Naveen Rao
Person
Naveen Rao is the CEO of Unconventional AI, a company focused on developing new approaches to artificial intelligence and computing. He previously founded Nervana, led it through its acquisition by Intel, and co-founded MosaicML, where he served as CEO before its acquisition by Databricks.
What Naveen Rao has said on podcasts
14 statements
Hardware innovation is needed to build true intelligence
“We need innovation on the hardware substrate to actually build true intelligence.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 0:26
AI will enable humanity’s next evolutionary level
“I think AI is one of the most transformational technologies that humanity's ever created and will enable us to get to that next level of evolution”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 0:58
- on Unconventional AI power efficiency targetPositiveSep 21, 2026· All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Unconventional AI targets 1,000x power efficiency within 3.5 years
“The goal has been within— it was initially within 5 years to get to 1,000x power efficiency. I've actually revised this to 3.5 years because things have gone faster than we anticipated.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 3:41
AI data-center demand will exhaust available energy in about three years
“So we're going to run out of energy pretty fast. In like 3 years or so is my estimate.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 5:45
Energy accounts for about half of ChatGPT token-serving costs
“About 50% of the cost of serving a token, so every time you try something on ChatGPT, 50% of that cost is energy.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 6:38
Unconventional AI will monetize data-center power 1,000 times better
“We're going to monetize that 1,000x better than existing hardware.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 7:01
Biological neural systems provide the right substrate for intelligence
“Biology's created something quite incredible. In fact, it's the right kind of physical substrate for intelligence.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 7:58
Unconventional AI aims to surpass biological intelligence efficiency
“The overarching goal of this company is to beat biology.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 18:18
Unconventional AI will enable ubiquitous computing and new robotic forms
“We want to make something better and enable compute everywhere, including compute in new robotic forms and things like this in the next decade or so.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 18:21
Cheaper AI computation will create humanity’s largest market
“I think this will create the largest market that humanity's ever seen.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 19:27
Unconventional AI is within two years of a full product
“Yeah, time-wise, we're within 2 years of getting it to a full product.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 20:06
- on Existing AI models on Unconventional AI architectureMixedSep 21, 2026· All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Existing AI models will work on Unconventional AI’s architecture but require transition compute
“So yes, the existing models will work, but there's a fair bit of compute required to make that transition happen.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 21:13
The architecture implements computation as time-varying behavior
“It implements it as sort of time-varying behavior.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 21:28
- on Unconventional AI Python librariesPositiveSep 21, 2026· All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Unconventional AI’s Python libraries express stochastic time-varying elements
“It's a language of sorts that allows you to kind of express time-varying elements that have stochastic behavior.”
Open the episode · Naveen Rao: 4D Computing, AI's Energy Wall & Beating BiologyListen at 22:18
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.
