platforms. And, you know, someone's going to have to build those platforms.Swyx [00:34:12]: Yeah. Cool. Let's move on to language models and just specifically that workload just to flesh it out a little bit. You already said that RAMP is like fine tuning 100 models at once simultaneously on modal. Closer to home, my favorite example is ErikBot. Maybe you want to tell that story.Erik [00:34:30]: Yeah. I mean, it was a prototype thing we built for fun, but it's pretty cool. Like we basically built this thing that hooks up to Slack. It like downloads all the Slack history and, you know, fine-tunes a model based on a person. And then you can chat with that. And so you can like, you know, clone yourself and like talk to yourself on Slack. I mean, it's like nice like demo and it's just like, I think like it's like fully contained modal. Like there's a modal app that does everything, right? Like it downloads Slack, you know, integrates with the Slack API, like downloads the stuff, the data, like just runs the fine-tuning and then like creates like dynamically an inference endpoint. And it's all like self-contained and like, you know, a few hundred lines of code. So I think it's sort of a good kind of use case for, or like it kind of demonstrates a lot of the capabilities of modal.Alessio [00:35:08]: Yeah. On a more personal side, how close did you feel ErikBot was to you?Erik [00:35:13]: It definitely captured the like the language. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, like the content, I always feel this way about like AI and it's gotten better. Like when you look at like AI output of text, like, and it's like, when you glance at it, it's like, yeah, this seems really smart, you know, but then you actually like look a little bit deeper. It's like, what does this mean?Swyx [00:35:32]: What does this person say?Erik [00:35:33]: It's like kind of vacuous, right? And that's like kind of what I felt like, you know, talking to like my clone version, like it's like says like things like the grammar is correct. Like some of the sentences make a lot of sense, but like, what are you trying to say? Like there's no content here. I don't know. I mean, it's like, I got that feeling also with chat TBT in the like early versions right now it's like better, but.Alessio [00:35:51]: That's funny. So I built this thing called small podcaster to automate a lot of our back office work, so to speak. And it's great at transcript. It's great at doing chapters. And then I was like, okay, how about you come up with a short summary? And it's like, it sounds good, but it's like, it's not even the same ballpark as like, yeah, end up writing. Right. And it's hard to see how it's going to get there.Swyx [00:36:11]: Oh, I have ideas.Erik [00:36:13]: I'm certain it's going to get there, but like, I agree with you. Right. And like, I have the same thing. I don't know if you've read like AI generated books. Like they just like kind of seem funny, right? Like there's off, right? But like you glance at it and it's like, oh, it's kind of cool. Like looks correct, but then it's like very weird when you actually read them.Swyx [00:36:30]: Yeah. Well, so for what it's worth, I think anyone can join the modal slack. Is it open to the public? Yeah, totally.Erik [00:36:35]: If you go to modal.com, there's a button in the footer.Swyx [00:36:38]: Yeah. And then you can talk to Erik Bot. And then sometimes I really like picking Erik Bot and then you answer afterwards, but then you're like, yeah, mostly correct or whatever. Any other broader lessons, you know, just broadening out from like the single use case of fine tuning, like what are you seeing people do with fine tuning or just language models on modal in general? Yeah.Erik [00:36:59]: I mean, I think language models is interesting because so many people get started with APIs and that's just, you know, they're just dominating a space in particular opening AI, right? And that's not necessarily like a place where we aim to compete. I mean, maybe at some point, but like, it's just not like a core focus for us. And I think sort of separately, it's sort of a question of like, there's economics in that long term. But like, so we tend to focus on more like the areas like around it, right? Like fine tuning, like another use case we have is a bunch of people, Ramp included, is doing batch embeddings on modal. So let's say, you know, you have like a, actually we're like writing a blog post, like we take all of Wikipedia and like parallelize embeddings in 15 minutes and produce vectors for each article. So those types of use cases, I think modal suits really well for. I think also a lot of like custom inference, like yeah, I love that.Swyx [00:37:43]: Yeah. I think you should give people an idea of the order of magnitude of parallelism, because I think people don't understand how parallel. So like, I think your classic hello world with modal is like some kind of Fibonacci function, right? Yeah, we have a bunch of different ones. Some recursive function. Yeah.Erik [00:37:59]: Yeah. I mean, like, yeah, I mean, it's like pretty easy in modal, like fan out to like, you know, at least like 100 GPUs, like in a few seconds. And you know, if you give it like a couple of minutes, like we can, you know, you can fan out to like thousands of GPUs. Like we run it relatively large scale. And yeah, we've run, you know, many thousands of GPUs at certain points when we needed, you know, big backfills or some customers had very large compute needs.Swyx [00:38:21]: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's super useful for a number of things. So one of my early interactions with modal as well was with a small developer, which is my sort of coding agent. The reason I chose modal was a number of things. One, I just wanted to try it out. I just had an excuse to try it. Akshay offered to onboard me personally. But the most interesting thing was that you could have that sort of local development experience as it was running on my laptop, but then it would seamlessly translate to a cloud service or like a cloud hosted environment. And then it could fan out with concurrency controls. So I could say like, because like, you know, the number of times I hit the GPT-3 API at the time was going to be subject to the rate limit. But I wanted to fan out without worrying about that kind of stuff. With modal, I can just kind of declare that in my config and that's it. Oh, like a concurrency limit?Erik [00:39:07]: Yeah. Yeah.Swyx [00:39:09]: Yeah. There's a lot of control. And that's why it's like, yeah, this is a pretty good use case for like writing this kind of LLM application code inside of this environment that just understands fan out and rate limiting natively. You don't actually have an exposed queue system, but you have it under the hood, you know, that kind of stuff. Totally.Erik [00:39:28]: It's a self-provisioning cloud.Swyx [00:39:30]: So the last part of modal I wanted to touch on, and obviously feel free, I know you're working on new features, was the sandbox that was introduced last year. And this is something that I think was inspired by Code Interpreter. You can tell me the longer history behind that.Erik [00:39:45]: Yeah. Like we originally built it for the use case, like there was a bunch of customers who looked into code generation applications and then they came to us and asked us, is there a safe way to execute code? And yeah, we spent a lot of time on like container security. We used GeoVisor, for instance, which is a Google product that provides pretty strong isolation of code. So we built a product where you can basically like run arbitrary code inside a container and monitor its output or like get it back in a safe way. I mean, over time it's like evolved into more of like, I think the long-term direction is actually I think more interesting, which is that I think modal as a platform where like I think the core like container infrastructure we offer could actually be like, you know, unbundled from like the client SDK and offer to like other, you know, like we're talking to a couple of like other companies that want to run, you know, through their packages, like run, execute jobs on modal, like kind of programmatically. So that's actually the direction like Sandbox is going. It's like turning into more like a platform for platforms is kind of what I've been thinking about it as.Swyx [00:40:45]: Oh boy. Platform. That's the old Kubernetes line.Erik [00:40:48]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, you know, like having that ability to like programmatically, you know, create containers and execute them, I think, I think is really cool. And I think it opens up a lot of interesting capabilities that are sort of separate from the like core Python SDK in modal. So I'm really excited about C. It's like one of those features that we kind of released and like, you know, then we kind of look at like what users actually build with it and people are starting to build like kind of crazy things. And then, you know, we double down on some of those things because when we see like, you know, potential new product features and so Sandbox, I think in that sense, it's like kind of in that direction. We found a lot of like interesting use cases in the direction of like platformized container runner.Swyx [00:41:27]: Can you be more specific about what you're double down on after seeing users in action?Erik [00:41:32]: I mean, we're working with like some companies that, I mean, without getting into specifics like that, need the ability to take their users code and then launch containers on modal. And it's not about security necessarily, like they just want to use modal as a back end, right? Like they may already provide like Kubernetes as a back end, Lambda as a back end, and now they want to add modal as a back end, right? And so, you know, they need a way to programmatically define jobs on behalf of their users and execute them. And so, I don't know, that's kind of abstract, but does that make sense? I totally get it.Swyx [00:42:03]: It's sort of one level of recursion to sort of be the Modal for their customers.Erik [00:42:09]: Exactly.Swyx [00:42:10]: Yeah, exactly. And Cloudflare has done this, you know, Kenton Vardar from Cloudflare, who's like the tech lead on this thing, called it sort of functions as a service as a service.Erik [00:42:17]: Yeah, that's exactly right. FaSasS.Swyx [00:42:21]: FaSasS. Yeah, like, I mean, like that, I think any base layer, second layer cloud provider like yourself, compute provider like yourself should provide, you know, it's a mark of maturity and success that people just trust you to do that. They'd rather build on top of you than compete with you. The more interesting thing for me is like, what does it mean to serve a computer like an LLM developer, rather than a human developer, right? Like, that's what a sandbox is to me, that you have to redefine modal to serve a different non-human audience.Erik [00:42:51]: Yeah. Yeah, and I think there's some really interesting people, you know, building very cool things.Swyx [00:42:55]: Yeah. So I don't have an answer, but, you know, I imagine things like, hey, the way you give feedback is different. Maybe you have to like stream errors, log errors differently. I don't really know. Yeah. Obviously, there's like safety considerations. Maybe you have an API to like restrict access to the web. Yeah. I don't think anyone would use it, but it's there if you want it.Erik [00:43:17]: Yeah.Swyx [00:43:18]: Yeah. Any other sort of design considerations? I have no idea.Erik [00:43:21]: With sandboxes?Swyx [00:43:22]: Yeah. Yeah.Erik [00:43:24]: Open-ended question here. Yeah. I mean, no, I think, yeah, the network restrictions, I think, make a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, long-term, like, I think there's a lot of interesting use cases where like the LLM, in itself, can like decide, I want to install these packages and like run this thing. And like, obviously, for a lot of those use cases, like you want to have some sort of control that it doesn't like install malicious stuff and steal your secrets and things like that. But I think that's what's exciting about the sandbox primitive, is like it lets you do that in a relatively safe way.Alessio [00:43:51]: Do you have any thoughts on the inference wars? A lot of providers are just rushing to the bottom to get the lowest price per million tokens. Some of them, you know, the Sean Randomat, they're just losing money and there's like the physics of it just don't work out for them to make any money on it. How do you think about your pricing and like how much premium you can get and you can kind of command versus using lower prices as kind of like a wedge into getting there, especially once you have model instrumented? What are the tradeoffs and any thoughts on strategies that work?Erik [00:44:23]: I mean, we focus more on like custom models and custom code. And I think in that space, there's like less competition and I think we can have a pricing markup, right? Like, you know, people will always compare our prices to like, you know, the GPU power they can get elsewhere. And so how big can that markup be? Like it never can be, you know, we can never charge like 10x more, but we can certainly charge a premium. And like, you know, for that reason, like we can have pretty good margins. The LLM space is like the opposite, like the switching cost of LLMs is zero. If all you're doing is like straight up, like at least like open source, right? Like if all you're doing is like, you know, using some, you know, inference endpoint that serves an open source model and, you know, some other provider comes along and like offers a lower price, you're just going to switch, right? So I don't know, to me that reminds me a lot of like all this like 15 minute delivery wars or like, you know, like Uber versus Lyft, you know, and like maybe going back even further, like I think a lot about like sort of, you know, flip side of this is like, it's actually a positive side, which is like, I thought a lot about like fiber optics boom of like 98, 99, like the other day, or like, you know, and also like the overinvestment in GPU today. Like, like, yeah, like, you know, I don't know, like in the end, like, I don't think VCs will have the return they expected, like, you know, in these things, but guess who's going to benefit, like, you know, is the consumers, like someone's like reaping the value of this. And that's, I think an amazing flip side is that, you know, we should be very grateful, the fact that like VCs want to subsidize these things, which is, you know, like you go back to fiber optics, like there was an extreme, like overinvestment in fiber optics network in like 98. And no one made money who did that. But consumers, you know, got tremendous benefits of all the fiber optics cables that were led, you know, throughout the country in the decades after. I feel something similar abou

This conversation with Akshat Rathi explores the concept of climate capitalism and how capitalism can be a driving force for climate change mitigation. It discusses the modification of capitalism to align with climate goals as well as the challenges of partnering with fossil fuel companies in the context of climate hardware startups, the Breakthrough Energy model, enabling factors for climate technologies, the importance of storytelling in climate tech, and Akshat's current focus as a senior reporter for Bloomberg News. TakeawaysCapitalism can be a powerful tool for addressing climate change when it is modified to align with climate goals.Understanding the limits and regulations imposed by nature is crucial in modifying capitalism for climate change.Founders should carefully consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of partnering with oil and gas companies, taking into account the availability of climate tech funding and the skills needed for their startups.Enabling factors for climate technologies include policy, finance, global diplomacy, shareholder activism, and effective storytelling.Effective storytelling is crucial for climate tech founders to communicate their ideas in a simple, compelling, and memorable way. Mentioned in the podcast:Askhat's book, Climate Capitalism: https://akshatrathi.com/book/Breakthrough Energy: https://breakthroughenergy.org/ Connect with us:Guest: https://akshatrathi.com/contact/Email us: info@climatetech360.comHost: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samiaqader  

In this monologue, Akshat talks about sterile inflammation, or leucocyte activation in the absence of inflammatory responses. These carefully regulated "internal affairs" of the immune system can be pathological or protective.

COP28 comes to a close. 200 countries came together, 100,000 people flew in, and what did they produce? A piece of text. But sometimes that piece of text can have real world consequences. In this week's episode Akshat speaks with producer Oscar Boyd about what is in the final COP28 text and the significance of agreeing to transition off of fossil fuels. Read More:  COP28 Nations Reach First-Ever Deal to Move Away From Fossil Fuels Climate Fight Takes Aim at Food in First Ever Net-Zero Plan Sign up to the Green newsletter Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Four billion people live in countries where climate change-related disasters are becoming more severe and frequent. Spending money to adapt, known as “climate adaptation finance” is a fraught topic. Who will pay for those adaptations and how, as well as a global goal on adaptation are all being discussed at COP28. To find out more, Akshat speaks with Patrick Verkooijen, head of the Global Center on Adaptation about the history of climate adaptation finance, what negotiations are taking place, and why the money promised still hasn't arrived.Read More: A quick Q&A with Patrick Verkooijen at COP28 A UN report shows that the climate adaptation gap is growing  Sign up to the Green newsletter Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, hello! When two driven youngsters started cleaning up a beach in India - it has now turned into over 25,000 volunteers and over 450 tons of waste collected. Their drive and passion is incredible - and the best part is - they're just getting started. Never miss an episode by following us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠! Don't forget to⁠⁠⁠⁠ turn on notifications⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠leave us a review⁠⁠⁠⁠! Good Garbage Episode 43 Presented by Pakka

Tripling renewables is one of the goals the COP28 discussions are circling around. It sounds good, but what will meeting it actually entail? Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF joins Akshat to break down where more investments are needed and why decarbonizing energy is the easy part.  Listen to our previous episode with Jenny Chase on solar's explosive growth Sign up to the Green newsletter Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bloomberg's Akshat Rathi joins us to make the case that capitalism can be harnessed in service of addressing the climate crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If reducing emissions from industry is the first step for carbon capture, then drawing down excess CO2 to reverse climate change is the next. This week Akshat speaks to Dr. Jennifer Wilcox, head of the US Department of Energy's office that is funding two gigantic carbon removal hubs and many small demonstration projects. They talk about why carbon removal is so complicated, crucial, and hitting the magic number $100. This is the second in a two part series about carbon management. Listen to the previous episode in this series: Big promise, little success: The state of carbon capture  Read More: Bill Gates-Backed Startup Uses Old Wood to Remove Carbon From Air Climeworks Battles Big Oil For $1 Trillion Carbon Capture Market Send us your questions about COP via zeropod@bloomberg.net and we'll try to answer them from the conference Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim, Brian Kahn, and Michelle Ma.  Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may not know Jim Hagemann Snabe by name, but he has been called Europe's top industrialist. Snabe has held leadership positions at some of the world's biggest companies like Maersk and Siemens. He is now a chairperson of Northvolt, Europe's largest battery manufacturer with 4,000 employees, $55B worth of orders and the competitive edge of greener batteries. Akshat spoke with Jim Snabe at the Bloomberg Tech Summit in London about how industrial behemoths like Maersk and Siemens can meet climate goals, whether zero-emission shipping will ever be a reality, and whether Northvolt can ever outcompete the Chinese battery industry. Send your questions about COP to zeropod@bloomberg.net and we'll try to answer them from the conference. Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The U.S. is spending billions on carbon capture as a climate solution, but is it realistic? The method has been around for 50 years and used primarily as a way to extract more oil. To find out how and if carbon capture can work as a climate solution, Akshat speaks with Emily Grubert, a professor at Notre Dame about what tech demonstrations have actually demonstrated and where this precious resource should be deployed. This is the first in a two part series about carbon management.  Read More  Occidental Quietly Ditched World's Biggest Carbon Capture Plant What Carbon Capture Failures Say About Its Future Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey Listen More  A kingdom built on oil now controls the world's climate progress Peak oil is here. Well, maybe. Vicki Hollub is selling net zero oil, do you buy it?  Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Industrial Talk is onsite at Hexagon LIVE and talking to Akshat Sharma, Monitoring and Controls Manager at ITT, Inc. about sensor technology providing asset condition insights.  Here are some quick points: Industrial innovation and collaboration. 0:03 Scott MacKenzie interviews Akshot Sharma from ITT at Hexagon Live, discussing innovation and collaboration in the industrial industry. Akshot Sharma discusses industrial control wireless communications and IoT experience. Vibration monitoring and data analytics in industrial settings. 3:48 Akshot discusses how advancements in sensor technology can improve asset maintenance and reduce downtime. Akshot explains how J five software digitizes operator rounds, allowing for real-time vibration data collection and automation. Vibration technicians live in a world of information overload, similar to data analytics, where they must interpret and make sense of the vibration data they collect. Vibration monitoring and alert system for industrial equipment. 7:59 Akshot explains how the iAlert system provides valuable insights into machine vibration, including the ability to detect misalignment issues and predict potential faults. The iAlert system uses AI to analyze FFT data and detect faults in real-time, providing proactive notifications to prevent equipment failure. Akshot explains how the device can detect faults on a pump and motor by linking data from both sensors, providing real-time monitoring and proactive notifications. Akshot highlights the device's security features, including encrypted data transfer and storage, to protect customer networks and data. Industrial IoT solutions for predictive maintenance. 14:18 The company's device can detect faults in motors within 5 minutes of installation, and the analytics platform can recognize issues and faults immediately. The company is exploring the use of AI to enhance the fault detection system, particularly in recognizing baselines and feature characteristics for accurate fault detection. Scott MacKenzie interviews Speaker 3 about their company, iDASH alert, and their innovative solutions for the industry. MacKenzie and Akshot discuss the importance of reaching out to iDASH alert for more information and to learn more about their products. Also, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy! AKSHAT SHARMA'S CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshat-sharma-3646309b/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/itt/ Company Website: https://www.itt.com/home THE...

Peak oil is here, or is it? Depends on how you measure, but at least one person is sure crude isn't coming back. This week Akshat speaks with Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling about why he thinks the world has reached peak crude oil demand, what comes next, and what it all has to do with the American soap opera Dallas.  Read more  David's original article: Peak Oil Has Finally Arrived. No, Really Not everyone agrees: The Harsh Truth: We're Using More Oil Than Ever Latest IEA forecasts: Global Oil Demand to Reach Its Peak This Decade, IEA Says Read or pre-order Akshat's book Climate Capitalism Listen Listen to the interview with IEA head Fatih Birol  Listen to the interview about EVs and oil demand with Colin McKraccher Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is now cheaper to save the world than destroy it. But is capitalism up to the challenge of preventing the climate crisis?  In his new book Climate Capitalism, Zero host Akshat Rathi introduces a dozen people who are already steering capitalism to solve the climate crisis: from the engineer who shaped China's electric car policies and the politician who helped make net-zero a UK law to the CEO who fought off a takeover attempt so he could stick with a sustainability strategy. Akshat argues that not only is capitalism capable of taking on the climate crisis, but harnessing it is the only way to solve the climate crisis in the time we have available.  And yet while some improvements have been made over the past few years, the world is off track to meet its 2050 climate targets. So today on Zero, Bloomberg's Greener Living editor Kira Bindrim sits down with Akshat to discuss his new book, and asks him: If climate capitalism is so doable, why does it seem so difficult?  Read more:  Order Akshat's new book, Climate Capitalism Listen to the interview with Fatih Birol that Akshat mentions  Hear Akshat and Kira talk about the reality of carbon footprints Read a transcript of this episode Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Anna Mazarakis, Gilda di Carli and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The rise of electric cars is staggering. In 2016, just 700,000 electric cars were sold worldwide, this year it'll be over 14 million. However, we are still off-track to meet climate goals. Colin McKerracher, head of Advanced Transport at BloombergNEF, joins Zero to discuss how electric cars can get on track to meet net-zero targets, why China has succeeded where others haven't, and when we'll finally see more electric cars on the roads than those burning fossil fuels.  Read more:  China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles Electric Vehicle Sales Top $1 Trillion in Wake-Up Call for Carmakers Electric Cars Are Winning Out Because of Consumers, Not Politicians  Pre-order Akshat's new book, Climate Capitalism Read a transcript of this episode.   Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are two wheels better than four? Can cutting commuting cap carbon consumption? And where's all the clean energy coming from? There are many climate numbers out there that we don't get to talk about on Zero but that deserve attention. In this bonus episode, host Akshat Rathi and producers Christine Driscoll and Oscar Boyd talk about some of their favorite stats showing people taking action on the climate crisis. More Links:  Electric Vehicle Output Report 2023 — BloombergNEF People who work from home all the time ‘cut emissions by 54%' against those in office — The Guardian Electricity Market Report – Update 2023 — International Energy Agency You can pre-order Akshat's book here. Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Setting world records. Combing through warehouses of old electronics. Seeding the Chinese solar industry from afar. This is the life of Martin Green, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and the director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. Green's work on solar panel design made the modern solar industry possible: 90% of solar panels made last year were based on his designs. He's still going strong, too, regularly breaking new records in the pursuit of the perfect solar panel. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with the man many call “the godfather of solar” to hear firsthand how it happened, the next record he wants to break and whether solar panels are destined for space.  Read more:  Making Solar Panels Is 'Horrible' Business. The US Still Wants It. (Bloomberg) Listen to Akshat's conversation with Jenny Chase (Apple Podcasts) Solar Power Investment Set to Surpass Oil Production Spending This Year (Bloomberg) China Leaves Everyone Behind in Race for Renewable Energy (Bloomberg)  A transcript of this episode. Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Jill Namatsi, David Stringer, Jenny Chase and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.