Andrew Feldman on Building a Chip 58x Larger Than Nvidia's

**Andrew Feldman** (0:00)
The demand for AI has outpaced everybody's expectation, everybody's forecast, and so everybody's chasing. They're chasing chips, they're chasing memory, or they're chasing data centers. OpenAI, we announced in January, a huge partnership, one of the biggest deals done in Silicon Valley history. We'll be doing more than $20 billion with hard work for them over the next several years. I'm concerned that they are ways frequently for Nvidia to exercise market strength. They're ways for Nvidia to use their balance sheet to limit competition. We have a chance for our children or the next generation, not only to not die from cancer, but to not know anybody who died from cancer.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:49)
Andrew Feldman, welcome to Sourcery.

**Andrew Feldman** (0:51)
Well, thank you so much for having me.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:53)
We are out here in Paris at Rays.

**Andrew Feldman** (0:56)
Pretty okay, huh?

**Molly O'Shea** (0:57)
It's pretty okay. I also heard you're one of the most popular people here.

**Andrew Feldman** (1:01)
Wow, that would be first in my life. So, it's nice of you to say.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:09)
A big theme, though, is, and we were talking about this just off camera, is hardware is cool. Semiconductors are cool. Everything is in fashion now.

**Andrew Feldman** (1:17)
We are in fashion, we're in demand, we're hard to get.
It's a big change. I think what's happened is the demand for AI has outpaced everybody's expectation, everybody's forecast. So, everybody's chasing. They're chasing chips, they're chasing memory, or they're chasing data centers.
There's an opportunity to invent new things, different architectures. It's really a time of a Cambrian explosion of ideas. That's really fun.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:51)
So you were at RAYS last year. I remember this because I think you had the biggest booth here. There was a fence around it.
And a lot of people. What is the biggest difference between last year and this year?

**Andrew Feldman** (2:03)
Well, I think last year was their first year, right? And I think there are more people here, there are more participants. So there are more attendees, there are more companies participating. I think people are participating in a bigger way.
I think the dinner last night at the...

**Molly O'Shea** (2:22)
Secret location.

**Andrew Feldman** (2:23)
The secret location called Versailles was sort of awesome. You know, we spent a lot of time in the digital world and the people, we talk about AI. To go look at something that illiterate masons made 400 years ago, right?
And to sit in it and to enjoy the grandeur is extraordinary, right? This wasn't AI, this wasn't EDA design or CAD, or these guys with pen and paper communicating with, you know, masons and other tradesmen who couldn't read. And they built something unbelievably beautiful. And that was really fun.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:01)
And so you're going to be on stage this year. What are you mainly going to talk about?

**Andrew Feldman** (3:05)
I'm on stage with Sachin from OpenAI.
You know, we announced in January a huge partnership, one of the biggest deals done in Silicon Valley history. We'll be doing more than $20 billion of hardware for them over the next several years. We'll talk a little bit about deploying hardware and fast AI, and how important fast inference is in the emerging sort of inference AI landscape.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:34)
Inference is a hot topic. Everyone loves inference.

**Andrew Feldman** (3:36)
Yeah, we make AI with training, right? And we use AI with inference. And so as the models and as the AI we made becomes useful, everybody wants to use it. And inference is the mechanism through which we use it. And so now we have smart AI. People want to use it. And when they want to use it, they want to use it and they want it to be fast. And that's where we come in.
And where the fast is not by a little bit, but by 20x.
And so everybody is using their AI, they're trying new things, they're deploying GPT or cloud code or one of these super models. And it's an explosion of building, of trying new things, of a new way to work. It's pretty fun.

**Molly O'Shea** (4:28)
So we're nearly two months after your IPO, and there was one post that I thought was really cool. You posted that you had a very large chip on your shoulder.
And it was quite literal and physical.

**Andrew Feldman** (4:46)
I hope that now that we're running a public company, that I wouldn't lose sort of the self-deprecating humor or whatever that I enjoy, the sort of tone in my social posts. And so we put a giant chip, we put this on my shoulder like this, and we built a harness for it. And yeah, that was a fun one.