Thermal Breakthrough, with David Tearse (CEO of Karman Industries)

Mo Islam (0:06)

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Valley of Depth. Today, I sit down with David Tearse, co-founder and CEO of Karman Industries, to talk about a problem that's becoming impossible to ignore as AI explodes, heat. As data centers scale to multi-gigawatt AI factories, thermal management is quickly turning into a real constraint on uptime, on cost, on deployment timelines, and increasingly on regulation. David breaks down why Karman built its heat processing unit and why improving the thermal side of the equation could matter as much as new power generation. We also get into Karman's beachhead in data centers, what customers are telling him right now, and why he sees thermal efficiency as a quiet but meaningful national security lever. That and much, much more. Let's jump in. David, Cody, great to have you on the show.

David Tearse (0:54)

Nice to be here. Thanks for the invite, Mo.

Mo Islam (0:56)

For those who's just listening on audio, tell us about our special guest who just joined.

David Tearse (1:02)

Yes, I have my four-month-old Bernice Mountain dog puppy here in my office. So I wanted to give the viewers here a little preview of what maybe is some background noise during the podcast here. But yes, growing fast, 40 pounds already.

Mo Islam (1:18)

Well, so I saw you post a photo, I think it was earlier today, of Cody in the office. And you're going to do monthly photos to gauge his size.

David Tearse (1:28)

That's right. I was thinking, I was like, I could put the little line on the wall as he keeps growing taller and taller. But we are opening our new facility here starting this summer. So it would, if sadly we would be moving out of this space and we would have all the little, the height lines as we move out.

Mo Islam (1:45)

Yeah. Well, I love all the dogs I've met in the sort of the corridor, the LA West side corridor, because there's a lot of great ones. So I haven't met Cody in person, so I'm excited to meet him in person.

David Tearse (1:57)

Next time you're here.

Mo Islam (1:58)

Okay. Well, David, just to kick things off, we're going to get into Karman. We're going to talk about what you're building now. But I am curious, if you were to introduce yourself in one sentence, engineer, founder, climate technologist, how would you describe yourself?

David Tearse (2:15)

Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, I am definitely an engineer at heart, but I would say I grew up using Legos, and I just love building stuff. And I am not the best at actually building the stuff, so I brought a great team around me to actually go execute on that vision. But at the end of the day, I just want to build cool things with good people that have a positive impact on society.

Mo Islam (2:42)

Well, I have had the privilege of knowing you for a number of years, and before Karman, you spent some time earlier in your career at a company called Skyrise, which is also based in the LA area.

I think back to that time period and I think back to now, and now we're looking at a world where AI is exploding, the energy grid is under stress, space is becoming increasingly commercial and likely going to have the most valuable company in the world. What moment do you think we're living through right now, back from even just a few years back or when we first met?

David Tearse (3:22)

Yeah, I mean, I do think that we were in this long period of great technical innovations, but everything was improvements. You had these Moore's Law type technologies improving, but you didn't have things that were fundamentally unlocking certain new categories. I think SpaceX definitely did that. But now when we actually think about how long ago that really was when we could start putting commercial satellites up into space, you know, it's now been maybe a decade plus of real reliable launch capabilities. And so there was many of these years where we just saw things keeping incrementally improving and life was getting better and technology was advancing. And then I think we saw this crazy unlock with Chachi PT just kind of starting to scratch that the surface of what was possible. And now we're starting to really see that accelerate. I still think we're very much in the early innings, but this is going to be one of those fundamental changes in society when you start looking at the steam engine, electricity, these big inflection points. I think you're going to see that 10 years from now, looking back as this was a big moment in civilization.