No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
Conviction
Conviction
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.
Dec 11
Imagine learning chess from a grand master, or negotiating tactics from an expert FBI hostage negotiator. ElevenLabs’ voice AI technology is making that unlock possible. Sarah Guo sits down with Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of ElevenLabs, to explore how the three-year old company is transforming how humans interact with technology through voice. Mati talks about the technical challenges of building foundational audio models, the strategic thinking between conducting research and deploying products in tandem, and why voice is the ultimate interface for everything from computers to robots to immersive media. They also discuss how the coming revolution of AI personal tutors will shift agentic AI from reactive to proactive support, break down language barriers globally, and even provide the framework for agentic government services. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @elevenlabsio |@matiii Chapters: 00:00 – Mati Staniszewski Introduction 00:46 – 11 Labs: Growth and Scale 02:46 – Voice Technology and Applications 06:52 – Research and Product Development 12:36 – Voice Quality and Customer Preferences 17:54 – Agent Platform and Use Cases 23:21 – Choosing the Right Technology Partner 26:43 – The Role of Foundation Models 29:58 – Open Source Models and Future Trends 32:37 – Research and Development Focus 36:53 – Future of AI Companions and Education 41:37 – Conclusion
Dec 5
In just over three years, Harvey has not only scaled to nearly one thousand customers, including Walmart, PwC, and other giants of the Fortune 500, but fundamentally transformed how legal work is delivered. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil are joined by Harvey’s co-founder and president Gabe Pereyra to discuss why the future of legal AI isn’t only about individual productivity, but also about putting together complex client matters to make law firms more profitable. They also talk about how Harvey analyzes complex tasks like fund formation or M&A and deploys agents to handle research and drafting, the strategic reasoning behind enabling law firms rather than competing with them, and why AI won’t replace partners but will change law firm leverage models and training for associates. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @gabepereyra | @Harvey Chapters: 00:00 – Gabe Pereyra Introduction 00:09 – Introduction to Harvey 02:04 – Expanding Harvey’s Reach 03:22 – Understanding Legal Workflows 06:20 – Agentic AI Applications in Law 09:06 – The Future Evolution of Law Firms 13:36 – RL in Law 19:46 – Deploying Harvey and Customization 23:46 – Adoption and Customer Success 25:28– Why Harvey Isn’t Building a Law Firm 27:25 – Challenges and Opportunities in Legal Tech 29:26 – Building a Company During the Rise of Gen AI 37:24 – Hiring at Harvey 40:19 – Future Predictions 44:17 – Conclusion
Nov 19
The robotics industry is on the cusp of its own “GPT” moment, catalyzed by transformative research advances. Enter Memo, the first general-intelligence personal robot, focused on taking on your chores to give back your time. Sarah Guo sits down with Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi, co-founders of Sunday Robotics, to discuss the state of AI robotics. Tony and Cheng speak to the challenges they faced while developing their technology, the innovative glove system employed to scale real-world data collection, and the impact of diffusion policy and imitation learning. Plus, they talk about their 2026 in-home beta program and why personal robots are only a handful of years away from mass deployment. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @tonyzzhao | @chichengcc | @sundayrobotics Chapters: 00:00 – Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi Introduction 00:56 – State of AI Robotics 02:11 – Deploying a Robot Pre-AI 03:13 – Impact of Diffusion Policy 04:29 – Role of ACT and ALOHA 07:02 – Imitation Learning - Enter UMI 10:38 – Introducing Sunday 11:57 – Sunday’s Robot Design Philosophy 15:05 – Sunday’s Shipping Timeline 19:02 – Scale of Sunday’s Training Data 23:58 – Importance of Data Quality at Scale 24:56 – Technical Challenges 27:59 – When Will People Have Home Robots? 30:48 – Failures of Past Demos 32:34 – Sunday’s Demos 36:53 – What Sunday’s Hiring For 39:10 – Conclusion
Nov 13
Bringing new drugs to market is a costly, time-consuming endeavor. On top of that, most medicines fail at some point in the research and development phase. Sarah Guo is joined by Sajith Wickramasekara, co-founder and CEO of Benchling, a company that has not only become the central system of record for biotech R&D, but uses AI agents to assist scientists to help fix this broken system. Sajith details the roadblocks that impede drug development and approval, the “dot com” bust occurring in biotech, and how AI agents and simulation can help scientists experiment faster. Plus, they talk about China’s competitive rise in the pharma space, and the unique challenges of building an interdisciplinary culture that merges the worlds of science and software. Rebuild biotech for the AI era - Sajith Wickramasekara Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @sajithw | @benchling Chapters: 00:00 – Sajith Wickramasekara Introduction 00:38 – Origin and Mission of Benchling 02:08 – The Drug Development Process 03:49 – Current State of the Biotech industry 08:46 – AI’s Role in Biotech 16:14 – Benchling AI and Its Impact 18:36 – The Future of AI in Biotech 26:28 – Debunking AI Drug Discovery Myths 28:50 – Data’s Role in Biotech 29:35 – The Importance of Tools in Pharma 31:28 – AI’s Impact on Scientific Research 34:55 – Building a Biotech Company 40:18 – Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Biotech 43:06 – Tech and Biotech: Learning from Each Other 48:16 – Conclusion
Nov 6
Snowflake is moving beyond the data warehouse. Its new Snowflake Intelligence is an agentic platform for every employee, not just data teams. Sarah Guo sits down with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to discuss his first 18 months at the helm, as well as the massive pivot to make the data giant AI-first. Sridhar talks about Snowflake Intelligence, the company's new AI agent platform, and its implications for enterprise data management. They also explore how Sridhar navigates partnerships with major tech companies, how he fosters a culture of continuous improvement within the organization, and how he envisions Snowflake’s future as an integral data-driven enterprise solution. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @Snowflake Chapters: 00:00 – Sridhar Ramaswamy Introduction 00:42 – Snowflake’s Market Adaptation 03:14 – Snowflake’s Evolution and AI Integration 05:44 – Introducing Snowflake Intelligence 09:01 – Snowflake Intelligence User Experience 11:55 – Drawing the Line Between Data, Agent System, and App 13:30 – Leadership and Organizational Changes 16:19 – How Being an Investor, Entrepreneur Informed Sridhar’s Leadership 18:50 – Importance of Product-Market Fit 22:46 – Snowflake’s Strategic Positioning 27:10 – Snowflake’s Partnership Strategy 30:20 – How Sridhar Sees the ROI of AI 35:09 – How AI Changes the Ad Model 38:15 – Why LLMs Still Need Search 42:11 – Conclusion
Oct 31
2025 has thus far been a year of great leaps and advances in AI technology. And Sarah and Elad have spoken with some of the most enterprising founders and scientific minds in the field of AI today. So we’re revisiting a few of our favorite conversations on No Priors so far in 2025 – Winston Weinberg (Harvey), Dr. Fei-Fei Li (World Labs), Brendan Foody (Mercor), Dan Hendrycks (Center for AI Safety), Noubar Afeyan (Flagship Pioneering), Brandon McKinzie and Eric Mitchell (OpenAI o3), Isa Fulford (OpenAI), Arvind Jain (Glen), and Dr. Shiv Rao (Abridge). Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil Chapters: 00:00 – Episode Introduction 0:21 – Winston Weinberg on Leaning into New Capabilities 02:01 – Dr. Fei-Fei Li on Spatial Intelligence 04:13 – Brendan Foody on AI Disruption in the Workforce 06:10 – Dan Hendrycks on the Geopolitics of Superintelligence 08:06 – Noubar Afeyan on Entrepreneurship 10:38 – Brandon McKinzie and Eric Mitchell on Reasoning Models 12:41 – Isa Fulford on Training Deep Research 13:49 – Arvind Jain on Innovating Enterprise Search 16:21 – Dr. Shiv Rao on AI’s Human Impact 18:58 – Conclusion
Oct 23
For decades, the developer terminal has remained largely unchanged. But for Warp CEO and co-founder Zach Lloyd, reinventing this core tool is the key to unlocking AI agents for coding, debugging, and automating the entire development process. Zach joins Elad Gil to discuss how seeing this opportunity for innovation led to Warp’s agentic terminal for developers. Zach talks about the phases of software development, from coding by hand to the current "develop by prompt" era, and the coming age of fully automated development. Plus, Zach and Elad explore the deep philosophical questions around intelligence versus consciousness in AI models, and what it would take to believe a computer program is truly aware. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @zachlloydtweets | @warpdotdev Chapters: 00:00 – Zach Lloyd Introduction 00:32 – AI, Intelligence, and Consciousness 06:55 – What Warp Does 07:38 – Benefits of the Terminal as a Launchpoint 08:27 – Features Driving Warp’s Adoption 09:12 – Zach’s View of the Coding Market 10:27 – Evolution of Coding Development 12:45 – Importance of Senior Engineer Expertise 14:11 – Future of Security and Other Dev Tools 22:22 – Why Zach Focused on the Terminal 23:52 – The Future of the Model Layer 25:36 – What Zach’s Excited About in the AI Dev World 27:18 – Conclusion
Oct 15
With demand from AI for energy already exploding, our electric grid is facing a crisis. Base Power CEO and co-founder Zach Dell is ready to re-architect its future from the ground up. Zach sits down with Elad Gil to talk about Base Power’s recent $1 billion fundraise from major investors. Zach discusses the role of energy across industries, as well as Base Power's mission to lower electricity costs through vertical integration. Zach and Elad also explore the future of energy, the role of batteries in transforming the grid, and the regulatory challenges facing the energy industry. Plus, Zach pitches why top talent should make their careers in energy generation. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @ZachBDell | @basepowerco Chapters: 00:00 – Zach Dell Introduction 00:50 – Base Power’s Vision 02:15 – Base Power’s Products and Services 04:00 – What Drew Zach to Working on Power 05:12 – Base Power’s Founding Team 06:58 – Base Power’s Hiring Needs 08:02 – How Zach Hired an Awesome Founding Team 09:51 – How Do We Meet Energy Demands? 12:58 – How Viable is Nuclear Energy? 17:04 – Global Energy Cost Dynamics 17:41 – Future of AI Training Centers 18:32 – What Will Drive Energy Buildout 20:38 – Drivers of Energy Transmission Cost 22:30 – Regulation and the Energy Industry 23:52 – What Zach is Optimistic About in Energy 24:42 – Cultivating Base Power’s Culture 27:26 – Zach’s Philosophy on Capitalization 30:00 – How Base Power Uses Scale 31:57 – Conclusion
