Training Data

Nathan Sobo has spent nearly two decades pursuing one goal, building an IDE that combines the power of full-featured tools like JetBrains with the responsiveness of lightweight editors like Vim. After hitting the performance ceiling with web-based Atom, he founded Zed and rebuilt from scratch in Rust with GPU-accelerated rendering. Now with 170,000 active developers, Zed is positioned at the intersection of human and AI collaboration. Nathan discusses the Agent Client Protocol that makes Zed "Switzerland" for different AI coding agents, and his vision for fine-grained edit tracking that enables permanent, contextual conversations anchored directly to code, a collaborative layer that asynchronous git-based workflows can't provide. Nathan argues that despite terminal-based AI coding tools visual interfaces for code aren't going anywhere, and that source code is a language designed for humans to read, not just machines to execute. Hosted by Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital

Alex Kendall founded Wayve in 2017 with a contrarian vision: replace the hand-engineered autonomous vehicle stack with end-to-end deep learning. While AV 1.0 companies relied on HD maps, LiDAR retrofits, and city-by-city deployments, Wayve built a generalization-first approach that can adapt to new vehicles and cities in weeks. Alex explains how world models enable reasoning in complex scenarios, why partnering with automotive OEMs creates a path to scale beyond robo-taxis, and how language integration opens up new product possibilities. From driving in 500 cities to deploying with manufacturers like Nissan, Wayve demonstrates how the same AI breakthroughs powering LLMs are transforming the physical economy. Hosted by: Pat Grady and Sonya Huang

When Google launched Nano Banana, it instantly became a global phenomenon, introducing an image model that finally made it possible for people to see themselves in AI-generated worlds. In this episode, Nicole Brichtova and Hansa Srinivasan, the product and engineering leads behind Nano Banana, share the story behind the model’s creation and what it means for the future of visual AI. Nicole and Hansa discuss how they achieved breakthrough character consistency, why human evaluation remains critical for models that aim to feel right, and how “fun” became a gateway to utility. They explain the craft behind Gemini’s multimodal design, the obsession with data quality that powered Nano Banana’s realism, and how user creativity continues to push the technology in unexpected directions—from personal storytelling to education and professional design. The conversation explores what comes next in visual AI, why accessibility and imagination must evolve together, and how the tools we build can help people capture not just reality but possibility. Hosted by: Stephanie Zhan and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital

The OpenAI Sora 2 team (Bill Peebles, Thomas Dimson, Rohan Sahai) discuss how they compressed filmmaking from months to days, enabling anyone to create compelling video. Bill, who invented the diffusion transformer that powers Sora and most video generation models, explains how space-time tokens enable object permanence and physics understanding in AI-generated video, and why Sora 2 represents a leap for video. Thomas and Rohan share how they're intentionally designing the Sora product against mindless scrolling, optimizing for creative inspiration, and building the infrastructure for IP holders to participate in a new creator economy. The conversation goes beyond video generation into the team’s vision for world simulators that could one day run scientific experiments, their perspective on co-evolving society alongside technology, and how digital simulations in alternate realities may become the future of knowledge work. Hosted by: Konstantine Buhler and Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital

Michael Kagan is the Chief Technology Officer at Nvidia and co-founder of Mellanox. Recorded live at Sequoia’s Europe100 event, Kagan explains how Nvidia’s $7 billion acquisition of Mellanox transformed the company from a chipmaker into the architect of AI infrastructure. He breaks down the technical challenges of scaling from single GPUs to 100K—and eventually million-GPU—data centers, revealing why network performance, not just compute power, determines AI system efficiency. Kagan also discusses Nvidia’s partnership with Intel, the evolution from training to inference workloads, and why he believes AI will help humanity uncover new laws of physics yet to be imagined.

Irregular co-founder Dan Lahav is redefining what cybersecurity means in the age of autonomous AI. Working closely with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, Dan, co-founder Omer Nevo and team are pioneering “frontier AI security”—a proactive approach to safeguarding systems where AI models act as independent agents. Dan shares how emergent behaviors, from models socially engineering each other to outmaneuvering real-world defenses like Windows Defender, signal a coming paradigm shift. Dan explains why tomorrow’s threats will come from AI-on-AI interactions, why anomaly detection will soon break down, and how governments and enterprises alike must rethink defenses from first principles as AI becomes a national security layer. Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Dean Meyer, Sequoia Capital

Ping Wu built Google's contact center business before becoming CEO of Cresta, where he's pioneering a unique approach to contact center transformation. Rather than full automation Ping advocates a dual approach, automating what's ready while using AI to assist humans with the rest. He makes the case for an abundance mindset—imagining new customer experiences like talking to airline apps or turning synchronous interactions asynchronous. Ping breaks down the technical challenges of deploying Contact Center AI at scale, from solving latency to orchestrating 20+ models in real-time. Sequoia’s Doug Leone shares his framework for building AI companies at speed and why he believes we're at the front end of an Industrial Revolution 2.0. Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Doug Leone, Sequoia Capital

As CTO of Block, Dhanji Prasanna has overseen a dramatic enterprise AI transformation, with engineers saving 8-10 hours a week through AI automation. Block’s open-source agent goose connects to existing enterprise tools through MCP, enabling everyone from engineers to sales teams to build custom applications without coding. Dhanji shares how Block reorganized from business unit silos to functional teams to accelerate AI adoption, why they chose to open-source their most valuable AI tool and why he believes swarms of smaller AI models will outperform monolithic LLMs. Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital