Ricursive Intelligence is betting on AI-designed chips to help solve the compute crisis; plus, Gudea leverages AI to help organizations prevent social media crises before they erupt

[upbeat music] This is TechCrunch. This episode is brought to you by Framer. You know what's absolutely terrifying? A bad website, or worse, one that doesn't work. Avoid that nightmare and use Framer. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. So I was new to this whole website building thing, but Framer helped me get set up and running incredibly fast. You know, for instance, I wanted to add a blog to my website. It was super easy. Starting with a basic blog page template, I added some breakpoints and then jumped into customizing my layout, adding my own special touches with Framer's intuitive tools, and bam, I was ready to start letting my thoughts flow. See why thousands are trusting Framer to help build their websites. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/tcstartups for thirty percent off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/tcstartups. Rules and restrictions may apply. Recursive Intelligence founders Anna Goldie and Azalea Mirasini believe more efficient AI chip design could help solve the compute crisis. The founders took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday to detail how their startup is developing AI that can design chips, learn from each iteration, and improve subsequent designs, all with the goal of automating and accelerating the chip design process. Goldie said, "There is this understanding that in the next five years we are going to have at least ten thousand X more demand for compute, and that's somewhat potentially conservative. So we don't want to build ten thousand times more data centers. We think that we need to help by making chips that are more efficient, that use the bandwidth in those data centers more efficiently, that use the wafers and fabs more efficiently." While some may be scared by the thought of AI designing its own chips, Goldie argues that letting AI handle chip design will allow humans to focus on developing applications and exploring new possibilities that can expand what they can accomplish with computing. "I think the way everything is shifting is that humans bring their great ideas and creative thoughts and execution is handled by AI," Goldie said. And this is happening in chip design, software development, and other places, and that's something that Recursive does for chip design. The founders say AI is challenging traditional chip design methods by discovering unconventional layouts that can outperform traditional ones. You know, for example, Alpha Chip, the AI system the founders previously developed, produced a circular donut-shaped arrangement of chip components that initially surprised engineers but ultimately proved to be successful. They explained that they are optimizing entire chips rather than following the traditional approach of partitioning them into dozens of smaller blocks. This approach allows AI to create intricate patterns, including wave-like designs, which the pair said they plan to share more about in the