In this episode of Founded & Funded, Ben Gilbert, co-host of the Acquired podcast, sits down with Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe-AI, the company building what it calls AI factories, including its massive campus in Abilene, Texas, which are designed to power this new era of intelligence.

In this conversation, Ben and Chase explore the physical reality behind today's AI revolution. Why modern AI workloads demand entirely new infrastructure. How energy has become the primary bottleneck to scaling intelligence. What it takes to compress multi-year building timelines into months. And how Crusoe's energy-first philosophy, from capturing flared methane to siting facilities near abundant wind power, shaped its path to building one of the world's largest AI computing campuses.

This is a must-watch for anyone building in AI or rethinking infrastructure for the next era of intelligence.

Full Transcript: https://www.madrona.com/the-infrastructure-of-intelligence-inside-crusoes-ai-factory-in-texas

Chapters:
(00:00) - Introduction
(02:46) - Scale and Power Requirements
(03:55) - Job Creation and Construction Progress
(05:11) - Creative Solutions and Manufacturing Capabilities
(06:25) - Modular Design and Infrastructure Optimization
(07:42) - Data Center Construction and Assembly Process
(09:07) - Technical Infrastructure and Cooling System
(10:33) - Power Sourcing and Renewable Energy
(11:56) - Wind Energy Utilization and AI Infrastructure
(13:16) - AI Workload Flexibility and Energy Considerations
(14:38) - Entrepreneurial Journey and Company Evolution
(16:11) - Background in AI and Transition to Data Centers
(17:40) - Early Business Model and Bitcoin Mining
(19:14) - Infrastructure Evolution and Future Outlook
(21:17) - Cloud Platform Services

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Jon Turow hosts a live conversation with Carina Hong, Founder & CEO of Axiom, and Byron Cook, VP & Distinguished Scientist at AWS.

Carina is building foundation models trained on verified proofs instead of human-written reasoning. Byron leads AWS's automated reasoning group, which secures massive infrastructure with mathematically proven systems.

During this live IA Summit conversation, they explore what it means to build AI that actually reasons and why verified intelligence is critical for domains where being right really matters.

They dive into:
1) Why today's models fail at objective truth in high-stakes domains
2) How verification bridges the gap between correctness and scale
3) What superintelligent reasoning engines might unlock
4) The future of AI in finance, chips, healthcare, and beyond

This is a must-watch for any founder or builder working in AI, infrastructure, or high-consequence systems.

Full Transcript: https://www.madrona.com/can-we-trust-ai-the-future-of-verified-reasoning-in-high-stakes-systems

Chapters:
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:02:01) Meet Carina Hong & Byron Cook
(00:04:07) Why Next-Gen Reasoning Models?
(00:05:59) Objective Truth & Verification in AI
(00:08:03) Formal Verification at Amazon
(00:09:40) Making Proof Tools Usable
(00:11:14) Proofs vs. Bugs: The Mathematical Approach
(00:13:25) The Market for Reasoning & Scarcity
(00:15:41) From Scarcity to Abundance in Reasoning
(00:17:47) AI Mathematicians & Scientific Breakthroughs
(00:19:59) Collaboration: AI & Human Experts
(00:22:16) Lowering the Cost of Creativity & Experimentation
(00:24:08) Broad Applications of Mathematical Reasoning
(00:25:28) Balancing Theory & Practice in AI
(00:28:14) Customer-Driven Investment in Formal Methods
(00:30:31) Building Toward Superintelligent Reasoning Engines

In this live episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar sits down with Jay Parikh, EVP of Core AI at Microsoft, to unpack the company's evolution from a software factory to an agent factory

Jay leads the team responsible for Microsoft's core AI stack, the systems that power Copilot, the tools developers rely on, like GitHub, and the infrastructure that makes large-scale AI possible. In short, his group builds the underlying tech that Microsoft and thousands of companies use to create AI-powered applications and agents.

In this conversation, Soma and Jay dive into what Jay calls the Agent Factory, which is a new paradigm reshaping how software gets built in the reasoning era. They explore how AI changes the development lifecycle, why observability and evals are becoming mission-critical for enterprises, what it means to collapse traditional engineering functions, and how organizations should prepare for a world where models, agents, and human builders all collaborate in real time.

This is a must-watch for founders, developers, and enterprise leaders who want to understand what's coming — and how to prepare for a world of real-time collaboration between humans, models, and agents.

Full Transcript: http://www.madrona.com/microsofts-agent-factory-the-future-of-ai-software-with-evp-of-core-ai-jay-parikh

Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(2:43) Jay's Background & Microsoft Role
(4:33) The Reasoning Revolution
(6:45) From Software Factory to Agent Factory
(8:38) Building the Agent Factory
(10:54) Impact on Microsoft's Future
(12:49) AI Code Generation & Productivity
(14:46) Shifting Engineering Focus with AI
(16:22) Future of Software Development
(18:17) Real-World AI Productivity Gains
(20:18) Microsoft's AI Infrastructure Investments
(24:01) Challenges with AI Evaluation & Observability
(26:12) Model Choices & Microsoft's Strategy
(28:40) Audience Q&A