Akanksha Manik Talya

Google is building its largest data center outside the United States — right here in Vizag, India. A $15-billion AI hub that promises to transform India’s digital future. But behind the shiny promise lies a serious question: What is the cost of this AI dream in terms of real-world resources? The intersection of AI and climate is a complex topic, no doubt. We have tried to unpack some parts of it in a video that looks at the environmental impact of this data center on the Vizag landscape and it's people. https://lnkd.in/g8aTXfJg

14

1 Comment

Yesterday’s encounter that reminded me why protocols matter more than platforms. Had an inspiring conversation with Rajeesh Menon, whose work spans the entire digital infrastructure ecosystem that’s quietly revolutionizing how we think about systemic change. From EkStep Foundation to Beckn Open Collective, Rajeesh embodies something crucial: building systems that serve rather than surveil, that empower rather than extract. What excites me most is exploring how our community-driven approach (SAOcommons) to human capital indexing (WellbeingProtocol) could plug into this broader ecosystem of digital public / common goods. The goal? Value redistribution that’s signal-based and equitable rather than platform-captured. But this conversation also surfaced some critical questions I’m wrestling with: 1) “Emission” vs “Collection” of data 2) Deep Thinkers' Collective. 3) Anti-hive-mind design - How does TheInternetOfValue preserve individual agency while enabling collective intelligence? 4) “Weaponising” context ? If you’re working on systems that put livelihoods with dignity at the center, Rajeesh Menon is building something remarkable. Worth following his journey. Thanks for the active listening and questions, Rajeesh!

45

6 Comments

"This space moves so fast that every quarter, everything you do can be obliterated," said Glean founder Arvind Jain. "We had to shift to a mindset of constantly rebuilding. Your moat is not your tech but the value you provide to your customer, those deep relationships you build, and the team that’s with you to build and execute in that kind of environment." An intimate, thoughtful gathering at last night’s AI Pioneers Summit by Decibel Partners and Latent Space Podcast with speakers that included (photo, left to right) Eric Simons (bolt.new), Behnam Neyshabur(Anthropic), swyx ​(inc a celebration of 10M downloads), Arvind Jain (Glean), and Laura Burkhauser (Descript). Simons: “We’re seeing more developer-adjacent product people building direct experiences.. that will lead to developers doing deeper thinking & reviewing PM work, as PMs also go deeper to shape the front-end.” Burkhauser spoke to the complexity of AI video editing, where context goes far beyond the script to understand how humans see, feel and sense, and uncover the reasoning behind what a viewer expects. Neyshabur's pursuit of creating an AI scientist is rooted in his curiosity about how a model learns from human interaction and the nature of learning itself. Our breakout session was insightful, inclusive, and energetic. Good to spend time with founders like Bella Liu (Orby AI - A Uniphore Company) and catch up with Ajay Singh. A great mix of technical depth and openness for conversations that stay with you.

22

Launching: Chat with Priyank (beta) today on https://priyank.tech A few weeks ago, I launched priyank.tech as a single home for my work, projects, and notes. Today I’m adding a faster way to get to the signal: Skip the scrolling, ask.  “Chat with Priyank” answers questions about my projects, views, and skills by pulling the most relevant context and giving you a concise, useful response. What’s under the hood (and why): - Human‑verified access - Conversations start only after the system knows it’s interacting with a person, not a bot. - Scope & guardrails - It only answers questions about me. When a query is out of scope or uncertain, it responds with a polite “I don’t know.” - Context engineering first (no RAG, yet!) - An analysis by industry veterans suggested that GPT-5 class models can correctly use ~85% of the provided context. I want to see how far careful, prompt, and context design can go before adding retrieval. I’ll evaluate this over the next few days and decide before graduating from beta. - Prompt caching enabled - To keep costs under control (and responses snappy), repeat prompts and shared context are cached. - Early memory layer - A lightweight short-term memory layer powers more personal, consistent answers across sessions. Try it on: https://priyank.tech   If it’s your first visit, do subscribe to my newsletter—I’ll share build notes, decisions, and lessons learned there. Starter prompts: “Tell me about your AI and Generative AI expertise “How can you help me become an AI first organization?” Feedback is welcome, especially edge cases and failure modes.  #AI #product #buildinpublic #LLM

31

2 Comments

Nearly 2 years ago, Ashutosh, Varun, and I crowded around a whiteboard debating if AI could understand the nuances behind human conversations. Why does a VP of Sales answer “How’s the quarter going?” one way to the CEO and another to a board member? The context changes the response. That was the spark behind Viven, which we invested in this year. Most AI can pull up data. But what about the relationships, unspoken cues, and history that shape decisions? So much gets lost when people move on from orgs or when stories never make it into docs. Viven calls their approach “pairwise context" - training AI to recognize who’s speaking + listening, and how their relationship shapes the conversation. Those endless debates evolved into a mission to help orgs preserve their most valuable knowledge... the experience and insight that lives in people’s heads and is rarely written down. It’s an ambitious vision, but one that will transform how orgs learn. Work that once moved at the speed of meetings could eventually move at the speed of thought. I shared more about how we’re making this possible, and why I believe in Viven, here → https://lnkd.in/g8C3PkK5

150

5 Comments

From our PearX S25 cohort, meet Pravāh, the AI-native operating system for the electric grid When Mohak Mangal, Dhruv Suri, and Aman Gupta looked at the strain on the U.S. electric grid, they saw a system pushed to its limits. Exploding demand and unpredictable supply have made blackouts increasingly common. This costs the economy more than $150B a year, a number that could 10x in the next five years. Mohak Mangal and team founded Pravāh to help fix it. Their platform helps utilities and grid operators make real-time decisions on load, generation, and congestion, reducing blackout risks, optimizing power procurement, and bringing much-needed stability to the backbone of modern life. We’re proud to support the Pravāh team as they take on one of the toughest and most important infrastructure challenges of our time.

804

23 Comments

This was an awesome chat with Deepak Chhugani where we did a deep dive into how Nuvocargo is leveraging AI. We also discussed lots of topics like how B2B marketplaces often start off looking more like brokerages, how operationally complex marketplaces can leverage AI, taking the "full-stack AI" vs. vertical agent approach, early GTM strategies for B2B marketplaces, and more. This is a must-watch (or listen) for B2B marketplace founders and get ready to take some notes!

7

Very happy to share that Vinay Rao is joining Samaipata as an Operating Partner. Vinay brings deep AI expertise built over decades at the frontier, including senior roles at Anthropic and Google, where he worked on real product and security challenges. He understands not just what these systems can do, but where they break. He is based in San Francisco and serves as CTO of ROOST.tools, a non-profit developing open source infrastructure aimed at improving safety standards across online platforms in the tech ecosystem. After joining our Annual Summit and leading a session on some of the toughest questions in AI today, including reliability, misuse and misalignment, it became clear that he could bring immense value to our community. We wanted to bring his expertise closer to our founders. As an Operating Partner, Vinay will mentor founders of our portfolio companies on critical decisions from day one. In early stage companies, choices around AI architecture, security and governance define speed, defensibility and long term risk. For our founders, having Vinay involved at those moments will make a real difference. Welcome to the team, Vinay. Excited for what is ahead! Thank you to Cinco Días for the coverage. More information in the link in the comments (in Spanish).

286

27 Comments

Just spent 45 minutes talking with Nilanjana Bhowmik on her Post Money Podcast — exploring all the nuances of “software beyond the screen” investing, the danger of going TOO deeptech, and some of the best Ubiquity Ventures companies. Check out the preview video below or (1) watch the full interview on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gqUKpzP3 or (2) listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/gSi74wDZ — (And one clarification from this teaser because it sounds so terrible out of context: “these customers are so stupid they don’t know what they’re doing” — VERY importantly my quote starts with “I would NEVER back an entrepreneur who doesn’t empathize with customers and says ridiculous stuff like ‘these customers are so stupid…’)

15

New short! For enterprise AI budgets, it's not about speed or scale of implementation but small steps, finding the right partners, and focusing on human role and imapct amidst all the changes. More sharings from WIZ.AI's Robin Li from working with hundreds of enterprise partners across the globe on implementing their conversational AI solutions for their businesses. Follow Insignia Ventures Partners for the latest episode of On Call with Insignia. #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIArchitecture #Leadership #Innovation #ashortaday

9

Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber's CTO, was kind enough to join us a few weeks back (continued from what my Partner, Ganesh Srinivasan previously shared) to walk us through his philosophy on building operationally complex AI systems. And as always, it all leads back to fundamentals. Even the best AI model can’t outrun a messy data stack. As Praveen put it, scalability isn’t a function of model sophistication; it’s a function of data quality, flow, and freshness. Any cracks in that foundation will eventually become the true bottleneck to innovation. This was just one snippet among many learnings, and it was such a pleasure speaking with Praveen. Thank you again to him and the Uber team for the warm welcome at their offices. I'll be keeping this lesson top of mind as Ganesh and I head to #NeurIPS2025 this week. We're excited to see what innovation is around the corner. Please reach out if you’d like to chat. We’d love to meet up on the convention floor.

77

3 Comments