Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / Investing in Quantum and Physical AI

Transcript

Investing in Quantum and Physical AI · THE DAILY BRIEF

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What interests me so much is within your podcast, you've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: just been speaking to a family, you've backed Logical all
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: about the future of quantum. Yeah, have been deep diving
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: on this. So when you see these sorts of iterations
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and breakthroughs, what do you make of it? Where is
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the opportunity for you in the seed in the series? A.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: First of all, great question. As you know, I am
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: a long term, early stage investor and I like to
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: look for companies that could be worth ten, twenty thirty
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: billion dollars. There's very few of those in the world,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: and I think that led me to quantum now almost
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: a year and a half ago, thinking it's sort of
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: the next wave of innovation after AI, and the potential
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: is profound once and if we build these quantum computers,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: and mind you, it's a category where the people have
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: been toiling away for thirty years without much success, but
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: the best experts in the world believe that in the
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: next decade we will begin to see real advancements towards
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: building the first scaled quantum computer. And what comes out
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: of that is huge advancements in financial services, in pharmaceutical
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: and all these other categories that are going to change
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the world in any profound way.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: When you think about IBM's role here and they've come
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: on the show and said by twenty twenty nine, are
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: quantum computer is going to be in there in the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: world and achieving real things. Then from the early stage founder,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: how are you seeking them out and where can they
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: add to the quantum process? Sure? So, I think the
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: big goal.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Right now is people are trying to get to ten
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: thousand cubits so many different hardware types six or seven
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: based on how you've cut it, and I think your
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: most important researchers and PhDs in the world are trying
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: to get to ten thousand, one hundred thousand skilled cubits.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: That is the march that everyone is working towards, and
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: we're rooting for them.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Alexi, I'm really interested in like the business model, which
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I know is a bit of a dry way of
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: looking at it. But when we think about compute for
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: data centers in the AI context, people lease that capacity, right.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I think about the work that Google is doing in quantum.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: It uses its quantum machines in house for research. So
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: with what HSBC did with IBM, and when you're looking
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: to invest in the earlier stages of this field. How
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: do quantum computing companies give their services to a financial
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: institution like an HSBC. What's the model for that?
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: That's a great question. So I think we're going to
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: see a few things. First of all, right now people
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: will rent out their quantum computers. You're seeing prices from
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: ten thousand to you know, in different cases, fifty thousand
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: dollars per per per hour, et cetera. So people will
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: rent them out. I actually think it could be a
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: profound business model shift, which is whatever is created with
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: that quantum computer, whatever IP, whatever technology that comes out
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: of using those advancements in compute that you could take
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: a revenue stream forever. So that is sort of an
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: interesting shift. Somebody once said to me that whoever builds
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: the first quantum computer almost overnight could become Pfizer because
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: the compute of what's possible for pharmaceuticals could be that profound.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: So it gives you a sense of the shift, which
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: is you could potentially take a stream of the IP
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: that comes out of quantum computers as a new business model.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Entirely, Alexi, you are one of many I would say
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: that is arguing that physical AI is having a chat
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: GPT moment. Physical AI is now a pretty broad category.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: So which vertical within that would you say that is
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: most true?
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Of great question? So what I get excited about as
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: everyone was running at digital AI, as you've seen the
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: dollars pour into the category and inspired our venture fund,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: early stage venture fund is very thesis driven. So for us,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: what physical AI means is taking big foundational models that
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: now exist credibly that can interact with things like sensors
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: and robotics and create smart devices everywhere in our physical world.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: If you think about just our infrastructure. We all live
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: because of our infrastructure, our water, our pipeline, our electricity,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: our roads, and we're getting to the point where we
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: can no longer be reactive, which is what we almost
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: like the Roman times, something breaks, you go and fix
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: it to becoming predictive about our ecosystem around us, our
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: world and infrastructure around us. And that is what we
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: mean by physical AI. It inspired. We're really looking for
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: the intersection of observability and predictability in the environment around us.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: And looking at your poor photio companies, you've already made
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: some key bets. Yes, we're thinking about bright AI TC labs.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: What is it that these companies that we see on
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: our screen now have offered you from the seed in
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: series a area you feel hasn't been adopted already by big industry,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: by big companies already listed.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Sure, I'll start with bright Ai. Bright Ai. Alex, the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: CEO is an absolute technical genius, the godfather of IoT,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and he invented a sticker. There's now two hundred and
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: fifty thousand already deployed of these stickers, and they can
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: go on anything from a utility poll to a water pipeline.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: And here's what it does. It then sends an observability
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: layer back to whichever company has bought these stickers and
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: can say, now proactively, the utility pole is twenty five
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: degrees slanted, let's go fix it before it falls on
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: an electrical wire and takes power grids out. Literally, men
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: and women walk up and down utility poles right now
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: and observe them physically and then fix things versus being
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: predictive and fixing it. In the water world, will literally
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: find inside pipelines the leaks and right now today we
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: lose six billion gallons of treated water, which is fifteen
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: million homes of water. Think about that, every single day
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: because of leaks and verse and Bright AI is the
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: sensors that we'll get ahead of that seth BRIGHTAI a
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: company we're really rooting for another company, as we said,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: with TC Labs, which is an incredible team out of Google.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: They're trying to save one gigaton of carbon each year.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And what they do is go take the energy we
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: already have. So think about this, because of AI, we
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: need wild amounts of energy. Right, There's not enough energy
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: is the headline, and so they are going to the
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: infrastructure already have oil refineries and not only helping make
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: them be more efficient using AI so that they can
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: produce more energy, but also more carbon friendly. So that's
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: tc lobs. And then finally tree Swift is the data
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: set of sensors for our forests, the forests of the
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: lungs of the planet, and they are measuring them so
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: that we can get ahead of forest fires and major
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: storms that then take power out. So, as you see,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: you're very forwarde binking and physical AI