Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) New data showing ChatGPT's impressive growth since mid-2024 2) Was ChatGPT voice mode responsible? 3) How important ChatGPT's growth is for OpenAI 4) How seriously DeepSeek challenged ChatGPT's traffic numbers 5) Does brand matter or are bots interchangeable? 6) OpenAI does the Reddit AMA 7) Experimenting with OpenAI's Deep Research 8) Why AI reasoning methods contain so much promise 9) New Gemini releases 10) Weird Gemini naming conventions 11) Big Technology in New York Times' Klarna story 12) Are the AI Super Bowl ads a good idea?
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Episode Overview:
This episode features a relaxed, peer-to-peer conversation between two media entrepreneurs—African Tech Roundup co-founder and executive producer Andile Masuku, and Money & Moves founder and writer Tinashe Mukogo.
They explore how Mukogo draws on his background in consulting (Deloitte), corporate venture capital (Next47), and organisational finance (Siemens), along with his CA and INSEAD MBA credentials, to deliver sophisticated yet accessible analysis of African businesses.
What starts as an origin story and a look into his approach to business journalism expands into a deep dive on turning media assets into sustainable businesses. Mukogo and Masuku explore strategic considerations, revenue model challenges, and innovation opportunities in building independent media ventures that balance public interest with commercial viability.
Key topics:
- Leveraging corporate experience for credible financial analysis
- Strategic approaches to finding and maintaining "blue ocean" market positions
- The geography advantage: How distance can aid editorial independence
- Business model innovation in African media markets
- Building personal brands alongside institutional credibility
- The role of independent media in developing investment ecosystems
Notable points:
1. How geographic distance from Zimbabwe enables more objective coverage of major corporations
2. The limitations of traditional advertising models when covering potential advertisers
3. The strategic value of building long-term credibility before monetisation
4. Why individual voices often carry more trust than institutional media
5. The "billionaire model" and its implications for editorial independence
Listen in for an unfiltered discussion between two media entrepreneurs on the practical challenges and strategic opportunities in building independent financial media properties in African markets.
Joel Krooswyk, Federal Chief Technology Officer at GitLab joins the show to discuss some of his predictions for the Federal government this year including his thoughts on the proliferation of Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs), AI in software development, and the renewed focus that agencies will place on cloud technology. We also discuss his thoughts on compliance as a strategic enabler and why DevSecOps will continue to grow in popularity.
Nikita Shamgunov is a native of Russia, coming to the US for grad school in 2005. Eventually he worked at Microsoft on the SQL Server product. A fun fact - Nikita quit business school on the first day, and decided to join Facebook and find his future co-founder. All of this worked out, and he and his co-founder built SingleStore, which is one of the highest valued companies at YC. Outside of tech, he was a semi-professional athlete in Ping Pong, achieving the status of Top 10 in Washington State back when he was at Microsoft.
Nikita completed his "tour of duty" at SingleStore, and post that, he joined a venture fund. He pitched incubating an idea of his at the fund, which was rolling up all Postgres instances in the world. He started to engineer an approach, the team, and the architecture - and did so in some very unique, and deliberate ways.
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai.
Dubai is the new global center of gravity, connecting the world in a way few places can. As a hub for trade, tourism, innovation, and finance, Dubai offers the ideal environment for startups and scale-ups to thrive. Entrepreneurs find a home here, whether in health-tech, fintech, AI, or renewable energy, supported by SME-focused programs that empower high-potential companies to scale globally. From flexible regulations to tax incentives, world-class infrastructure to access to global investors managing $1 trillion, Dubai understands what businesses need to scale fast.
For today’s episode, we are speaking with Mohammad Albalooshi, CEO of the DIFC Innovation Hub, a driving force behind Dubai’s innovation ecosystem and a key player in empowering startups and scaleups across the MEASA region.
Questions:
Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.
What is the DIFC Innovation Hub, and what role does it play in driving innovation in Dubai and the broader region? How did it come to be, and what vision does it fulfill?
Can you tell us more about the Dubai AI Campus? What is its mission, and how does it support the development of AI-driven innovation?
So I’m an entrepreneur looking to build the next big thing in fintech — how does the DIFC Innovation Hub support startups and scaleups in this space? Can you share some examples of companies that have benefited from your ecosystem?
Dubai is positioning itself as a global hub for fintech and innovation. How does the DIFC contribute to making this vision a reality?
Is it necessary for entrepreneurs to be physically located in Dubai or the MEASA region to join the DIFC Innovation Hub and its programs, or can global innovators participate from anywhere in the world?
What are the Dubai AI License and the DIFC License? How do these frameworks support entrepreneurs and businesses within the innovation ecosystem?
How is DIFC planning to expand its role in the innovation ecosystem over the next 5-10 years?
What new programs or initiatives can we expect to see from the DIFC Innovation Hub to attract global talent and businesses?
What advice would you give to startups and entrepreneurs, particularly those from outside the UAE, who are considering Dubai as a base for their operations?
Rev Lebaredian is the Vice President, Omniverse & Simulation Technology at NVIDIA. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a conversation about NVIDIA's push to develop AI that understands the dynamics of the real world, including physics. In this conversation, we cover how NVIDIA is building this technology, what it might be useful for (things like robotics and building common sense into AI models), how it will change labor, and even potentially warfare. We also cover how AI videos today possess a solid understanding of the real world. Tune in for the first few minutes where we discuss Lebaredian's perspective on DeepSeek and Jevon's Paradox.
Cory O'Daniel has had an interesting path to technology, growing his career in a number of cloud architect roles at Ripple, DealScience and The RealReal. He has rich experience in DevOps, the cloud and platform engineering. But outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, living in Southern California. He loves driving (and destroying) RC cars - like the ones that go 65-70 miles per hour. He jumps them off a lot of ramps, his highest jump behind 20 feet upwards... which of course, he landed.
Cory noticed that there is a huge knowledge gap regarding the cloud, especially during his time doing professional services. He would leave a project post completion, and see a major gap in how the client understood what was built. He and his co-founders had the idea to build a product to allow platform engineers to diagram their infra - and fuel developers engineering process.
Push is a browser-based identity security platform that detects and blocks identity attacks, enforces security controls, and monitors employee logins to cloud accounts.
Dylan Patel is the founder of SemiAnalysis, a research & analysis company specializing in semiconductors, GPUs, CPUs, and AI hardware. Nathan Lambert is a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and the author of a blog on AI called Interconnects.
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep459-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.
OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(13:28) – DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3
(35:02) – Low cost of training
(1:01:19) – DeepSeek compute cluster
(1:08:52) – Export controls on GPUs to China
(1:19:10) – AGI timeline
(1:28:35) – China’s manufacturing capacity
(1:36:30) – Cold war with China
(1:41:00) – TSMC and Taiwan
(2:04:38) – Best GPUs for AI
(2:19:30) – Why DeepSeek is so cheap
(2:32:49) – Espionage
(2:41:52) – Censorship
(2:54:46) – Andrej Karpathy and magic of RL
(3:05:17) – OpenAI o3-mini vs DeepSeek r1
(3:24:25) – NVIDIA
(3:28:53) – GPU smuggling
(3:35:30) – DeepSeek training on OpenAI data
(3:45:59) – AI megaclusters
(4:21:21) – Who wins the race to AGI?
(4:31:34) – AI agents
(4:40:16) – Programming and AI
(4:47:43) – Open source
(4:56:55) – Stargate
(5:04:24) – Future of AI
