Investors · new episode 20 Oct 2026
The Generalist
Hosted by Mario Gabriele
Long conversations with investors and founders at the frontier of technology.
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Investors named as guests in the most episode titles on The Generalist.
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- 52Pete Florence: When Robots Improvise20 Oct 2026 · 1h 6mMatt Mason▶Show page
About this episode
Pete Florence and I began by agreeing that his company has an excellent name. Generalist builds AI for robots, including models that can begin learning a new task from a single demonstration. We talked about dexterity, the strange business of gathering physical experience for a machine, and what we might build if…
- 51Jaan Tallinn would like us to survive8 Oct 2026 · 1h 7mJaan Tallinn▶Show page
About this episode
Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa, and a co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and Future of Life Institute . For more than fifteen years, he has been among the most consistent voices arguing that advanced AI poses an extinction-level risk to humanity. Jaan became…
- 50Periodic Labs: A chatbot walks into a laboratory29 Sept 2026 · 60 minGoogle▶Show page
About this episode
Liam Fedus and Dogus Cubuk are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Periodic Labs , a startup building “synthesis superintelligence.” In practice, that means an AI system that closes the loop between hypothesis, experiment, and learning. Liam previously led post-training at OpenAI, where he was one of the creators of…
- 49An Ex-SpaceX Engineer on Elon Musk, Starship, and Building a $1B-Valued Startup (Scott Morton, Founder & CEO of Revel)8 Sept 2026 · 57 minElon Musk▶Show page
About this episode
Scott Morton is the founder and CEO of Revel , a software platform for testing and controlling complex hardware systems. Before founding the company in 2024, Scott spent nearly a decade at SpaceX building control software for Falcon 9 and Starship. That experience helped him recognize a broader problem: while rockets,…
- 4838x in Ten Months: Inside One of Fintech’s Fastest-Growing Infrastructure Companies (Farooq Malik, CEO of Rain)18 Aug 2026 · 1h 15mOn DeckCharles Yoo-Naut▶Show page
About this episode
Farooq Malik is the co-founder and CEO of Rain, a financial infrastructure company powered by stablecoins. Growing up in an immigrant family, Farooq saw firsthand the friction involved in moving money across borders. Alongside co-founder Charles Yoo-Naut, Farooq spent years building infrastructure before stablecoins…
- 47AI Got Good at Language. Now It’s Learning the Language of Life. (Eric Nguyen, Co-Founder and CEO of Radical Numerics)4 Aug 2026 · 1h 22m▶Show page
About this episode
Eric Nguyen is the co-founder and CEO of Radical Numerics , an AI research lab that has raised $50 million to train models directly on biological data. Before starting the company, Eric helped develop Evo and Evo 2, large-scale genome language models trained on unlabeled DNA sequences. Radical Numerics is now building…
- 46The Token Budget Problem Nobody Is Talking About (Matan Grinberg, Co-Founder & CEO of Factory)30 Jun 2026 · 1h 17m▶Show page
About this episode
Matan Grinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Factory , an AI company valued at $1.5 billion that helps enterprises like Nvidia, Morgan Stanley, and Adobe automate software development through “Droids,” intelligent agents designed to streamline software engineering. Before Factory, Matan spent more than a decade in…
- 45Own or Be Owned: Why Every Company Needs Its Own AI Model (Yash Patil, Co-Founder & CEO of Applied Compute)23 Jun 2026 · 1h 8m▶Show page
About this episode
Yash Patil is the 23-year-old founder and CEO of Applied Compute, a $1.3 billion company helping businesses train custom AI models on their own data: smaller, cheaper, and purpose-built for the work they actually do. Before founding the company, Yash dropped out of Stanford and spent two years at OpenAI working on…
- 44What America Is Missing Between Sanctions and Nuclear War (Bryon Hargis, Co-Founder & CEO of Castelion)2 Jun 2026 · 1h 16m▶Show page
About this episode
Bryon Hargis is the co-founder and CEO of Castelion, a defense startup building low-cost hypersonic missiles designed to be manufactured at scale. Before founding Castelion, Bryon spent more than a decade at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and nearly six years at SpaceX, where he worked on national security…
- 43“Our Goal Is to Build an Electrical Engineer.” (Davide Asnaghi, Co-Founder & CEO of Diode)19 May 2026 · 1h 12m▶Show page
About this episode
Davide Asnaghi is the co-founder and CEO of Diode , a Brooklyn-based startup using AI to design and manufacture circuit boards in the United States. Before Diode, Davide worked on Apple’s Special Projects Group and spent time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen studying Asia’s electronics manufacturing ecosystem. That…
- 42Investing Like A Mystic: How Cyan Banister Finds Outliers (Co-Founder of Long Journey Ventures)5 May 2026 · 1h 13mCyan BanisterLong Journey Ventures▶Show page
About this episode
Cyan Banister has built one of the most distinctive early-stage track records of the last fifteen years, with early bets on companies like Uber, SpaceX, DeepMind, Niantic, and Postmates. Today, she is co-founder and general partner at Long Journey Ventures , where she backs what she calls “magical weirdos.” Banister…
- 41The Future Of Drug Discovery Is 4 Billion Years Old (Viswa Colluru, Founder & CEO at Enveda)21 Apr 2026 · 1h 23mViswa Colluru▶Show page
About this episode
For decades, drug discovery has shifted away from nature and toward biology-first approaches. Viswa Colluru believes that shift was a catastrophic mistake. His company, Enveda Biosciences, has raised over $500 million to build a “search engine for nature’s chemistry.” The mission is personal: he grew up around his…
- 40How a 20-Person Startup Won Gold at the Math Olympiad, Tying With OpenAI & DeepMind (Tudor Achim, CEO of Harmonic)14 Apr 2026 · 1h 5mGoogle▶Show page
About this episode
Tudor Achim is the co-founder and CEO of Harmonic, a startup working to solve one of AI’s hardest problems: mathematical reasoning. In July 2024, Harmonic achieved gold-medal-level performance on International Math Olympiad problems alongside systems from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, but with a key difference: every…
- 3930% Of Network Engineers Are Retiring. What Happens Next? (Anil Varanasi, Co-Founder & CEO of Meter)7 Apr 2026 · 1h 11m▶Show page
About this episode
Anil Varanasi, co-founder and CEO of Meter, is building a new kind of networking company for the AI era. Alongside his brother Sunil, he has helped raise more than $250 million to challenge incumbents like Cisco with a vertically integrated approach spanning hardware, software, deployment, and ongoing operations, all…
- 38Why One Superintelligence Is More Dangerous Than a Thousand (Vincent Weisser, CEO & Co-Founder of Prime Intellect)24 Mar 2026 · 1h 19mVitalik Buterin▶Show page
About this episode
Much of the fear around AI centers on misalignment – the idea that powerful systems might act against human interests. Vincent Weisser worries about something different: what happens if advanced AI systems are perfectly aligned with the interests of a small group of institutions? That concern led him to co-found Prime…
- 37Why Robots Still Struggle With Simple Tasks (And What Might Finally Change That) | Karol Hausman, Co-Founder & CEO of Physical Intelligence17 Mar 2026 · 1h 14mGoogle▶Show page
About this episode
Karol Hausman is the co-founder and CEO of Physical Intelligence , a robotics company building a general-purpose “AI brain for the physical world.” The company has raised more than $1 billion in funding to develop foundation models that allow robots to operate across many machines, environments, and tasks rather than…
- 36America’s Electric Power Grid Is Broken. This Startup Is Trying to Fix It. (Zach Dell, co-founder & CEO of Base)10 Mar 2026 · 1h 12m▶Show page
About this episode
For decades, America’s electrical system has rewarded utilities for building more infrastructure, not for lowering costs. The result is a grid that expanded but rarely improved. Zach Dell , co-founder and CEO of Base, is building a different kind of power company. In under three years, Base has grown into a vertically…
- 35Everyone Is Betting on Bigger LLMs. She's Betting They're Fundamentally Wrong. (Eve Bodnia, Founder & CEO of Logical Intelligence)24 Feb 2026 · 1h 8mYann LeCun▶Show page
About this episode
Eve Bodnia is the co-founder and CEO of Logical Intelligence, which is developing energy-based reasoning models (EBMs) as an alternative to large language models. She argues that LLMs, which operate by recognizing and recombining patterns within language space, are structurally incapable of genuine reasoning. Eve's…
- 34How Bolt Survived An 85% Revenue Crash And Became Europe's Ride-Hailing Champion (Markus Villig, Founder & CEO)19 Feb 2026 · 1h 20mMarkus Villig▶Show page
About this episode
In 2013, on an Estonian island of just 10,000 residents, a teenager borrowed €5,000 from his parents and decided to take on Uber. Twelve years later, Markus Villig leads Bolt , a company operating in 50+ countries, generating nearly €3 billion in revenue, and standing as one of the only European tech companies…
- 33The Private Company Bringing Nuclear Enrichment Back to America (Scott Nolan, CEO of General Matter)3 Feb 2026 · 1h 16mScott NolanFounders Fund▶Show page
About this episode
Roughly 20% of the U.S. power grid runs on nuclear energy. A quarter of the fuel behind it is headed toward a hard stop. In this episode, I sit down with Scott Nolan , founder and CEO of General Matter, to unpack why uranium enrichment has quietly become one of the most consequential industrial bottlenecks of the 21st…
- 32Programming Sunlight: How Reflect Orbital Is Building Satellites to Redirect Light From Space (Ben Nowack, Founder & CEO)20 Jan 2026 · 1h 19m▶Show page
About this episode
Most energy conversations start with scarcity. This one starts with abundance. Sunlight powers nearly everything on Earth, directly or indirectly. And yet we have almost no control over when or where we get it. Ben Nowack thinks that’s a solvable problem. Ben is the founder and CEO of Reflect Orbital, a company…
- 31Nothing’s Carl Pei on Building a $1B Smartphone Company, Why He Left OnePlus After 10 Days of Retirement, and Why He Thinks About Death Every Week13 Jan 2026 · 1h 19mCarl Pei▶Show page
About this episode
Carl Pei is the founder of Nothing, the consumer electronics company known for its distinctive transparent design language across smartphones and audio products. Before launching Nothing in 2020, Carl co-founded OnePlus, where he spent seven years helping build it into a major smartphone brand. But Carl’s instincts as…
- 30Why Being a Generalist VC Is a Competitive Advantage (Aydin Senkut, Founder & Managing Partner at Felicis Ventures)9 Dec 2025 · 1h 17mAydin SenkutGoogleLarry Page▶Show page
About this episode
Two decades ago, Aydin Senkut was a first-time fund manager with a thin track record to show prospective backers. LPs didn’t believe a solo GP, especially one without experience at a legacy firm, could build a lasting franchise. They were wrong. Today, Felicis is a Silicon Valley mainstay on its 10th fund, a $900M…
- 29Joey Krug on Prediction Markets, Crypto Treasuries & the Next Era of On-Chain Finance (Partner at Founders Fund)2 Dec 2025 · 1h 16mJoey KrugFounders Fund▶Show page
About this episode
Prediction markets are no longer a fringe curiosity. They are becoming one of the most revealing instruments in modern finance. Platforms like Polymarket, once a niche corner of crypto, now regularly clear billions in monthly volume as traders speculate on everything from political outcomes to sports to cultural…
- 28How a Solo Founder is Reshaping Global Finance (Parth Garg, CEO of Aspora)18 Nov 2025 · 1h 9mParth GargGreylockHummingbird Ventures▶Show page
About this episode
In the summer of 2022, Parth Garg woke up in Bangalore to discover that his co-founder had fled the country and emailed their investors to tell them their company was dead. Just over three years later, Aspora is one of fintech’s fastest-growing startups. The company, which makes it faster and cheaper for India’s…
- 27How Do You Build a New Singapore? Inside Próspera’s Bet on Private Governance (Erick Brimen, Founder & CEO)11 Nov 2025 · 1h 24mErick Brimen▶Show page
About this episode
What if you could redesign the rules of society? Not tweak the margins, but start over entirely. That’s the question driving Erick Brimen, founder and CEO of Próspera, a private charter city in Roatán, Honduras. Próspera is a radical experiment in governance: a platform that lets governments and entrepreneurs build…
- 26Why Psychedelics Might Be the Breakthrough That PTSD Patients Need (Kevin Ryan, The Godfather of NYC Tech)28 Oct 2025 · 1h 8mKevin RyanAlleyCorpGoogle▶Show page
About this episode
Often called the godfather of NYC tech, Kevin Ryan is one of America’s most influential entrepreneurs and investors. He co-founded MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and Transcend Therapeutics, and continues to build and back new companies each year through AlleyCorp. Earlier in his career, he led…
- 25The Trillion-Dollar AI Hardware Opportunity (Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield)21 Oct 2025 · 1h 0mNavin Chaddha▶Show page
About this episode
Navin Chaddha has spent three decades at the forefront of innovation, first as a founder, and now as managing partner at Mayfield, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest venture firms. A 17-time member of Forbes’ Midas List, Navin has guided generations of entrepreneurs through waves of technological change, from the dot-com…
- 24Biological Time Travel: How Cryopreservation Could Transform Medicine (Laura Deming, CEO & co-founder of Until)14 Oct 2025 · 1h 6mLaura DemingThe Longevity Fund▶Show page
About this episode
From a child prodigy in a genetics lab to building a company that can pause life itself, Laura Deming has made a career out of chasing time. At just eight years old she became obsessed with aging. At eleven, she joined Cynthia Kenyon’s pioneering longevity lab. At seventeen, she launched The Longevity Fund, one of the…
- 23"This feels like 1996": Why a16z's Martin Casado believes the AI boom still has years to run (General Partner)7 Oct 2025 · 1h 25mMartin CasadoAndreessen Horowitz▶Show page
About this episode
Martin Casado has lived through multiple tech waves, first as a founder, now as a16z’s leading voice on AI and infrastructure. He helped pioneer software-defined networking, then moved from academia to entrepreneurship, and today backs founders building at the frontier of technology as a General Partner at Andreessen…
Who the show talks about
Firms named in its episodes, and people named in descriptions: talked about, rather than on the show.
