No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups cover art

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

Written by: Conviction
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At this moment of inflection in technology, co-hosts Elad Gil and Sarah Guo talk to the world's leading AI engineers, researchers and founders about the biggest questions: How far away is AGI? What markets are at risk for disruption? How will commerce, culture, and society change? What’s happening in state-of-the-art in research? “No Priors” is your guide to the AI revolution. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com. Sarah Guo is a startup investor and the founder of Conviction, an investment firm purpose-built to serve intelligent software, or "Software 3.0" companies. She spent nearly a decade incubating and investing at venture firm Greylock Partners. Elad Gil is a serial entrepreneur and a startup investor. He was co-founder of Color Health, Mixer Labs (which was acquired by Twitter). He has invested in over 40 companies now worth $1B or more each, and is also author of the High Growth Handbook.© Copyright 2023 Conviction. All Rights Reserved. Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Science
Episodes
  • Why Diffusion Will Win AI Inference with Inception Co-Founder and CEO Stefano Ermon

    Why Diffusion Will Win AI Inference with Inception Co-Founder and CEO Stefano Ermon
    Sep 18 2026
    As generative AI hits hardware and latency bottlenecks, Stanford professor, diffusion pioneer, and Inception co-founder and CEO Stefano Ermon is betting on a radical new architecture. Stefano joins Sarah Guo to talk about Inception, and how his team is applying diffusion architecture beyond images and video into discrete text and code generation. Stefano explains the limitations of autoregressive LLMs, as well as why parallel token generation in diffusion models offers superior inference scaling and hardware utilization on standard GPUs. He also shares details about Inception’s Mercury models, real-world voice agent applications, the software stack required to serve diffusion-based models at scale, academia’s role at the frontier of AI innovations, and why the next era of AI competition will be defined by efficiency. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @StefanoErmon | @_inception_ai Chapters: 00:00 – Stefano Ermon Introduction 00:35 – Research Background 02:54 – Starting Inception 05:59 – Why Diffusion Beats Autoregressive 11:10 – Discrete vs. Continuous Modalities 13:19 – Inception Today 16:45 – Where Speed Wins 17:31 – Inception Customer Base 18:49 – Interaction with Hardware Landscape 19:34 – Inception and the Broader Industry 21:41 – Data Compression and Structure 24:45 – Controllability of Diffusion Modeles 27:25 – Emergent Capabilities at Scale 29:02 – Future Workload Split Between Diffusion vs. Traditional 30:03 – Adoption Challenges 31:44 – Hiring and Team Organization 32:50 – Recursive Self Improvement 34:02 – Resource Allocation 35:10 – Impact of Academia 38:13 – Conclusion
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    38 mins
  • Coinbase’s Everything Exchange: Agentic Finance, Stablecoins, and Tokenization with CEO Brian Armstrong

    Coinbase’s Everything Exchange: Agentic Finance, Stablecoins, and Tokenization with CEO Brian Armstrong
    Sep 10 2026
    From the tokenization of real-world assets to funding research on anti-aging therapeutics, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong is focused on solving meta-problems for the benefit of society. Brian joins Elad Gil this episode to discuss the intersections of artificial intelligence, crypto rails, and biotechnology. He details Coinbase’s vision for agentic finance, as well as how Coinbase is becoming the ‘Everything Exchange’, which includes tokenized real-world stocks, stablecoin payment adoption, and prediction markets. Brian also introduces his new venture, New Limit, a company founded to tackle longevity through epigenetic reprogramming, and outlines initial therapeutic programs and the roadmap toward clinical trials. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @brian_armstrong | @Coinbase Chapters: 00:00 – Cold Open Trailer 00:45 – Brian Armstrong Introduction 01:13 – Coinbase and the Everything Exchange 05:52 – Agentic Commerce 10:00 – AI and Crypto 10:49 – AI Inside Coinbase 15:39 – Productivity and Company Size 17:26 – The Everything Exchange and Tokenization 20:53 – Prediction Markets 23:15 – Introducing New Limit 34:17 – Looking Forward Five Years 40:24 – Special Economic Zones 44:26 – Conclusion
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    45 mins
  • Redefining Chip Architecture with Arm CEO Rene Haas

    Redefining Chip Architecture with Arm CEO Rene Haas
    Sep 3 2026
    From data center orchestrators to AGI and robotics, CPUs remain the heart of modern computing. Arm CEO Rene Haas joins Elad Gil and Sarah Guo to explore how Arm is positioned at the epicenter of AI-driven demands for compute. Rene explains Arm’s position in the chip supply chain, and how Arm transitioned from an IP licensing model to producing physical chips like the Arm AGI CPU for Meta. He also discusses bottlenecks in hardware supply chains, SoftBank’s ecosystem and capital strategy, why US semiconductor manufacturing independence is critical, the future of robotics, and why CPUs remain crucial for executing AI workloads. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @renehaas237 | @Arm Chapters: 00:00 – Cold Open Trailer 00:49 – Rene Haas Introduction 01:14 – Arm and Chip Supply Chain 02:37 – Shift from IP to Manufacturing CPUs 04:23 – CPU IP and Customers 06:55 – AI Adoption at Arm 10:15 – Changes in Chip Time to Market 13:27 – Data Center Buildout Bottleneck 15:13 – Softbank Leverage and Capital Strategy 17:43 – Softbank Portfolio Overview 20:13 – Robotics Opportunities for Arm 24:49 – US Manufacturing Protectionism 28:59 – Data Center Backlash 32:30 – Arm Outlook 33:31 – CPU Opportunity 37:06 – Conclusion
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    37 mins
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