No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups - Conviction

Latest Episodes:

Scaling Legal AI and Building Next-Generation Law Firms with Harvey Co-Founder and President Gabe Pereyra Dec 05, 2025

Show notes

In just over three years, Harvey has not only scaled to nearly one thousand customers, including Walmart, PwC, and other giants of the Fortune 500, but fundamentally transformed how legal work is delivered. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil are joined by Harvey’s co-founder and president Gabe Pereyra to discuss why the future of legal AI isn’t only about individual productivity, but also about putting together complex client matters to make law firms more profitable. They also talk about how Harvey analyzes complex tasks like fund formation or M&A and deploys agents to handle research and drafting, the strategic reasoning behind enabling law firms rather than competing with them, and why AI won’t replace partners but will change law firm leverage models and training for associates.

Chapters:

00:00 – Gabe Pereyra Introduction

00:09 – Introduction to Harvey

02:04 – Expanding Harvey’s Reach

03:22 – Understanding Legal Workflows

06:20 – Agentic AI Applications in Law

09:06 – The Future Evolution of Law Firms

13:36 – RL in Law

19:46 – Deploying Harvey and Customization

23:46 – Adoption and Customer Success

25:28– Why Harvey Isn’t Building a Law Firm

27:25 – Challenges and Opportunities in Legal Tech

29:26 – Building a Company During the Rise of Gen AI

37:24 – Hiring at Harvey

40:19 – Future Predictions

44:17 – Conclusion

Sunday Robotics: Scaling the Home Robot Revolution with Co-Founders Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi Nov 19, 2025

Show notes

The robotics industry is on the cusp of its own “GPT” moment, catalyzed by transformative research advances. Enter Memo, the first general-intelligence personal robot, focused on taking on your chores to give back your time. Sarah Guo sits down with Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi, co-founders of Sunday Robotics, to discuss the state of AI robotics. Tony and Cheng speak to the challenges they faced while developing their technology, the innovative glove system employed to scale real-world data collection, and the impact of diffusion policy and imitation learning. Plus, they talk about their 2026 in-home beta program and why personal robots are only a handful of years away from mass deployment.

Chapters:

00:00 – Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi Introduction

00:56 – State of AI Robotics

02:11 – Deploying a Robot Pre-AI

03:13 – Impact of Diffusion Policy

04:29 – Role of ACT and ALOHA

07:02 – Imitation Learning - Enter UMI

10:38 – Introducing Sunday

11:57 – Sunday’s Robot Design Philosophy

15:05 – Sunday’s Shipping Timeline

19:02 – Scale of Sunday’s Training Data

23:58 – Importance of Data Quality at Scale

24:56 – Technical Challenges

27:59 – When Will People Have Home Robots?

30:48 – Failures of Past Demos

32:34 – Sunday’s Demos

36:53 – What Sunday’s Hiring For

39:10 – Conclusion

How AI Will Accelerate Breakthroughs in Biotechnology with Benchling CEO Sajith Wickramasekara Nov 13, 2025

Show notes

Bringing new drugs to market is a costly, time-consuming endeavor. On top of that, most medicines fail at some point in the research and development phase. Sarah Guo is joined by Sajith Wickramasekara, co-founder and CEO of Benchling, a company that has not only become the central system of record for biotech R&D, but uses AI agents to assist scientists to help fix this broken system. Sajith details the roadblocks that impede drug development and approval, the “dot com” bust occurring in biotech, and how AI agents and simulation can help scientists experiment faster. Plus, they talk about China’s competitive rise in the pharma space, and the unique challenges of building an interdisciplinary culture that merges the worlds of science and software.

Rebuild biotech for the AI era - Sajith Wickramasekara

Chapters:

00:00 – Sajith Wickramasekara Introduction

00:38 – Origin and Mission of Benchling

02:08 – The Drug Development Process

03:49 – Current State of the Biotech industry

08:46 – AI’s Role in Biotech

16:14 – Benchling AI and Its Impact

18:36 – The Future of AI in Biotech

26:28 – Debunking AI Drug Discovery Myths

28:50 – Data’s Role in Biotech

29:35 – The Importance of Tools in Pharma

31:28 – AI’s Impact on Scientific Research

34:55 – Building a Biotech Company

40:18 – Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Biotech

43:06 – Tech and Biotech: Learning from Each Other

48:16 – Conclusion

Meet Snowflake Intelligence: A Personalized Enterprise Intelligence Agent with Sridhar Ramaswamy Nov 06, 2025

Show notes

Snowflake is moving beyond the data warehouse. Its new Snowflake Intelligence is an agentic platform for every employee, not just data teams. Sarah Guo sits down with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to discuss his first 18 months at the helm, as well as the massive pivot to make the data giant AI-first. Sridhar talks about Snowflake Intelligence, the company's new AI agent platform, and its implications for enterprise data management. They also explore how Sridhar navigates partnerships with major tech companies, how he fosters a culture of continuous improvement within the organization, and how he envisions Snowflake’s future as an integral data-driven enterprise solution.

Chapters:

00:00 – Sridhar Ramaswamy Introduction

00:42 – Snowflake’s Market Adaptation

03:14 – Snowflake’s Evolution and AI Integration

05:44 – Introducing Snowflake Intelligence

09:01 – Snowflake Intelligence User Experience

11:55 – Drawing the Line Between Data, Agent System, and App

13:30 – Leadership and Organizational Changes

16:19 – How Being an Investor, Entrepreneur Informed Sridhar’s Leadership

18:50 – Importance of Product-Market Fit

22:46 – Snowflake’s Strategic Positioning

27:10 – Snowflake’s Partnership Strategy

30:20 – How Sridhar Sees the ROI of AI

35:09 – How AI Changes the Ad Model

38:15 – Why LLMs Still Need Search

42:11 – Conclusion

The Best of 2025 (So Far) with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil Oct 31, 2025

Show notes

2025 has thus far been a year of great leaps and advances in AI technology. And Sarah and Elad have spoken with some of the most enterprising founders and scientific minds in the field of AI today. So we’re revisiting a few of our favorite conversations on No Priors so far in 2025 – Winston Weinberg (Harvey), Dr. Fei-Fei Li (World Labs), Brendan Foody (Mercor), Dan Hendrycks (Center for AI Safety), Noubar Afeyan (Flagship Pioneering), Brandon McKinzie and Eric Mitchell (OpenAI o3), Isa Fulford (OpenAI), Arvind Jain (Glen), and Dr. Shiv Rao (Abridge).

Chapters:

00:00 – Episode Introduction

0:21 – Winston Weinberg on Leaning into New Capabilities

02:01 – Dr. Fei-Fei Li on Spatial Intelligence

04:13 – Brendan Foody on AI Disruption in the Workforce

06:10 – Dan Hendrycks on the Geopolitics of Superintelligence

08:06 – Noubar Afeyan on Entrepreneurship

10:38 – Brandon McKinzie and Eric Mitchell on Reasoning Models

12:41 – Isa Fulford on Training Deep Research

13:49 – Arvind Jain on Innovating Enterprise Search

16:21 – Dr. Shiv Rao on AI’s Human Impact

18:58 – Conclusion

Reinventing the Developer Terminal with Warp Co-Founder and CEO Zach Lloyd Oct 23, 2025

Show notes

For decades, the developer terminal has remained largely unchanged. But for Warp CEO and co-founder Zach Lloyd, reinventing this core tool is the key to unlocking AI agents for coding, debugging, and automating the entire development process. Zach joins Elad Gil to discuss how seeing this opportunity for innovation led to Warp’s agentic terminal for developers. Zach talks about the phases of software development, from coding by hand to the current "develop by prompt" era, and the coming age of fully automated development. Plus, Zach and Elad explore the deep philosophical questions around intelligence versus consciousness in AI models, and what it would take to believe a computer program is truly aware.

Chapters:

00:00 – Zach Lloyd Introduction

00:32 – AI, Intelligence, and Consciousness

06:55 – What Warp Does

07:38 – Benefits of the Terminal as a Launchpoint

08:27 – Features Driving Warp’s Adoption

09:12 – Zach’s View of the Coding Market

10:27 – Evolution of Coding Development

12:45 – Importance of Senior Engineer Expertise

14:11 – Future of Security and Other Dev Tools

22:22 – Why Zach Focused on the Terminal

23:52 – The Future of the Model Layer

25:36 – What Zach’s Excited About in the AI Dev World

27:18 – Conclusion

Unlocking the Road to Energy Abundance with Base Power CEO and Co-Founder Zach Dell Oct 15, 2025

Show notes

With demand from AI for energy already exploding, our electric grid is facing a crisis. Base Power CEO and co-founder Zach Dell is ready to re-architect its future from the ground up. Zach sits down with Elad Gil to talk about Base Power’s recent $1 billion fundraise from major investors. Zach discusses the role of energy across industries, as well as Base Power's mission to lower electricity costs through vertical integration. Zach and Elad also explore the future of energy, the role of batteries in transforming the grid, and the regulatory challenges facing the energy industry. Plus, Zach pitches why top talent should make their careers in energy generation.

Chapters:

00:00 – Zach Dell Introduction

00:50 – Base Power’s Vision

02:15 – Base Power’s Products and Services

04:00 – What Drew Zach to Working on Power

05:12 – Base Power’s Founding Team

06:58 – Base Power’s Hiring Needs

08:02 – How Zach Hired an Awesome Founding Team

09:51 – How Do We Meet Energy Demands?

12:58 – How Viable is Nuclear Energy?

17:04 – Global Energy Cost Dynamics

17:41 – Future of AI Training Centers

18:32 – What Will Drive Energy Buildout

20:38 – Drivers of Energy Transmission Cost

22:30 – Regulation and the Energy Industry

23:52 – What Zach is Optimistic About in Energy

24:42 – Cultivating Base Power’s Culture

27:26 – Zach’s Philosophy on Capitalization

30:00 – How Base Power Uses Scale

31:57 – Conclusion

Humans&: Bridging IQ and EQ in Machine Learning with Eric Zelikman Oct 09, 2025

Show notes

The AI industry is obsessed with making models smarter. But what if they’re building the wrong kind of intelligence? In launching his new venture, humans&, Eric Zelikman sees an opportunity to shift the focus from pure IQ to building models with EQ. Sarah Guo is joined by Eric Zelikman, formerly of Stanford and xAI, who shares his journey from AI researcher to founder. Eric talks about the challenges of building human-centric AI, integrating long-term memory in models, and the importance of creating AI systems that work collaboratively with humans to unlock their full potential. Plus, Eric shares his views on abunance and what he’s looking for in talent for humans&.

Chapters:

00:00 – Eric Zelikman Introduction

00:29 – Eric’s Early Interest in AI

01:29 – Challenges in AI and Automation

02:25 – Research Contributions

06:14 – Q-STaR and Scaling Up AI

08:14 – Current State of AI Models

15:23 – Human-Centric AI and Future Directions

22:08 – Eric’s New Venture: humans&

35:33 – Recruitment Goals for humans&

36:57 – Conclusion

The Impact of AI, from Business Models to Cybersecurity, with Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora Oct 04, 2025

Show notes

Between the future of search, the biggest threats in cybersecurity, and the jobs and platforms of tomorrow, Nikesh Arora sees one common thread connecting and transforming them all—AI. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with Nikesh Arora, CEO of cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks and former Chief Business Officer of Google, to talk about a wide array of topics from agentic AI to leadership. Nikesh dives into the future of search, the disruptive potential of AI agents for existing business models, and how AI has both compressed the timeline for cyberattacks as well as fundamentally shifted defense strategies in cybersecurity. Plus, Nikesh shares his leadership philosophy, and why he’s so optimistic about AI. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @nikesharora | @PaloAltoNtwks Chapters: 00:00 – Nikesh Arora Introduction 00:39 – Nikesh on the Future of Search 04:46 – Shifting to an Agentic Model of Search 08:12 – AI-as-a-Service 16:55 – State of Enterprise Adoption 20:15 – Gen AI and Cybersecurity 27:35 – New Problems in Cybersecurity in the AI Age 29:53 – Deepfakes, Spearfishing, and Other Attacks 32:56 – Expanding Products at Palo Alto 35:49 – AI Agents and Human Replaceability 44:28 – Nikesh’s Thoughts on Growth at Scale 46:52 – Nikesh’s Leadership Tips 51:14 – Nikesh on Ambition 54:18 – Nikesh’s Thoughts on AI 58:21 – Conclusion

Reinventing K-12 Education Using AI with Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt Sep 25, 2025

Show notes

What if kids could master their academics in just two hours a day and spend the rest of their time developing real-world skills they’re passionate about? Joe Liemandt, founder of the software company Trilogy, is doing just that. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil are joined by Joe Liemandt, principal of Alpha School, to discuss his AI-driven vision of reinventing K-12 education. Joe talks about the strategies that Alpha School employs: reducing the traditional six-hour school day to two, replacing teachers with “Guides,” using financial incentives as motivation, and dedicating the remainder of the school day to project-based workshops that reflect the students’ passions. Together, they also examine Joe’s plan to scale Alpha School, the youth mental health crisis, and why edtech so far has failed.

Chapters:

00:00 – Joe Liemandt Introduction

00:27 – From Trilogy to Alpha School

02:45 – How Joe Changed His Mind About Alpha School

04:16 – Reenvisioning the School Day

09:06 – An Example Day at Alpha School

20:13 – Educating Based on Motivations

22:56 – Incentives-Based Learning

24:40 – Standards for Guides

26:39 – Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivators

35:12 – Tackling Learning Differences

39:13 – Alpha School Pricing Structure