Tech Today with Eric Tarczynski

Samir Vasavada, co-founder and CEO of Vise, joins us to talk about how registered investment advisors (RIAs) are increasingly entering the world of venture capital. Samir explains how changes in liquidity, demand for differentiation, and the availability of new platforms have opened the door for wealth managers to back private tech companies—something historically reserved for endowments and institutions.

We dive into why this shift is happening now, how RIAs are navigating access to top-tier venture funds, and what the “retailization” of private markets might mean for venture as an asset class going forward.

We also covered Revolut’s record profit, Anthropic’s model welfare research program, Flex’s acquisition of Maza, and Adam Neumann’s latest raise for Flow.

Over the last decade, startup exit timelines have stretched, cap tables have grown more complex, and LPs have become more focused on liquidity. That’s why Homebrew co-founder Hunter Walk says it’s time for early-stage VCs to embrace secondaries—not as a last resort, but as part of the playbook.

In this episode, Hunter breaks down why the traditional “buy and hold” mindset is breaking down, how the dynamic between small funds and mega-AUM firms is reshaping investor behavior, and what responsible secondaries can look like for both founders and early backers.

We also covered Windsurf’s new pricing war with Cursor, Datadog’s latest acquisition, Perplexity’s iPhone assistant rollout, and Tesla’s robotaxi pilot in Austin.

The tools—and expectations—of software development are changing fast. Today on Tech Today, Zach Lloyd, founder and CEO of Warp, joins us to talk about how the job of the software developer is evolving in the age of AI, agents, and “vibe coding.”

Zach breaks down what gets easier, what stays hard, and what tools will need to be rethought entirely. He shares why he thinks IDEs are becoming obsolete, why software engineers are more in demand than ever, and what Warp is doing to build the developer interface of the future.

We also covered: xAI’s Grok Vision update, Supabase’s $200 million raise, Northwood Space’s ground station expansion, and OpenAI’s surprising interest in acquiring Google Chrome.

Replit founding engineer Gian Segato joins us to talk about his viral new essay, Agency Is Eating the World, and the shift toward high-agency individuals building and scaling software alone. He explains why today’s AI “agents” aren’t truly agentic, why taste is downstream of iteration, and how generalists are now empowered to compete with specialists across industries.

We also discuss the end of credentialism, how AI collapses years of specialization into days of effort, and why this is only the beginning of a larger economic shift — one that stretches from barbershops writing code to billion-dollar solo startups.

We also covered ChatGPT Search's rapid EU growth and looming regulatory status, YC-backed Theseus and its GPS-free drone tech for Special Operations, OpenAI’s massive spend on making ChatGPT more polite, and Slate Auto’s $25K EV that can change shape ahead of its public reveal.

Bhavin Shah, founder and CEO of Moveworks, joins us after announcing the company’s acquisition by ServiceNow last month. 

Moveworks was one of the first enterprise AI startups to bet on conversational interfaces and AI agents — years before ChatGPT made that idea mainstream. In this episode, Bhavin walks us through the origin story, how they made the gutsy call to rewrite their entire architecture around agentic reasoning, and how that decision set the stage for their nearly $3 billion exit.

We also talk about what it really takes to build AI that works in the enterprise: connectors, context windows, multilingual models, and the hard truth of procurement cycles. Bhavin shares lessons from navigating two black swan events — COVID and the generative AI boom — and why conviction, speed, and creative destruction were key to Moveworks’ success.

We also covered Bill Gates’ prediction that AI will replace doctors and teachers, Strava’s acquisition of AI running coach Runna, OpenAI’s potential $3 billion acquisition of Windsurf (formerly Codeium), and Figma’s confidential IPO filing.

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Nicholas Harris, CEO and co-founder of Lightmatter, joins us to talk about the company's latest product launches: the Passage M1000 and the L200, two breakthroughs in photonic interconnect technology that could reshape how we scale AI infrastructure.

We also discussed the limits of traditional electrical interconnects, why data movement — not compute — is the real bottleneck in AI training, and how Lightmatter is building a full-stack photonics platform for the next era of massive, energy-intensive AI models.

Finally, we discussed Base Power’s $200 million Series B to build a distributed residential battery network, OpenAI’s launch of a new benchmarking program following controversy around Meta’s Llama 4, Andreessen Horowitz’s plans to raise a $20 billion growth-stage AI fund, and Anthropic’s launch of a new $200/month “Max” subscription tier for power users.

Today, John Arnold—philanthropist and co-chair of Arnold Ventures—joins us to break down the real barriers facing next-gen nuclear energy. In a space filled with big promises and long timelines, John makes the case for why fusion and small modular reactors (SMRs) won't succeed without serious government intervention.

We talked about: 

• Why non-binding agreements in nuclear can be misleading
• The funding “valley of death” facing fusion startups
• How a milestone-based public-private model — modeled on NASA’s COTS program — could unlock progress

We also covered OpenAI’s updated release roadmap for o3 and GPT-5, the extended deadline for a TikTok sale, new agentic capabilities in Microsoft Copilot, and Midjourney’s first new image model in nearly a year.

On Monday March 31, Runway, a generative video startup, launhced its most advanced AI video generation model to date, Gen-4. 

Today, Runway co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela joins us to talk about the Gen-4 release, the evolution of Runways product over time, the future of video generation and storytelling, and how Runway is building an “infinite dream machine that can do whatever you want.”

We also cover OpenAI’s new $40 billion fundraise, Amazon’s new AI agent, a16z’s talks to invest in TikTok, and Circle’s upcoming IPO. 

On Wednesday, former Forbes senior editor Alex Konrad launched a new tech media company covering startups. 

Today, Alex joins us to talk about his new company. We covered a lot of ground including why media coverage of startup stories is demand, whether the narrative of media vs. tech being adversarial is accurate, how Alex wants Upstarts to serve as a bridge to the startup world, and why the energy in the startup ecosystem from AI makes it a uniquely interesting time to be in startups right now. 

We also covered Mercury’s $300 million Series C, Terrestrial Energy’s SPAC, Rivian’s new micromobility company, and Grok’s integration with Telegram.