Nicole Maffeo was the very first guest on Not Another Podcast. She's back, and the conversation picks up right where we left off.
Nicole is a former Bridgewater investor, ex-Google AI research leader, and co-founder of Gambit Robotics, where she's building specialized robots for the home. In Part 1, she gave us the thesis: the only real moat left in AI is hardware, and the global AI race is really 8 battles happening at once. In Part 2, she updates that thesis and goes further.
In this episode, Brennan and Nicole break down:
- Why humanoid robots are the wrong bet for your home, and why specialized, distributed robotics wins
- How the AI race has shifted from horizontal competition (best model) to vertical stack dominance, with different countries owning different layers
- Why OpenAI buying a podcast network is a vertical integration play, not a content play
- Why people hate big tech, and how 20 years of social media toxicity broke public trust
- Nicole's experience as one of the only women in every room she's walked into, from competitive chess at age 6, to Bridgewater, to Google AI, to crypto, to robotics
- The mentors who championed her, and why she pays it forward at every company she works at
Subscribe for more episodes of Not Another Podcast. If you know a founder building in AI, robotics, or deep tech, send them this one.
Check out Nicole's company, Gambit Robotics: https://www.gambitrobotics.ai
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