Charles Fisher is the co-founder and CEO of Unlearn AI. Charles’ problem is this: How do you build an AI model that can predict human health? Charles and his colleagues have built a predictive model of health that is already being used in clinical trials, and might one day be deployed to predict individuals’ health … Read more
Laura Modi is the founder and CEO of Bobbie, a company that makes baby formula and sells it directly to parents. Laura’s problem is this: how do you launch a startup in a highly regulated industry that has pretty much been a duopoly for decades? Part of Laura’s answer is marketing, which raises another question: … Read more
Xiao Wang is the founder of a company called Boundless. Xiao’s problem is this: How do you make it cheaper and easier for people to navigate the U.S. immigration system? Xiao moved to the U.S. from China when he was three years-old. For many years, he took for granted that immigration was slow, complicated, and … Read more
Henrik Stiesdal got his start in wind power back in the 70s. The price of oil had gone way up, and he wanted to help his parents figure out a cheaper source of electricity for their farm. He went on to help create the modern wind industry. Five decades later, he’s still pushing the frontier. … Read more
One of the most amazing things about ChatGPT and other, similar AI models: Nobody really understands what they can do. Not even the people who build them. On today’s show, we talk with Sam Bowman about some of the mysteries at the heart of so-called large language models. Sam is on the faculty at NYU, … Read more
Dan Friedmann is the CEO of Carbon Engineering. The company is at the frontier of a new industry, direct air capture. They just broke ground on a big plant in Texas that will pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Dan’s problem is this: how do you bring the price of direct air capture way … Read more
Does flying have to be bad for the environment? Val Miftakhov, the founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, doesn’t think so. His company built a plane that’s powered by hydrogen fuel, which produces zero carbon emissions. It had a successful test flight earlier this year and Miftakhov hopes it will be ready for commercial use by … Read more
Andrew Mason is the founder and CEO of Descript. Descript’s software has made editing audio and video much simpler. The company recently received a large investment from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. It’s a sign that Descript is moving toward using generative AI to generate words and pictures. What will that mean for the people who … Read more
Andrew Ponec is co-founder and CEO of the energy storage company Antora Energy. Andrew’s problem is this: How can you store renewable energy in a way that is cheap enough and reliable enough for industrial use? He thinks the solution may be storing that energy as heat, in big blocks of graphite. See omnystudio.com/listener for … Read more
Tammy Hsu and Michelle Zhu are the cofounders of Huue. Their problem is this: how do you get bacteria to produce indigo dye? And how do you do it cheaply and reliably enough to replace the toxic petrochemical process that’s currently used to dye billions of pairs of jeans a year? They’re working with denim … Read more