VC10X - The AI Bottleneck Keeps Moving - Ashmeet Sidana, Founder & Managing Partner, Engineering Capital

So at any given time, you are combining components, storage, memory, compute, software, et cetera, which have different characteristics to make a system. And the problem is, the real issue here is that those underlying components grow, evolve, change at different speeds. The answer is we're gonna have to rebalance again every few years. That's just what has to be done.

Some people have started the debate that, okay, maybe investing in software right now is not as valuable as investing in hardware. Do you buy into that? How do you view that?

Here's the startling number. Sixty-three thousand times you can get a performance improvement if you move from Python directly to writing on the Intel x86 chip. This is without touching the hardware. This is without changing anything in, in the chips, in the systems, in the motherboards, in the interconnects, et cetera.

Data isn't the-- just the new oil, it's also the new asbestos due to its potential toxicity. As enterprise model training becomes heavily polluted by synthetic or poisoned data, how must engineering architectures change to filter out these liabilities?

What we've got is now this very mushy, messy collection of data, which is being further poisoned by data being generated by those AIs themselves.

Hey everyone, this is Prashant and I'll be host of the VC10X Podcast, and today we have Ashmeet Sidana with us. Ashmeet is the founder and managing partner of Engineering Capital, a seed-stage venture fund he runs as a solo GP in the Bay Area. Ashmeet is a Stanford-trained engineer and former product leader at VMware. In this conversation, we get into why software still offers a very lucrative investment opportunity, backed by a number that will stop you in your tracks, why data is no longer just the oil, it's the new asbestos, how data sovereignty is reshaping the global cloud landscape, and what it actually takes to back a technical founder at day zero, before there's a product, before there's revenue, before any proof. Ashmeet has been oversubscribed on every fund he has ever raised, and he'll tell you exactly why running alone is a structural advantage, not a risk. So without wasting any time, let's dive straight in. This episode is brought to you by Podcast NX, my podcasting agency for VCs. We help VCs start and run branded podcasts that can serve as their entire content engine. Turn the conversations you're already having into a machine. One recording becomes your presence on LinkedIn, Spotify, YouTube, and email. Don't just build another VC firm, build a firm that can stand out to LPs and one that founders can brag about having you on their cap table. Check out our services at podcastnx.com. I'll put the link in the description below. Now, enjoy the episode. Hey Ashmeet, so good to have you on the VC10X podcast. How are you doing?

Thank you, Prashant. Very happy to be here.

It's a pleasure having you on. Uh, let's get to the first question that we have here. So as clusters grow to hundreds of thousands of chips, raw processors have jumped ahead, leaving networking to catch up. What specific breakthrough needs to happen in interconnect layer to stop idle hardware from bottlenecking LLM training?

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