Vamshi Ambati has spent more than two decades in AI, through the symbolic era, statistical era, and the neural wave we're experiencing today. A CMU PhD, founder of LatentStructure and Predera (which was acquired), now an investor at Virama Ventures, he's one of the sharper voices on what's actually happening under the hood of the AI boom.
We discuss a simple question: Who wins when models become cheaper and more abundant?
And try to answer this by looking at how inference spend v/s compute spend is shifting, and why inference may become the biggest infrastructure opportunity of the next decade.Vamshi explains what actually goes into the cost of a token, why AI is simultaneously getting cheaper and more expensive, and why the inference market alone could reach $1.3 trillion by 2030.
If you're building in AI or someone who wants a clear mental model of where this industry is headed, this conversation is for you.
00:00 - Trailer
0:45 - How an AI researcher thinks after 20 years
05:53 - Where enterprise AI adoption is headed
08:35 - Drawing parallels between cloud and AI
11:20 - If building is cheap, what's valuable?
13:37 - Can computing get cheaper?
16:41 - What is inference, really?
22:22 - Why coding and customer support got eaten first?
26:48 - Which technologies are overvalued and undervalued?
29:56 - An accidental entrepreneur's journey
33:15 - Why is healthcare slow to adopt technology?
38:59 - Landing Walmart as a customer
42:36 - Should founders build in services if product isn't visible?
43:47 - Is Palantir a product company or a services company?
44:15 - How to win as a forward-deployed company
46:23 - What it takes to land large enterprise customers
49:20 - Building sales muscles as a technical founder
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This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.
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