Tech Today with Eric Tarczynski

Scott Belsky, partner at A24 and former Chief Product Officer at Adobe, joins us to explore how AI is reshaping the creative process. We talk about the rise of taste as a differentiator in a world of infinite content, the shift from production to ideation, and how brand-building evolves when machines can generate at scale.

Scott also shares his perspective on the importance of story and process, why behind-the-scenes footage will matter more than ever, and how creators can cut through the noise by focusing on authenticity and meaning. We dive into his view that we're still...

Beezer Clarkson, managing director at Sapphire Partners, joins the show to unpack the state of venture funding from the unique perspective of an LP. We dive into why 2025 has been one of the toughest fundraising environments for venture firms in over a decade, what’s driving LP caution, and how structural shifts, like longer fund durations and fewer exits, are reshaping the market.

Beezer explains why many emerging managers are struggling to close new funds, how secondary markets are evolving as a partial solution, and why “knowing your math” matters more than ever when fundraising. We also get in...

Larry Cheng, co-founder and managing partner at Volition Capital, joins us to explore why capital efficiency is more important than ever for founders. He explains how capital discipline can coexist with high growth, shares lessons from backing Chewy early, and breaks down why the best companies know how to build without overspending.

We also dig into the resurgence of CapEx in frontier tech. Larry shares how Volition is thinking about hardware-enabled SaaS, and offers a framework for evaluating return on capital — whether you're acquiring users, building hardware, or rolling up businesses.

We also covered Circle’s ex...

Quinn Slack, co-founder and CEO of Sourcegraph, joins Kyle to explore how AI is transforming software development and why the “AI coding agent” is becoming the center of gravity in the modern engineering stack. Quinn walks through Sourcegraph’s new tools—Cody and AMP—and explains how model-product fit, not feature checklists, is what will define winners in this fast-moving market.

They discuss why Sourcegraph made counterintuitive bets like hiding model selection and emphasizing multi-tenant design, how customer trust enables bold product choices, and why building in sync with new model capabilities is more important than chasing traditiona...

Hermeus just became the first private company to fly a hypersonic-capable aircraft — and it’s only the beginning.

Today, AJ Piplica, founder and CEO of Hermeus, joins to break down the first successful flight of the Quarterhorse Mk 1, explain what hypersonic flight actually is, and share why this milestone could reshape both national defense and commercial aviation.

We also covered Reddit’s lawsuit against Anthropic, Windsurf’s model access problems, Bolttech’s $147M fundraise, and Mistral’s new AI coding assistant

Reddit has always been a cultural force online — but today, it's also something else: a core piece of the internet’s AI infrastructure.

In this episode, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman joins Eric to talk about the company’s first year as a public company, why Reddit still feels like it’s just getting started, and how it’s navigating a new era where AI-generated content is flooding the internet. They discuss Reddit’s evolution from a link aggregator to a community engine, the irony of becoming an LLM training backbone, and why Huffman thinks Reddit can preserve...

Today on Tech Today, Kyle is joined by Zavain Dar, founder and managing partner of Dimension, to talk about what he calls the “self-inflicted corrosion” of American hegemony. In a viral tweet, Zavain laid out two pillars of the U.S.’s strength, immigrant-driven innovation and global alliances, and argued that both are being systematically undermined. In this episode, he explains why the U.S. is pouring concrete over the very wellspring of scientific and technological leadership that made it dominant for decades.

They also discuss the immigrant roots of America’s most valuable companies, the geopolitical dynamics...

Immigration isn’t just a humanitarian issue—it’s a strategic lever for American innovation. Jeremy Neufeld, Director of Immigration Policy at the Institute for Progress, joins us to explain how student visas, OPT, and H-1Bs quietly power the U.S. tech and startup ecosystem. He breaks down why high-skilled immigration is essential to America’s edge in AI, what a modern-day “Project Paperclip” might look like, and how visa policy missteps are helping competitors like China.

We also get into why 70% of top AI startup founders came through the student visa pipeline—and why only a fraction get...

Marc Freed-Finnegan, co-founder and CEO of Chalk, joins us to talk about why AI infrastructure needs to shift from training to inference—and how Chalk is powering sub-5ms pipelines for customers like Whatnot, MoneyLion, and Sunrun. He explains why Chalk is taking on Databricks, why fresh data is more valuable than ever, and what it means to run Python at real-time scale.

We also dive into Marc’s fintech roots, Chalk’s origins, and the company’s approach to supporting complex ML use cases across fraud detection, content moderation, and clean energy. Plus, Marc shares his take on...

In this episode, Kyle talks with Sam Bowman, editor of Works in Progress and Head of Publishing at Stripe, about one of the most important but under-discussed ideas in energy policy: the regulatory science that made nuclear energy unaffordable. Sam unpacks the origins and impact of the Linear No Threshold (LNT) radiation model and the ALARA regulatory principle, and explains how they led to decades of cost overruns and stagnation in nuclear power.

They also dive into the editorial mission behind Works in Progress, how it surfaces “new and underrated ideas to improve the world,” and why opti...

Isaiah Taylor — founder and CEO of Valar Atomics — joins us to unpack a bold new push from the White House: a set of executive orders signed by President Trump aimed at reviving domestic nuclear energy. He breaks down what’s in the orders, why they matter, and how they could reshape US energy and industrial policy over the next decade.

We also dive into the realities of building modern nuclear infrastructure. Isaiah explains why uranium independence is critical, how the US lost its lead in the global race, and why he sees nuclear as a key part of the...

Charley Ma, co-founder and Managing Partner at Pathlight, joins us to unpack the changing landscape of AI adoption across SMB and enterprise segments. He shares why the most promising vertical AI startups are being led by younger, first-time founders—and why these teams are winning by building fast, iterating directly with customers, and delivering products that “just work.”

We also dive into Pathlight’s thesis on govtech as an emerging AI opportunity. Charley explains why local governments are more ready than ever to adopt new tech, how procurement barriers are changing, and why this is a once-in-a-generation opening...

Today, Rex Woodbury, Founder and Managing Partner at Daybreak Ventures, joins Kyle Harrison to share his reactions to new AI product announcements at Google I/O, OpenAI’s $6.4B acquisition of Jony Ive’s “LoveFrom,” design studio, as well as his thoughts on the future of consumer AI products.

They discuss the competitive landscape between tech incumbents and AI startups, the consumer product areas ripe for disruption, and the potential for AI to bridge human’s need for social connection and emotional support.

We also covered OpenAI’s Jony Ive acquisition, Klarna’s latest earnings report present...

Kian Sadeghi, founder and CEO of Nucleus Genomics, joins the show to unpack the fall of 23andMe and what its $256M acquisition by Regeneron means for the future of consumer DNA testing.

We talk about what 23andMe got wrong—from its business model to its reliance on outdated genotyping tech—and how a new generation of genomic startups like Nucleus are taking a different approach: full genome sequencing, HIPAA compliance, and consumer empowerment.

We also covered Klarna’s rising credit losses, JPMorgan’s AI-driven hiring slowdown, Waymo’s expansion into San Jose, and Zoox’s new test mar...

In today’s episode, Lucas Harrington — co-founder and president of Mammoth Biosciences — joins Eric to discuss a groundbreaking moment for gene editing: the successful treatment of an infant, K.J. Muldoon, using a custom CRISPR therapy developed in just six months. Lucas walks us through how this came together, what made it possible, and why this case could mark the beginning of a new era in personalized medicine.

They also explore the technical and regulatory infrastructure that enabled the treatment, the challenges of in vivo gene editing beyond the liver, and why Lucas believes the brain is the ne...

Today, Eric is joined by Contrary general partner Kyle Harrison for a candid conversation on how the venture landscape looks from the founder’s perspective in 2025. Kyle breaks down the structural shifts reshaping the VC ecosystem — from the hollowing out of mid-sized firms to the growing divide between capital agglomerators and specialist funds — and what it all means for entrepreneurs raising today.

They discuss how larger venture firms’ need for outsized returns shapes their approach to competition, ownership, and ambition, and why smaller funds are often better aligned with founders looking to build more deliberate, less capital-intensive business...

For the last 30 years, globalization was the default—especially in tech. But as the world fractures, we’re seeing something new: deglobalization driven by national security, digital sovereignty, and geopolitical competition.

Today, Lux Capital’s Danny Crichton joins us to break down the new industrial policy era. We discuss how the tech world is fragmenting into national stacks, why most countries will never build their own search engines or operating systems, and how this shift is creating both opportunity and chaos.

We also covered Elon Musk’s Neuralink trial in the UAE, Pathos AI’s $365M raise fo...

Today on Tech Today, Eric is joined by TJ Parker, Founder of PillPack and Amazon Pharmacy, to break down the current state of drug pricing in the U.S. and the significance of Trump’s recent executive order on prescription drugs. TJ walks through the supply chain mechanics behind inflated out-of-pocket prices and explains why consumers often pay far more than insurers for the same drug.

They discuss how middlemen like PBMs distort prices, why rebates have made the system so opaque, and how a “most favored nation” pricing clause could finally give Americans access to net prices...

Today, Eight Sleep co-founder and CEO Matteo Franceschetti joins us to talk about sleep science, recovery, and how better sleep might be the greatest untapped lever for improving human performance.

He broke down why sleep matters more than fitness or nutrition, how deep and REM sleep drive mental and physical recovery, and how new tools are helping people fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Matteo also shares Eight Sleep’s broader vision — from smart beds and thermoregulation to eventually compressing total sleep time without sacrificing recovery.

We also covered Harvey's shift to Google and Anth...

Danny Crichton, Head of Editorial & Riskgaming at Lux Capital, joins the podcast to break down the state of U.S. export bans on AI chips — and whether they’re actually working. Danny explains why NVIDIA is so central to the policy debate, how sales are still finding their way to China through workarounds like Singapore, and why the U.S. may not be able to stop China from achieving AI parity if their models keep catching up in performance.

We also discuss the tension between national security and commercial success, the importance of measuring output rather than inpu...

Today, Kyle Harrison, general partner at Contrary, joins the podcast to talk about the early-stage venture bear market and why it’s being masked by the AI hype cycle. While valuations for seed and Series A rounds have remained relatively stable, the number of rounds has plummeted, and Kyle argues that the true state of venture is far worse than it appears.

Next, the discussion turns to why capital destruction is overdue, how AI has warped investor incentives, and why many great companies are struggling to get attention despite solid fundamentals. Kyle and Eric also discuss the gr...

A few years ago, all eyes were on Big Tech when it came to startup acquisitions. But with regulatory pressure mounting, a new cohort of acquirers has emerged: mid-sized, AI-native companies like Databricks, Datadog, and OpenAI.

In this episode, Alex Konrad of Upstarts Media joins Eric to break down the new wave of $100M–$1B deals — from Databricks’ pending $1B acquisition of Neon to Datadog’s Eppo pickup and OpenAI’s pursuit of Windsurf. They unpack the strategic motives behind these deals, what they signal about the current state of the market, and why companies that once would've b...

Jacob Kimmel, co-founder and President of NewLimit, joins us to talk about the company’s newly announced $130 million Series B and its ambitious plan to develop reprogramming-based medicines that can reverse cellular aging.

We explore how NewLimit’s therapies use mRNA to deliver transcription factors that restore liver cells to a younger state, why the company is targeting alcohol-related liver disease first, and how advances in single-cell sequencing and AI made this work possible. Jacob also shares how NewLimit is expanding into the immune and endothelial systems—and what that could mean for extending human healthspan.

We a...

Cloud seeding isn’t new, but Rainmaker is giving it a second life. On today’s episode, Augustus Doricko, founder and CEO of Rainmaker, joins Eric to explain how his company uses drones, radar, and remote sensing to make it rain on command. 

Augustus outlines how Rainmaker's technology solves the attribution problem that has long haunted cloud seeding, and why their $25M Series A marks the beginning of a new infrastructure layer for the American West. We also discuss the company’s long-term ambition: building programmable weather systems to green deserts, stabilize water supply for agriculture and industr...

Apple just got slammed by a federal judge for willfully violating an injunction in its antitrust fight with Epic Games. Patrick McGee, longtime Apple reporter at the Financial Times and author of the upcoming book Apple in China, joins to unpack how the case unfolded, why Epic’s move was both strategic and symbolic, and what this moment means for the future of the App Store.

We zoom out to discuss Apple’s broader challenges—from its tightening entanglement with China to the slow progress in decoupling its supply chain. Patrick explains why Apple may be far more r...

Most AI apps still feel clunky, generic, or oddly off-tone. Pete Koomen thinks he knows why — and he’s calling it the “horseless carriage” problem. Just like early cars mimicked carriages, today’s AI products too often copy outdated software models instead of rethinking from first principles.

Pete, a General Partner at Y Combinator and co-founder of Optimizely, joins us to break down his viral essay AI Horseless Carriages. We talk about why editable system prompts are critical, how app design is holding AI back, and why user-controlled agents could unlock far more powerful workflows than today’s one-size-f...

Rick Song, co-founder and CEO of Persona, joins us after announcing the company’s $200 million Series D. In this episode, Rick breaks down what it means to build the verified identity layer of the internet — not just verifying who someone is, but verifying who an AI agent is acting on behalf of, and what their intent is.

We explore how identity has evolved from static credentials to something continuous and contextual, how AI is raising the stakes for online trust, and why Rick believes the future of identity must be privacy-preserving and user-controlled. He also shares how Pers...

Sid Malladi, co-founder and CEO of Nuvo, joins us on the day of the company’s public launch to talk about the future of B2B trade infrastructure. Backed by $45M from Sequoia, Founders Fund, and Spark, Nuvo aims to replace the outdated pen-and-paper systems that still dominate the $11 trillion U.S. trade economy.

Sid explains why the problem isn’t just software—it’s a lack of shared infrastructure across businesses. He walks us through the scaling challenges, the platform Nuvo is building, and why he compares Nuvo’s roadmap to early Facebook: first connect businesses, then build...

In today’s episode, Jon Gegenheimer, Global Co-Head of Tech M&A at Jefferies, joins us to break down how the Trump administration’s new tariffs have frozen the tech M&A market almost overnight. We dive into why the year started with optimism, how quickly the landscape shifted in April, and why buyers and sellers are now stuck in a tense waiting game.

Jon also shares his advice for founders and boards navigating this uncertainty—and why companies need to be prepared to move fast if the market reopens later this year.

We also covere...

Today, Kyle Harrison, general partner at Contrary, sits down with Sean Hunt, co-founder and CTO of Solugen, to talk about how the company is reinventing chemical manufacturing from first principles. Sean explains why traditional chemical supply chains are fragile and carbon-intensive — and how Solugen’s modular, carbon-negative Bioforge model could reshape industrial production.

We discuss the dynamics driving demand for domestic chemicals, how tariffs are creating new opportunities, why reusing abandoned infrastructure is critical for scaling manufacturing, and how Solugen thinks about licensing its technology in the future.

We also covered Discord’s CEO transition, Flow’s...

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 c...

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 Wi...

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...

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 start...

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: conne...

We're launching Tech Today, a daily show on the most important stories in technology.

10 minutes per day. Five days per week.

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...

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 exten...

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, Terr...