Best David Race Productions Podcasts (2025)

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The 80-Year Bet: Why Naveen Rao Is Rebuilding the Computer from Scratch 30:11

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13h ago30:11

30:11

Naveen Rao is cofounder and CEO of Unconventional AI, an AI chip startup building analog computing systems designed specifically for intelligence. Previously, Naveen led AI at Databricks and founded two successful companies: Mosaic (cloud computing) and Nervana (AI accelerators, acquired by Intel). In this episode, a16z’s Matt Bornstein sits down w…

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Square's product chief on the death of the penny and the future of money 1:13:47

18h ago1:13:47

1:13:47

Today, I’m talking with Willem Avé, who’s the head of product at Square. You know Square — it was started by billionaire Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame more than 15 years ago, and it got big on the back of that little magnetic reader that once plugged into the headphone jack of the iPhone and let small businesses accept credit cards. Nowadays, of cour…

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20VC: Kalshi's $1BN Raise, the Polymarket Feud, and the Battle to Replace Traditional Media 47:55

20h ago47:55

47:55

Tarek Mansour is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Kalshi, the leader in the world of prediction markets. Just last week, they announced their $1BN raise at an $11BN valuation. In total, they have raised $1.59BN from some of the best, including Sequoia, a16z, General Catalyst, IVP, Meritech, and more. They also last week announced exclusive partnerships wit…

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Ep 78: Jordan Schneider, Host of China Talk, on AI Race, Key Policy Decisions & Unpacking Geopolitical Chip Tension 1:13:22

3d ago1:13:22

1:13:22

This week on Unsupervised Learning, Jacob Effron is joined by Jordan Schneider, host of China Talk, who challenges widespread assumptions about US-China AI competition. China's AI development is driven by private capital and market competition—not central government planning—with companies like DeepSeek, Alibaba, and ByteDance operating more like S…

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What Comes After ChatGPT? The Mother of ImageNet Predicts The Future 1:01:56

4d ago1:01:56

1:01:56

Fei-Fei Li is a Stanford professor, co-director of Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and co-founder of World Labs. She created ImageNet, the dataset that sparked the deep learning revolution. Justin Johnson is her former PhD student, ex-professor at Michigan, ex-Meta researcher, and now co-founder of World Labs. Togethe…

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20VC: Inside Bending Spoons Acquisition Machine: Evernote, Eventbrite, Vimeo | How Evernote Evaluates Acquisitions and New Product Ideas | How Evernote Mastered Product Launches, User Retention and Monetisation ... 1:05:28

4d ago1:05:28

1:05:28

Bending Spoons is the acquisition machine of the tech world. They have acquired the likes of Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Streamyard and more. However, they never open their gates to the secrets behind Evernote's product machine. Today that changes with Federico Simionato joining 20Product. Fede has been a Product Lead at Bending Spoons for 8 years…

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How AI Created the Fastest Product Cycle in History 50:54

5d ago50:54

50:54

Recently, a16z General Partner Anish Acharya joined Ollie Forsyth on NEW ECONOMIES. They talked about why consumer tech is surging again, how AI is enabling 100M-user products at unprecedented speed, and what founders need to understand heading into 2026 — from distribution shifts to founder mindset to the mechanics behind the fastest product cycle…

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The tiny team trying to keep AI from destroying everything 38:20

5d ago38:20

38:20

Today, I’m talking with Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field about some of the people responsible for studying AI and deciding in what ways it might… well, ruin the world. Those folks work at Anthropic as part of a group called the societal impacts team, which Hayden just spent time with for a profile she published this week on The Verge. The team…

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20VC: Thrive & OpenAI Partnership | Eventbrite Acquired for $500M | Databricks Raising $5BN at $134BN Valuation: Cheap or Not? | Why SaaS is Like Japan and The TAM Trap in Software 1:12:30

5d ago1:12:30

1:12:30

AGENDA: 04:20 Thrive and OpenAI Partnership 07:14 Databricks Raising $5BN at $134BN Valuation: Cheap or Not? 17:39 Eventbrite Acquired by Bending Spoons for $500M 21:39 Pagerduty's $1BN Market Cap, Just 2x Revenue 26:59 The TAM Trap: Why SaaS Is Like Japan 37:42 Lessons from Companies Hitting $100M ARR 44:57 The Future of Labour Markets is F****** …

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Why AI Moats Still Matter (And How They've Changed) 51:31

6d ago51:31

51:31

a16z General Partners David Haber, Alex Rampell, and Erik Torenberg discuss why 19 out of 20 AI startups building the same thing will die - and why the survivor might charge $20,000 for what used to cost $20. They expose the "janitorial services paradox" (why the most boring software is most defensible), explain why OpenAI won't compete with your o…

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Ep 77: Anthropic’s Dianne Na Penn on Opus 4.5, Rethinking Model Scaffolding & Safety as a Competitive Advantage 42:03

7d ago42:03

42:03

This episode features Dianne Na Penn, a senior product leader at Anthropic, discussing the launch of Claude Opus 4.5 and the evolution of frontier AI models. The conversation explores how Anthropic approaches model development—balancing ambitious capability roadmaps with user feedback, making strategic bets on areas like agentic coding and computer…

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How To Lead | Ben Horowitz on My First Million 1:10:40

7d ago1:10:40

1:10:40

A16Z co-founder Ben Horowitz joins Shaan Puri and Sam Parr on My First Million to talk about how to be a great leader. Resources: Follow Ben on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz Follow Shaan on X: https://x.com/ShaanVP Follow Sam on X: https://x.com/thesamparr Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your frien…

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The Leviathan Chronicles | A Salty Squid Christmas 16:48

6d ago16:48

16:48

This episode is made possible by the generous support of our subscribers on ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠. Join us at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/leviathanchronicles⁠⁠⁠ to hear episodes ad free and unlock exclusive content. Happy Holidays from everyone at Leviathan Audio Productions! It’s that magical time of year again... the lights are twinkling, the cocoa is flowing, and our …

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The $700 Billion AI Productivity Problem No One's Talking About 58:17

8d ago58:17

58:17

Russ Fradin sold his first company for $300M. He’s back in the arena with Larridin, helping companies measure just how successful their AI actually is. In this episode, Russ sits down with a16z General Partner Alex Rampell to reveal why the measurement infrastructure that unlocked internet advertising's trillion-dollar boom is exactly what's missin…

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IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says there is no AI bubble after all 1:09:34

8d ago1:09:34

1:09:34

IBM was instrumental to the entire 20th century of computing — but it's a lot harder for most of us to see what it's been up to during this century. That's because it's fully an enterprise company, and CEO Arvind Krishna says that business is booming. But there’s a huge change coming to that business as well, as Watson-style deep learning has given…

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20VC: Scale, Surge, Turing, Mercor: Who Wins & Who Loses in Data Labelling | Is Revenue in Data Labelling Real or GMV? | Why 99% of Knowledge Work Will Go and What Happens Then? | Why SaaS is Dead in a ... 1:08:16

8d ago1:08:16

1:08:16

Jonathan Siddharth is Founder and CEO of Turing, one of the fastest-growing AI companies advancing frontier models. Jonathan has led the company to an astonishing $300M ARR with just $225M raised and a profitable company. A Stanford-trained AI scientist, Jonathan previously helped pioneer natural language search at Powerset, which was acquired by M…

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Leviathan Presents | The Gentlemen From Hell by Mark and Steven Anzalone 50:58

10d ago50:58

50:58

This Leviathan Chronicles is made possible by the generous support of our subscribers on ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠. Join us at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/leviathanchronicles⁠⁠⁠ to hear episodes ad free and unlock exclusive content. Welcome to LEVIATHAN PRESENTS! - A segment where we highlight one audio fiction creator, have a conversation, and then play a full episode of th…

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How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning 53:24

11d ago53:24

53:24

In this episode, a16z GP Martin Casado sits down with Sherwin Wu, Head of Engineering for the OpenAI Platform, to break down how OpenAI organizes its platform across models, pricing, and infrastructure, and how it is shifting from a single general-purpose model to a portfolio of specialized systems, custom fine-tuning options, and node-based agent …

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20Sales: John McMahon on How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Sales Reps | How Sales Changes in a World of AI | Sales Lessons from Snowflake and MongoDB | How to Create and Drive a Sales Process with Urgency ... 1:08:30

11d ago1:08:30

1:08:30

John McMahon is widely regarded as one of the greatest enterprise-software sales leaders of all time. He's the only person to have served as Chief Revenue Officer at five public software companies: PTC, GeoTel, Ariba, BladeLogic and BMC Software. He helped scale BladeLogic from a startup into a public company — ultimately leading to its ~$880M sale…

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20VC: Anthropic Raises $30BN from Microsoft and NVIDIA | NVIDIA Core Business Threatened by TPU | Sam Altman's "War Mode" Analysed | Sierra Hits $100M ARR: Justifies $10BN Price? | Lovable Hits $200M ARR ... 1:30:09

12d ago1:30:09

1:30:09

AGENDA: 04:06 Anthropic's $30BN Investment from Microsoft and NVIDIA 07:01 Google vs. OpenAI: Sam Altman's "War Mode" Memo 15:27 NVIDIA's Customer Concentration: Bull or Bear 22:12 Is "War Mode" BS: Does Hyper-Aggressive Ever Work? 36:12 Sierra Hits $100M ARR: Justify $10BN Price? 46:14 Implementation is the Biggest Barrier to Enterprise AI Growth …

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Ben Horowitz: Why Open Source AI Will Determine America's Future 46:50

12d ago46:50

46:50

Ben Horowitz reveals why the US already lost the AI culture war to China—and it wasn't the technology that failed. While Biden's team played Manhattan Project with closed models, Chinese developers quietly captured the open-source heartbeat of global AI through DeepSeek, now running inside every major US company and university lab. The kicker: Goog…

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The Secret Marketing Strategy That Built a16z: From Zero to Legendary VC Firm 59:55

13d ago59:55

59:55

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz sit down with Margit Wennmachers—the woman who turned two unknown entrepreneurs with $300 million and zero investing track record into the most talked-about firm in venture capital. She unpacks how they weaponized transparency in an industry built on secrecy, why Fortune's cover story triggered a cartel meltdown, an…

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Erika Pani, "Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867" (UNC Press, 2025) 57:37

9d ago57:37

57:37

Between the late 1840s and the late 1860s, the United States and Mexico had quite a bit in common. Both suffered from reactionary succession movements, both faced brutal civil wars, and both had to figure out a method of reconstructing broken nations in their aftermath. In Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexi…

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How Marc Andreessen Actually Uses AI 34:02

14d ago34:02

34:02

Half a billion people can access the world’s best AI on their phone. So why are most using it to write emails while only some are using it to build empires? In this conversation with Mark Halperin from Next Up, Marc Andreessen reveals why small bakeries are beating Fortune 500 companies at AI adoption, how to turn ChatGPT into your personal board o…

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The Rogue Plague | Part 3 1:02:33

13d ago1:02:33

1:02:33

This episode is made possible by the generous support of our subscribers on ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠. Join us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/leviathanchronicles⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to hear episodes ad free and unlock exclusive content. The Rogue Plague takes us back to 16th Century in Scotland. An ancient evil is spreading over the Highlands, infecting its victims and driving them…

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JOE LAVERICK | Privateer’s Life, Marginal Gains & Having Fun! 48:36

13d ago48:36

48:36

Joe Laverick was one of the standout British talents through his junior years and earned a place on one of the top development teams in cycling: Hagens Berman Axeon. He spent two seasons there under the guidance of the world-renowned Axel Merckx. Joe had hoped to make the jump to the WorldTour, but things didn’t fall into place, and he found himsel…

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The 2045 Superintelligence Timeline: Epoch AI’s Data-Driven Forecast 1:00:10

15d ago1:00:10

1:00:10

Epoch AI researchers reveal why Anthropic might beat everyone to the first gigawatt datacenter, why AI could solve the Riemann hypothesis in 5 years, and what 30% GDP growth actually looks like. They explain why "energy bottlenecks" are just companies complaining about paying 2x for power instead of getting it cheap, why 10% of current jobs will va…

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What the climate story gets wrong 50:32

15d ago50:32

50:32

Hey everyone, it's Nilay. It’s been great being back in the Decoder chair this fall, and we’ve got a bunch of great episodes coming up to round out the year. But the production team is off this week for the holiday, so today, we’re going to share this episode of The Gray Area with you. This time, host Sean Illing is talking to data scientist Hannah…

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20VC: Base44's Maor Shlomo on How Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS and Salesforce | Why it is BS that Vibe Coding Platforms Do Not Have Defensibility and Bad Margins | Why He Worries About Google, Not Replit ... 1:11:43

15d ago1:11:43

1:11:43

Maor Shlomo is the Founder and CEO of Base44, the AI building platform that Maor built from idea to $80M acquisition by Wix, in just 8 months. Today the company serves millions of users and will hit $50M ARR by the end of the year. Before Base44, Maor was the Co-Founder and CTO of Explorium. AGENDA: 00:05 – 00:10: How Vibe Coding is Going to Kill S…

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Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner 1:05:02

18d ago1:05:02

1:05:02

Vlad Tenev built Robinhood by breaking every rule Wall Street wrote: zero commissions when competitors charged $10, mobile-first when "serious" investors demanded desktop, a brand that made finance feel like rebellion instead of a club you'd never join. By 2021 they'd forced every major brokerage to slash fees and attracted millions who'd never own…

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20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster ... 1:19:22

18d ago1:19:22

1:19:22

Max Altman is Co‑Founder & Managing Partner at Saga Ventures, a US$125 M early‑stage fund. Before Saga Max was an investor with Apollo Projects, Hydrazine Capital and Altman Capital (where he helped deploy over US$500 M) into breakout names such as Rippling and Reddit. AGENDA: 03:55 – Venture Capital Is FULL of Tourists With Single-Digit IQs 06:20 …

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The DoorDash Problem: How AI browsers are a huge threat to Amazon 30:55

19d ago30:55

30:55

Okay, let’s talk about AI and what I’ve been calling the “DoorDash problem.” This is about to define the next battle in AI, and it might completely transform not only how you order a sandwich, but also how the entire internet economy works in general. If you’ve been listening to the show this past year, you’ve heard me bring up the Doordash problem…

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Can Community Banks Survive the Next SVB? | ModernFi CEO Paolo Bertolotti and Former Comptroller Gene Ludwig 43:42

19d ago43:42

43:42

The former bank regulator who invented deposit networks just revealed why SVB's collapse was inevitable—and why the solution that could have saved them is finally being rebuilt. Gene Ludwig ran the OCC during the Clinton administration, created a half-trillion-dollar market solving a problem his Aunt Betty faced riding buses between banks, then wat…

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Pyet DeSpain, "Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking" (HarperOne, 2025) 50:45

19d ago50:45

50:45

Chef Pyet DeSpain joins the New Books Network to discuss her new cookbook, Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking (HarperOne, 2025). Drawing from her Potawatomi and Mexican heritage, DeSpain shares recipes that connect past and present, including bison meatballs with Wojape BBQ sauce, raspberry mezcal quail, and poblan…

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20VC: Cursor Raises $2.3BN: Who Wins the Coding War | Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA: Analysed | Why Venture Capital Will Hit $1TRN and the Opening of Retail | Why Stripe and the Best Companies Will ... 1:22:38

19d ago1:22:38

1:22:38

AGENDA: 04:47 Cursor Raises $2.3BN at $29BN Valuation 11:36 What Gemini 3 Means for Lovable, Cursor and Replit 30:54 Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA: The Bubble Bursting? 48:54 Oracle Credit Default Swaps: The Risk is Increasing 01:07:22 Stripe Does Tender at All-Time High: Why the Best Companies Will Never IPO 01:19:18 Why Retail WIll Cause a…

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Ben Horowitz & Marc Andreessen: Why Silicon Valley Turned Against Defense (And How We’re Fixing It) 1:16:13

20d ago1:16:13

1:16:13

Palmer Luckey got fired from Meta for backing the wrong candidate—now he's the hero saving American defense, and that shift tells you everything about how fast the ground moved beneath Silicon Valley's feet. For decades, tech and defense were allies, then came 15 years of hostility so visceral that Google employees revolted over a Pentagon AI contr…

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The Rogue Plague | Part 2 38:22

20d ago38:22

38:22

This episode is made possible by the generous support of our subscribers on ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠. Join us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/leviathanchronicles⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to hear episodes ad free and unlock exclusive content. The Rogue Plague takes us back to 16th Century in Scotland. An ancient evil is spreading over the Highlands, infecting its victims and driving them…

1
2025 SEMA Show Recap: What's New & Popular with the Industry & Car Culture 39:36

22d ago39:36

39:36

We assembled a group of Summit Racing employees, including a first-time SEMA Show attendee, to recap the 2025 event and discuss what hot new products, trends & vehicle builds we spotted in Las Vegas.By Summit Racing Equipment

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Emmett Shear on Building AI That Actually Cares: Beyond Control and Steering 1:10:36

22d ago1:10:36

1:10:36

Emmett Shear, founder of Twitch and former OpenAI interim CEO, challenges the fundamental assumptions driving AGI development. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg and Séb Krier, Shear argues that the entire "control and steering" paradigm for AI alignment is fatally flawed. Instead, he proposes "organic alignment" - teaching AI systems to genu…

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Ring's Jamie Siminoff thinks AI can reduce crime 1:10:17

22d ago1:10:17

1:10:17

Jamie Simonoff, founder of Ring, won't let me call him the CEO. He says his title is and always has been 'chief inventor.' His mission with Ring is to make the world safer, and he has a pretty expansive view of what that means. He told The Verge last month he thought Ring could 'almost zero out crime' in some neighborhoods within a year or two. Tha…

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20VC: Andrew NG on The Biggest Bottlenecks in AI | How LLMs Can Be Used as a Geopolitical Weapon | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI? | Is Defensibility Dead in a World of AI? | Will AI Deliver Masa Son ... 1:02:53

22d ago1:02:53

1:02:53

Dr. Andrew Ng is a globally recognized leader in AI. He is Founder of DeepLearning.AI, Executive Chairman of LandingAI, General Partner at AI Fund, Chairman and Co-Founder of Coursera. As a pioneer in machine learning Andrew has authored or co-authored over 200 research papers in machine learning, robotics and related fields. In 2023, he was named …

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Fresh Start with Dr. David - Season 4 - Episode 8 - Master Your Emotions: Practical Anger Management with Dr. David (Avoiding Bipolarities) 18:28

24d ago18:28

18:28

Fresh Start with Dr. David - Season 4 - Episode 8 - Master Your Emotions: Practical Anger Management with Dr. David (Avoiding Bipolarities) Dr. David explores emotional management by framing emotions as energy, using analogies like batteries and buffering to explain why regulation and balance are essential. He offers practical tips on planning ahea…

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20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify ... 1:11:23

25d ago1:11:23

1:11:23

Carl Rivera is the Chief Design Officer at Shopify, where he previously led both Merchant Services and the Shop App as VP of Product. Before joining Shopify through its acquisition of Tictail, Carl was the co-founder and CEO of Tictail, the "Tumblr for e-commerce," where he built one of the most beloved design-forward commerce platforms of its era.…

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Can America Win The AI Biotech Race Against China? | Lada Nuzhna & Elliot Hershberg 1:02:23

25d ago1:02:23

1:02:23

Two venture capitalists dissect why biotech burns billions while China runs trials in weeks—and why the next Genentech won't look anything like the last one. Elliot Hershberg reveals the "three horsemen" strangling drug development as costs explode to $2.5 billion per approval, while Lada Nuzhna exposes how investigator-initiated trials in Shanghai…