In this episode of Innovator Coffee, we sit down with Lu Zhang, Founding Partner of Fusion Fund, for a wide-ranging conversation on where AI is heading in 2025–2026 and what truly matters beyond the hype.

Drawing from her deep experience investing at the intersection of AI, healthcare, enterprise infrastructure, space tech, and open source, Lu shares firsthand insights from Silicon Valley, Davos, and JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.

The conversation also dives into global AI dynamics, geopolitical tensions, open-source innovation, AI agents, physical AI, and the emerging leadership challenges of managing both human and digital labor. This episode is a must-listen for founders, investors, enterprise leaders, and anyone navigating the real decisions behind AI’s next phase.

Lu Zhang is the Founding Partner of Fusion Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley that focuses on AI-driven technologies, enterprise AI, healthcare AI, space tech, and deep tech innovation.

Since founding Fusion Fund, Lu has built a strong track record of backing AI-native companies from inception through scale, with multiple IPOs and significant exits across her portfolio. She is a long-time investor in healthcare AI, federal/federated computing, AI governance, space infrastructure, and physical AI, and has been actively investing in space technology since 2017.

00:00 – 01:00 | Welcome & Introduction
Introducing Lu Zhang and framing the discussion around AI, innovation, and global technology trends.

01:00 – 05:00 | AI in 2025–2026: From Hype to Practicality
Why AI adoption has shifted toward concrete use cases, cost reduction, inference efficiency, and small language models for enterprise deployment.

05:00 – 08:30 | Vertical AI Opportunities
Healthcare AI, insurance, finance, logistics, and why highly regulated industries are now moving faster than expected.

08:30 – 12:00 | Global AI & Geopolitics
Insights from Davos: U.S. leadership, Europe’s regulatory shift, data sovereignty concerns, and emerging geopolitical tensions.

12:00 – 15:30 | AI Economics & Social Impact
Hyper-efficient startups, revenue growth with smaller teams, labor disruption, and the societal challenges of AI concentration.

15:30 – 18:30 | Open Source & New Model Architectures
Why open source matters more than ever, the role of GitHub traction, and why the next breakthrough may come from new model architectures—not just LLMs.

18:30 – 22:30 | AI Agents & Governance Challenges
Agent protocols, infrastructure readiness, governance gaps, and why enterprises are struggling with agent-to-agent decision-making.

22:30 – 26:30 | Physical AI & the Road Ahead
Physical AI, simulation systems, data layers, space robotics, and where Silicon Valley still has a long-term edge.

26:30 – 27:00 | Closing Thoughts
Why 2026 will be even more intense — and why collaboration between startups and enterprises is accelerating.

Tom Kong*Stanford EE alumni,*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com and heyboss.ai*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)Wickey Wang*IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty*Growth fund VC advisor and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus*GAI Security book co-author*AI Security Non-Profit (SafenAI) Co-founderQuestions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:  / wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913  

  / thomaskong  

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends.

This episode explores how vector databases are evolving from “RAG serving infrastructure” into a broader vector lake / multimodal lake layer that can support training, multimodal data management, and agentic context engineering.

The guest explains why context engineering increases the need for better retrieval + processing pipelines, and why the market is likely to consolidate to a few survivors. Practical advice is given for builders: prioritize data + evaluation discipline, keep stacks simple early, and treat security (RBAC + encryption + key management) as essential even for small teams.

The conversation closes with a candid look at open source as GTM and the “hard, unsexy breakthrough” of stability that takes years of compounding improvements.

James (also goes by “Xiaofan Luan” in the recording) is the VP of Technology, a leading vector database company Zilliz. He and his team open-sourced Milvus, described as one of the most popular open-source vector database projects on GitHub, and he has been building Milvus for about six years. Before that, he contributed to multiple open-source database projects.

00:02 Opening & Guest Introduction

00:45 From Vector DB to Vector Lake / Multimodal Lake

03:06 Context Engineering, Memory Layers & Agents

05:41 AI Infra Outlook & Vector DB Market Consolidation

09:09 Improving Accuracy: Data, Evaluation & Context

12:47 Vector DB + MongoDB/Postgres & Startup Tradeoffs

15:37 Security in Vector Databases: RBAC, Encryption & Cloud

21:53 Open Source GTM, Stability as Moat & Closing Advice

Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast.   / hannah-wang-9302421b3  and Vicky who helps editing the podcast [email protected]

Hosts:Tom Kong*Stanford EE alumni,*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)Wickey Wang*IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty*Growth fund VC advisor, VC fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus*GAI Security book co-author

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/

Welcome to Innovator Coffee, an English podcast dedicated to bridging the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights and the emerging trends.

In this episode, we interview with Xiaofan Luan, VP of Technology at Zilliz, a company specializing in vector databases, and discusses the history, technology, and market position of this infrastructure in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The conversation primarily focuses on how vector databases, such as the open-source Milvus project, address challenges like processing unstructured data and enabling large-scale similarity searches. A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to the role of vector databases in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, which use them to reduce the hallucination of Large Language Models (LLMs) by providing a single source of truth. The founder also highlights the ongoing industry challenges of scalability and cost reduction, while detailing Zilliz's cloud-only business model and global expansion strategy.

00:00 – Welcome to Innovator Coffee Bridging people with the world of AI and innovation; guest introduction.

00:45 – The Birth of Vector Databases Why vectors became the next data representation and how the market emerged.

03:42 – Vector Databases in the RAG & Agent Era Multimodal AI, hallucination reduction, RAG systems, and agent memory.

07:33 – Industry Landscape & Key Players FAISS, Pinecone, open source ecosystems, and a fast-diversifying market.

10:25 – Core Challenges: Cost, Accuracy, Scale Why cost is the biggest bottleneck and what unlocks the next wave of use cases.

15:43 – Founder Story & Strategic Pivots From GPU databases to vectors: finding real product–market fit.

19:28 – Product Differentiation & Enterprise Adoption Scalability, cloud-native design, security, governance, and cost efficiency.

29:00 – Global Expansion & The Future of AI Infrastructure
Enterprise use cases, US vs. APAC markets, open source GTM, and what comes after scaling laws.

Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/

and Vicky who helps editing the podcast [email protected]

Hosts: 

Tom Kong

*Stanford EE alumni,

*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )

*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com

*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty

*Growth fund VC advisor, VC fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/

#AI #Innovation #VC #Entrepreneur #Startup #AIJob #Investment #AITrends

In this session of Innovator Coffee podcast featuring the guest Steven Wang, who is based in Milan, Italy, and hosts his own podcast, "Steven Data Talk."

The discussion focuses heavily on the AI ecosystem in Europe, contrasting it with the United States . Key topics addressed include the perceived "AI bubble,"challenges related to infrastructure shortages and the difficulty for European startups to secure funding, and the general cultural emphasis on work-life balance in Europe. Steven Wang also provides specific examples of interesting European AI startups and stresses the importance of education and risk control within the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence.

Podcast Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction: Meeting Steven Wang
Background in finance, Milan, and his bilingual AI podcasting journey.

01:23 – How Europe Sees AI
Public perception, mixed sentiment, and regional AI maturity differences. 

06:47 – European Work Culture & Innovation Pace
Work–life balance, labor regulations, and cultural impact on startups. 

09:35 – Is AI a Bubble?
Different angles from model layer, application layer, and enterprise adoption. 

17:56 – AI Infrastructure & Data Center Shortages
Why Europe struggles with compute availability and how it affects founders. 

21:00 – Interesting AI Startups in Europe
Workflow orchestration agents, Excel–LLM bridges, and AI-powered 3D printing. 

23:43 – What Drives (or Limits) European AI Innovation
Funding scale, government incentives, bureaucracy, and talent flow. 

29:51 – The Startup Reality: Taxes, Cost, and Bureaucracy
Why founders often struggle financially despite funding. 

35:19 – Global Community Building (Vansa & Beyond)
European–US ecosystem connections and emerging cross-border collaboration. 

51:01 – The Next 5 Years of AI
Transformer limits, world models, small models on edge devices, and paradigm shifts.

Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/

and Vicky who helps editing the podcast [email protected]

Hosts: 

Tom Kong

*Stanford EE alumni,

*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )

*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com

*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty

*Growth fund VC advisor, VC fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends.

In this episode, Innovator Coffee podcast features an interview with Pengpeng Wang, the Head of Community and Campus at StartX. StartX is described as a nonprofit, zero-equity accelerator and community specifically dedicated to supporting Stanford-affiliated founders. 

The discussion focuses heavily on what makes StartX unique, emphasizing its community-driven model, the importance of founders having a "pay it forward" mentality, and its highly selective, multi-stage application process, which has an acceptance rate under ten percent. 

They also explore the support StartX provides to its founders, including mentorship, resources, and educational events, and its current focus on supporting the rising number of AI-focused companies within its cohorts.

00:00 – 06:30 | What Makes StartX Different

06:31 – 14:00 | How StartX Selects Founders (Application & Interview Insights)

14:01 – 22:00 | The Heart of StartX: Community, Mentorship & Support

22:01 – 30:30 | Stanford Ecosystem, Trust & Access

30:31 – 41:00 | AI, Unicorns & Success Metrics Beyond Fundraising

41:01 – 51:00 | Founder Mindset, Misconceptions & Program Details

Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/

and Vicky who helps editing the podcast [email protected]

Hosts: 

Tom Kong

*Stanford EE alumni,

*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )

*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com

*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty

*Growth fund VC advisor and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

*AI Security Non-Profit (SafenAI) Co-founder

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends.

In this episode, Sandy Carter, Chief Business Officer at Unstoppable Domains and best-selling author of AI First, Human Always, shares her journey across waves of innovation—from cloud and AI to blockchain and Web3. She highlights how emerging technologies democratize access, intelligence, and ownership, emphasizing the importance of empowerment and ethical use. 

Guest Bio: Sandy Carter’s background is characterized by a career spent leading innovation through successive waves of emerging technology: cloud, blockchain, and AI.

She is currently the Chief Business Officer for Unstoppable Domains, which focuses on blockchain and digital identity. She previously held leadership positions at both IBM (Worked on some of the earliest AI initiatives) and AWS (Amazon Web Services). 

00:00 – 05:00 | Introduction & Career Journey

05:01 – 12:00 | Human-Centered AI Philosophy and future workforce discussion

12:01 – 20:00 | AI + Web3 Integration

20:01 – 30:00 | Practical Applications & Use Cases

30:01 – 40:00 | Future Vision (2030)

40:01 – 50:00 | Advice for Innovators

Hosts: 

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance management in public company

*Growth fund VC advisor, Early stage fund fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

*AI Security/EmergingTech Security Non-Profit (SafenAI) Co-founder

Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/ (Co-founder of the podcast)

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI applications, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends.

In this episode of “Innovator Coffee" podcast, we wrote scripts but let AI speak to explores the complex and capital-intensive ecosystem behind OpenAI, highlighting how the company has shifted from mere product development to strategic financial and supply chain control. CEO Sam Altman is building an AI financial closed-loop by investing in and partnering with key technology suppliers like Nvidia, AMD, and Oracle, securing access to critical compute resources. The strategy also extends to applications, exemplified by UiPath’s stock surge following its AI-RPA integration with OpenAI. Additionally, the episode covers the rise of specialized AI cloud infrastructure providers like Nebius, showing that control over high-density GPU infrastructure (AI-IaaS) is a vital driver of value in the modern AI economy.

1. OpenAI's $300 Billion Ecosystem and Altman's Flywheel [00:00 – 02:45]

2. The Nvidia and Oracle Alliances [02:45 – 05:00]

3. The Strategic AMD Warrant: Hedging Compute Costs [05:00 – 09:30]

4. The Market Shift to Execution: The UiPath Case Study [09:30 – 14:00]

5. Other Application Layer Opportunities [14:00 – 15:30]

6. Nebius: The Rise of AI Infrastructure-as-a-Service [15:30 – 19:00]

Hosts: 

Tom Kong

*Stanford EE alumni,

*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )

*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com

*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty

*Growth fund VC advisor and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

*AI Security Non-Profit (SafenAI) Co-founder

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI applications, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends.

In this episode of “Innovator Coffee" podcast, we featured an interview with a seasoned technology leader, Joe Hsy, CTO of Raydiant, Investor, 3X exit founders, the first generation Stanford AI graduate and a MJAA mentor. 

The conversation primarily tracks Joe’s long and varied career path, including his subsequent journey through multiple startups, enterprise roles at companies like Oracle and WebEx, and several acquisitions (exits). Key themes explored include the importance of a growth mindset and continuous learning as a career driver, strategies for leading teams, and lessons learned from the startup lifecycle, particularly regarding go-to-market strategies like product-led growth and the complexities of M&A integration. 

The discussion concludes with Joe sharing his perspective on the current AI wave, its transformative potential compared to previous cycles, ethical concerns regarding data privacy and governance within large language models, and predictions for the future of work. His main advice for early-stage AI founders is to fall in love with the problem, not the AI technology itself.

A Summarized Version of the Podcast, Broken Down into Eight Sections

Section

Timestamp

1. Introduction, Education, and Early Startup Career 00:00 - 04:27

2. Evaluating AI Initiatives: Painkillers vs. Vitamins 04:28 - 07:40

3. Acquisition Lessons and Management Philosophy 07:41 - 14:16

4. The New AI Wave, Disruption, and Societal Purpose 14:17 - 18:19

5. Data Governance, Team Scaling, and Go-to-Market Strategy 18:20 - 32:00

6. Radiant's Strategy, Founder Advice, and Critical Mindset as well as MJAA 32:00 - end

Information about the MJAA: https://mjaamentorship.org

Hosts: 

Tom Kong

*Stanford EE alumni,

*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )

*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com

*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance/Auditor & CSTU Faculty

*Growth fund VC advisor, Early stage fund fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

*AI Security/EmergingTech Security Non-Profit (SafenAI) Co-founder

Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/

and Vicky @ [email protected]

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/

In this episode, Innovator podcast interviewed with Samder, the co-founder of BON, a company aiming to automate consumer credit management using AI. The conversation covers the evolution of consumer credit interactions, highlighting a shift from traditional financial advisors to internet apps, and now to AI-powered agents like BON's CreditGPT. Sandra details how BON addresses major pain points in the credit industry. The discussion also explores BON's technical pillars, including its proprietary LLM trained on credit data, its commitment to data privacy and personalization, and its aspirations for future growth and global expansion in the fintech space. Enjoying!

Here is a summarized version of each section of the podcast, with timestamps:

1. Podcast Introduction and Born's Vision (00:02 - 01:39)

2. The Evolution of Credit Management and Born's Solution (01:39 - 08:56)

3. Born's Product (CRED GPT) and Industry Pain Points (09:07 - 13:52)

4. Founding Story, Technical Pillars, and Overcoming AI Challenges (14:03 - 23:12)

5. Core Values, Future Shifts, and Growth Strategy (24:19 - 32:38)

6. Lessons Learned and Inspiration (33:00 - 36:59)

7. Future Trends, Resources, and Call to Action (37:25 - 43:30)

Hosts: 

Tom Kong

*Stanford EE alumni,

*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )

*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com

*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance/Auditor Leader & University Faculty

*Growth fund VC advisor, Early stage fund fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

Special thanks to

Vicky at [email protected] for the audio editing.

Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/

Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends.

This podcast episode features a panel discussion with venture capitalists and founders in the AI and Web3 space. The core of the discussion revolves around the synergies between Web3 and AI, with panelists exploring how these technologies can complement each other to solve existing problems and create new opportunities. They also address infrastructure bottlenecks and challenges hindering mainstream adoption of Web3/AI applications, such as scalability, data privacy, and the need for product-market fit (PMF) beyond token speculation. Finally, the panel discusses key traits they look for in AI plus Web3 projects, emphasizing cash flow generation, strong teams with niche expertise, and real-world problem-solving abilities.

Here is a summarized version of each section of the podcast with estimated timestamps:

• Introduction and Panelist Introductions (Approx. 0:00 - 3:00) 

• Synergies Between Web3 and AI (Approx. 3:00 - 7:30) 

• Infrastructure and Bottlenecks in Web3/AI Adoption (Approx. 7:30 - 14:00) 

• Evaluating AI + Web3 Projects for Investment (Approx. 14:00 - 19:30) 

• Noteworthy Web3 and AI Combination Products (Approx. 19:30 - 22:30) 

• Conclusion (Approx. 24:30 - 25:00) 

Hosts: 

Tom Kong

*Stanford EE alumni,

*Founder@ Stanford AGI Adventist Community (10K+ members so far from top VC, Engineers, startups from Silicon Valley )

*AI Lecturer, a serial entrepreneur in media and data. Advisor @ techtimes.com

*AI deployment for 8 years, with NLP and recent LLMs (RAG, Agent, Diffusion)

Wickey Wang

*IT Security Compliance/Auditor Leader & CSTU Faculty

*Growth fund VC advisor, Early stage fund fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus

*GAI Security book co-author 

Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wang-9302421b3/

Questions, Suggestions, Feedback and Comments? You can find us in LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wickey-wang-cisa-six-sigma-green-belt-2aaa913

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskong/