#101 - AI Revolution Roundtable feat. Jonas Andruilis (Aleph Alpha), Rasmus Rothe (Merantix) & Johannes Schaback (SumUp)

alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders

Transformative AI, Build/Buy AI, Business Opportunities and more

Get ready for the AI industrial revolution 🦸 in this CTO podcast episode featuring a roundtable of AI AllStars! So much is happening in AI, and you want to be part of it - that is why we asked Jonas Andrulis (Founder and CEO of Aleph Alpha), Rasmus Rothe (Co-founder of Merantix and its AI Campus) and Johannes Schaback (CTO of SumUp) to share with us a broad overview of what CTOs need to know about upcoming AI revolution. Turns out, we aren’t waiting for AGI - we are working on Transformative AI which is in reach for us all. Ready to transform lives with AI? Listen to find out:

• ~~AGI~~ Transformative AI by 2030 🤖
• Why your AI strategy (USP💎) matters more than model choice
• How to balance AI R&D 🎓with Product 💥and Enterprise Sales 💸
• AI Models: Build⚒️/Buy🛒/Pivot 🧭
• What are emerging opportunities in AI? (Spoiler: B2B SaaS especially in manufacturing 🏭)
• How to champion AI 🦸 in your company
• Loonshots🚀: how to cultivate innovation
• + Hack to attract 🧲 AI talent to non-tech hubs

Listen here

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Welcome (03:39) Meet the AI All Stars (04:31) AGI VS. TRANSFORMATIVE AI (05:28) What to expect in Transformative AI before 2030 (05:53) Agents and Scaling Limits of LLMs (07:07) The Joy of Unsupervised Learning (09:33) The Growing Pains of All AI Applications (10:38) Move to Smaller Models (11:13) RAG Combined with Proprietary Data (12:11) THE ROLE OF TRAINING DATA (14:06) Dreamer Model Architecture (15:25) Synthetic Data (16:49) Where foundational models excel (18:00) AI Sovereignty and Build/Buy/Pivot (20:18) AI Strategy (USP) is more important than model choice (20:29) Example: Detecting contradictory statements using explainable AI with positive and negative sources (22:53) Risk of Vendor Lock-In and Data Breach (25:23) Why companies are pursuing Multicloud in fear of being 'milked' (26:25) BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES IN AI (26:25) 1. Customising Models (28:59) 2. Vertical AI business for industry-specific solutions (30:37) Message for B2B SaaS (31:36) The New Pricing Paradigm Created by AI Products (32:01) Attracting AI Talent (33:38) Investors as Partners First (35:14) Keeping one's ego in check as CEO (36:49) Rasmus's 5-year plan (37:51) What is the Merantix AI Campus (39:31) Hiring The Right Fit AI Researchers (41:22) Balancing AI R&D + Product + Enterprise Sales (42:35) Pivoting an AI-Driven Product (46:10) LOONSHOT: CULTIVATING INNOVATION (46:45) The Challenge of a Loonshot Team on Company Culture (50:18) Loonshot: Can ideas come when isolated from customers? (50:51) Pitching to the Innovation Board at Aleph Alpha (51:39) COMPANY BUYIN: Guiding Companies Through AI Transformation (55:10) How can CTOs get the rest of the company board AI (56:31) Encourage people to try things out (56:57) The Role of the In-House Champion for AI (57:35) 3 Levels AI Company Maturity (58:47) Position your Team to Lead the Next Industrial Revolution (59:28) Bottom Up and Top Down

About our Guests#

Jonas Andrulis

Jonas Andrulis is founder and CEO of the German startup Aleph Alpha, with which he has set the German deep-tech funding record since its founding in 2019. He completed his industrial engineering studies at KIT in Karlsruhe, Germany, with a focus on artificial intelligence and modeling. As a serial entrepreneur, prior to Aleph Alpha, he first founded an AI software company for planning and optimization of complex logistics problems, then for human-in-the-loop training and validation of deep learning algorithms for human-machine interactions. As of 2016, he was at Apple leading AI research in the Special Projects Group. With Aleph Alpha, Jonas aims to build an independent European alternative for the next generation of artificial intelligence, following the example of OpenAI and DeepMind.

Rasmus Rothe

Dr. Rasmus Rothe is the co-founder and CTO of Merantix, the leading AI group in Europe. He serves as a General Partner of Merantix's venture arm, which builds and invests in AI companies. Merantix also operates an AI solutions business, Merantix Momentum, and oversees the largest AI ecosystem in Europe, including the AI Campus in Berlin and AI House Davos at the World Economic Forum. Rasmus received his Ph.D from ETH Zurich and is a renowned deep learning researcher. He serves as a founding board member of the German AI Association.

Johannes Schaback

Johannes Schaback is an accomplished entrepreneur and technology executive with extensive experience in the Berlin tech scene. He earned a degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Berlin and Shanghai Jiao Tong University before joining Rocket Internet as a Software Engineer in 2008. Schaback co-founded LadenZeile.de in 2009, utilizing AI extensively to build the visual eCommerce platform, which was acquired by Axel Springer in 2011. He became a business angel in 2015, and in 2018, joined the management board of online furniture store, home24. Currently, Schaback is the Chief Technology Officer of SumUp, a global financial technology company, leading the development of their cutting-edge payment processing solutions.

About our Sponsor#

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