San Francisco, October 26, 2026: The latest episode of the People by WTF podcast, hosted by Nikhil Kamath, features conversations with four AI industry leaders in San Francisco, exploring the realities behind the current AI investment boom, its economic impact, and implications for India.
Kamath is joined by Akshay Kothari, Co-founder of Notion; Azalia Mirhoseini and Anna Goldie, Co-founders of Ricursive Intelligence; and Vijay Krishnan, Co-founder of Turing. The discussion covers the AI technology stack, from chips and data centres to applications and services, and questions whether the surge in AI spending is justified by current productivity gains.
Debate on AI investment and productivity
The panel examines the economics of the AI boom, with one guest estimating committed AI spending this year at $700 billion, compared to about $100 billion in enterprise AI revenue. Krishnan notes that while software teams can now operate with half to 60% of their former size, there are few examples of Fortune 500 companies outside the AI sector that have significantly increased revenue or reduced costs due to AI. Goldie highlights that at Ricursive, AI coding tools have enabled a smaller, more expert team than would have been possible previously.
AI adoption, chip design, and data challenges
Kothari attributes the gap between investment and visible productivity to the slow diffusion of AI beyond Silicon Valley, citing a study that shows the top 1% of companies spend ten times more on AI than the top 10%. Mirhoseini discusses the exponential growth in AI inference demand, projecting a need for 100,000 times more compute in five years, and describes Ricursive’s approach of using AI to design custom chips for specific workloads. Goldie and Mirhoseini reference their previous work on AlphaChip at Google, which has been used in five generations of TPUs, Axion, Pixel phones, Waymo chips, and by MediaTek.
Krishnan explains that Turing employs over 5 million knowledge workers in more than 70 countries to provide expert data for training AI models, but notes that such data quickly becomes obsolete as models advance. Kothari reports that the share of Notion users who are agents has risen from 1% to 30% this year, and that users accessing Notion through agents are significantly more active.
Industry insights and risks
Goldie, drawing on her experience at Google Brain and Anthropic, discusses the evolution of AI companies and Nvidia’s changing competitive advantages. The conversation also addresses the potential risks of AI, with Krishnan comparing autonomous weapons to nuclear deterrence, and Mirhoseini and Goldie expressing confidence in Anthropic’s safety focus.
Kamath raises questions about the future role of humans as intermediaries in AI-driven processes and the likelihood of governments seeking domestic alternatives to foreign AI platforms. He also shares personal experiences, including advice from Sam Altman on luxury stocks and concerns about the impact of AI on children’s skill development.
Advice for India and future directions
The panel offers practical recommendations for India, including building domestic compute capacity and creating opportunities in AI beyond IT outsourcing. Kothari points to regulatory hurdles for startups, while Goldie cites a Stanford collaborator who received government support to develop speech models for Indian languages. The discussion highlights Skyroot, an Indian space company attracting US investment, as an example of India’s cost-effective innovation.
When asked where to invest $100 million in the AI stack, Mirhoseini suggests focusing on compute efficiency, while Goldie advises founders to pursue unique capabilities. Other suggestions include establishing a university for product design in India and developing AI tools to accelerate learning for children. Kamath predicts a shift in social media usage, with people seeking to spend less time on devices.
People by WTF is a global podcast platform hosted by Nikhil Kamath, featuring conversations with leaders in business, policy, technology, culture, and academia. Past guests include Elon Musk, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bill Gates, Ajay Banga, Martin Escobari, Rishi Sunak, Akshata Murty, and Ranbir Kapoor.
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