The video features Stefano Ermon, co-founder and CEO of Inception Labs, discussing his company's journey in developing faster, more efficient large language.
The video features Stefano Ermon, co-founder and CEO of Inception Labs, discussing his company's journey in developing faster, more efficient large language models and raising $50M to achieve this goal. This strongly suggests a Series B+ round, focusing on a significant fundraising amount for a developed AI company.
People are the most important. Just surround yourself with [music] great people and the right team and then everything is possible. [music] All right. Hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So today we have an amazing founder, you know, joining us. be prepared to have the battle of accents because we're going to have the Spanglish and also the Italian, you know, kicking in too. So, be ready. But again, we're going to be learning a lot, you know, on the building, the scaling, financing. I mean, they have something exciting to announce today. You know, there's a lot of uh generative AI, you know, uh talk going on. Uh our guest today, you know, he's he's been at it. He knows it very well before it even became trendy as it is today. But you're going to find the conversation today quite inspiring. So without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Stephano. Welcome to the
show. >> Thank you so much for having me, Alejandro. >> So originally from Italy, so give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you, Stephano? >> Yeah, so I grew up in a small village in northeastern Italy in the Alps. So it was a very small community of a few hundred people. Uh I went to elementary school there and uh yeah I went all the way through through high school in you know very small schools. Uh but you know had a lot of fun spend a lot of time outdoors uh you know grew up skiing so that's one of my passions what other was studying and uh artificial intelligence you know I was always very excited about computers and coding and building stuff. Uh I actually studied electrical engineering in in in college because I really wanted to build um computers, figure out how to actually work, build everything from scratch has always been my thing. And
uh yeah and after that I went to uh came to the states for my PhD. >> And before that before that how did you get into the whole you know problem solving engineering and the geeky side of you? How how did that flourish? You know what where did that come from? I don't know exactly. My dad uh I think was also you know very into science very much into like doing experiments and we would have a lot of fun and like doing chemistry stuff and building things. So I think it's just something that I grew up in [clears throat] and you know always got me interested like building with my hands building stuff from scratch. I don't know where it came from. I think from my dad, but but I'm not really sure. >> So, you you studied the college there. I mean, you did engineering in Italy. And, you know, it's interesting because Italy is very similar to Spain where I'm from, where ultimately
coming to the US is a really big deal. Um, you know, I mean, just like in Spain, people in Italy, they live with the parents, you know, for quite a while, too. No. And uh at what point do you decide um hey I think maybe it makes sense for me to take a look at what's going on in the US and and go to to do my PhD you know there. >> Yeah that was actually by luck. Um so when I did my master thesis in Italy I worked with a professor uh John Francoardi and uh he had actually studied in the US. He had been a professor in the US for a while at Cornell University. And he was the one that kind of like opened my eyes and told me that, you know, the the the the most exciting research is happening in the US. Like if you really want to be at the forefront of something, you've got to go to the US. And I had never been in the US. I had never traveled to the US before. But I just applied to a
bunch of PhD programs. I did my TOEFL. I I did the kind of like the English test. I did my GRE. I did all the things that I had to do and just applied to a bunch of places and uh yeah, luckily I I was admitted. Um I don't know if I would be admitted again today. Like now the now it's so hard to get into a PhD program, but I think back then it was a little bit easier. And uh eventually, yeah, I got into a few places and I decided to go to Cornell just because yeah, my adviser had been a professor there. he was telling me good things about the program and uh yeah the time I I took the plane to the US that was my first time in the in the in the country and then I landed in Ethan New York and you know I started my PhD >> so obviously we're going to talk about now what you're up to uh with your with your business but I wanted to ask you obviously after doing the PhD you got you got into
this academia path um I mean what what really got your curiosity you know wanting to go after that, you know, to Stanford. Um, and really following that track. Um, what really sparked that that chapter for you? >> Yeah, I've always been very curious and I know I always want to learn. I want to learn more. I want to try to figure out, you know, how to do things myself, how to solve problems that nobody has ever solved before. whether it's a you know like from puzzles all the way to computer games all the way to math problems like I always want to solve them I want to I like challenges and and research has been amazing for me because you know there's no shortage of of you know very hard problems that nobody has ever solved before and uh that has always been my my passion that's what gets me excited and uh specifically I've always thought that artificial intelligence is probably the
biggest problem that that humanity has ever worked on. I mean, what's more important than building a [gasps and snorts] a machine that that effectively imitates human intelligence, right? That is probably the the ultimate kind of like research question. So, that's I've always gravitated around kind of like neuroscience, understanding how the brain works, understanding what is intelligence, figuring out how to build something that is as intelligent as a person. that that's always been kind of like what has fascinated me since basically high school. >> Out of curiosity, you know, based on everything that you know uh and that you've been exposed to. I mean, you were alluding to it. What is intelligence like? How would you describe it, you know, in a non-technical way for all of us uh in a way that we get it? >> Yeah, it's very hard to define, right? That's the thing. And that's
that's uh you know there is this saying in in the field where we say if it works it's not AI right so it's it's almost like you always keep shifting the goalpost and and and I think you know probably the the most natural definition is uh it's it's kind of like the the imitation game right so if you basically cannot distinguish this machine this artifact this artificial intelligence from from a person uh then you've probably achieved your goal so you know Whether it's communicating it with this with this entity or whether it's getting this entity to do work uh that the way a person would do it or create economic value there is many different kind of like ways to think about it but ultimately I think it has something to do with building something that is quite similar in terms of the way it behaves, the way it performs, the way it generates value u compared to to to a human And in
Stamford, you were there for 10 years. I mean, that's a hell of a lot of time, right? And I'm sure that you had a blast. So, that's why you stayed there for for quite a bit. But we're talking about being there, a professor in one of the most renown uh universities and also in in one of the universities where some of the biggest innovations and companies have been uh built. Um, how was that experience for you as well of uh of being exposed to all of that and just being in it? It's been amazing. Um, you know, before coming to the to to the to the Bay Area, I had not kind of like experienced this this culture like the the the startup the the the entrepreneurship like it was not really a thing at at Cornell. I think Cornell was much more academic and people were not necessarily thinking about the the implications about the impact about the business opportunities that all these technologies
could could uh lead to. Stanford has been completely different like that the everybody is kind of like thinking about impact how they can change the world whether you know it's undergrads or grad students or professors it's kind of like the culture it's what you you what you feel the moment you are on campus and it's just uh it's been it's been amazing like the energy that you see every day is just it's just incredible and I think you know initially I was not thinking about starting a business about doing a startup but you know after a little bit you just get into it and then it just it was just it's just contagious right you can't avoid it I think everybody that spends enough time at Stanford eventually [laughter] >> was it like a big of a >> what was it for you like a big of a culture shock because I mean obviously being used to um [snorts] Italy where you're either a
lawyer or a doctor I…