The Derby Mill Series: Pushing AI to the Limit

Atinary Technologies, based in Lausanne and Silicon Valley, is pioneering autonomous scientific experimentation with AI-driven robotic research labs. In this episode, our season finale, the Derby Mill panel welcomes Hermann Tribukait, co-founder and CEO of Atinary , whose vision is to use the company’s technology to exponentially accelerate the discovery of breakthrough molecules. Named after the...

In our latest episode, Intrepid’s Derby Mill podcast features the CEO and co-founder of UK-based PhysicsX, Jacomo Corbo, for a special in-person episode filmed at our Annual General Meeting in London. The interview, conducted by host Ajay Agrawal and panel members Sendhil Mullainathan and Niamh Gavin, comes just weeks after PhysicsX announced an oversubscribed $300 million Series C investment roun...

UK-based Relay is a fast-growing delivery company whose mission is to lower the cost of last-mile fulfillment. CEO and co-founder Jonathan Jenssen say his team is reinventing networks for modern e-commerce. Relay covers about 23% of the UK, has a 4% share in operating postal codes and includes on its customer list such brands as Vinted, Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop, ASOS and Next. One big challenge fo...

How are companies using AI to improve the healthcare journey for consumers? And how will things evolve at the limit, where wearable technology integrates with electronic medical records and medical agentic AI analyzes everything on the fly to issue recommendations and improve outcomes? In other words, what are the implications of everyone becoming equipped with their own superhuman medical agent? ...

A response from the Derby Mill team of AI experts to Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark’s recent Substack essay, “ AI systems are about to start building themselves .” In the essay, Clark predicts that “no-human-involved AI R&D - an AI system powerful enough that it could plausibly autonomously build its own successor - happens by the end of 2028.” Clark notes: “If that happens, we will cross a Rubic...

Not just an episode about tax law! In fact, the Derby Mill team’s conversation with Benjamin Alarie, the co-founder and CEO behind Blue J, the fast-growing tax research platform, explores numerous fascinating threads. How will AI change the practice of law and the litigation process? Will trying a case in the justice system be necessary when AI can predict with high accuracy the likely outcome? In...

When the right answer is a matter of life and death, how do you ensure that your AI systems avoid fatal mistakes? Signal 1 is a software platform for healthcare that functions as a control panel for deployed AI systems in hospitals. Rather than building individual models, Signal 1 focuses on improving the safety, observability and governability of pre-existing AI models used throughout the patient...

OpenClaw, the latest AI chatbot to go viral, has some key differences from ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. The agentic AI developed by Peter Steinberger is open source and hosted on your own computer. You also can talk to it via messaging apps like WhatsApp. So how does OpenClaw work? What are the implications for the AI industry overall? How will it affect the adoption of artificial general intelligen...

Are humanoid robots using the best possible form factor, or should we consider a wholesale redesign if we’re seeking the most useful mechanical helpers for daily living? Drawing on recent demonstrations at CES, China’s Spring Festival Gala and the India AI Impact Summit, the Derby Mill team explores the implications of ever-advancing robotics capabilities.  Ajay Agrawal and collaborators Rich Sutt...

AI-enabled cyberattacks are increasing in sophistication and creativity. For example, recently, a vending machine became a potential entry point for attackers targeting a large financial institution in a major city. So how can manufacturers protect devices in the age of AI and LLMs? How can that effort be helped by open source software and hardware? And what does this mean for the future of connec...

Nearly a trillion dollars in market value vanished from software and services stocks after a Reuters headline framed AI as a potential existential threat to traditional software companies. In this episode of the Derby Mill Series, host Ajay Agrawal leads Rich Sutton, Niamh Gavin, and Suzanne Gildert in a focused discussion on whether that reaction reflects structural risk or market overreach. Ques...

Barney Hussey-Yeo is the founder and CEO of Cleo, the company behind an AI-powered financial companion that is transforming the way millions of people manage their money. Founded in London in 2016, the company has an annual recurring revenue of $350 million. It has doubled its subscriber base every year since 2021, and now has more than 300 employees in offices in London, New York and San Francisc...

The Derby Mill regulars host Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke on the heels of the ecommerce giant’s release of its Winter Edition 2026 , aka The RenAIssance Edition, a significant artificial intelligence-enabled refresh of the company’s products and services. With more than 150 new and updated products, the update aims to help entrepreneurs, merchants and small businesses use AI to amplify their human cre...

Does the Canadian AI community have a communications problem? Too often, AI investors feel they have to go outside of the country to find great targets for deals. Similarly, domestic AI companies find it difficult to attract dollars from Canadian sources of capital. Too few investors and companies actually talk to one another. And fewer still have the kind of trusted relationship required to get d...

Engineering is growing more complex—but design reviews still drag through email screenshots and PowerPoints. In this episode of the Derby Mill Series we welcome Adam Keating, CEO & co-founder of CoLab, whose platform uses AI to accelerate and improve engineering design reviews. One client achieved a 40% reduction in the cost of poor quality in a single year. With 160 employees and clients like For...

A trillion-dollar clash of ideas is roiling the artificial intelligence community. Today, in a special episode, our host Ajay Agrawal leads Rich Sutton, Sendhil Mullainathan and Niamh Gavin, and special guest Suzanne Gildert, in a fascinating exploration of the issue: Are Large Language Models (LLMs) sufficiently “bitter lesson pilled” to live up to their hype? “Bitter lesson pilled” is the AI com...

The Derby Mill Series hosts are back to kick off Season 2 with an episode about automating factories—an extension of a discussion we began in the series’ first-ever episode . Here, hosts Ajay Agrawal, Rich Sutton, Sendhil Mullainathan and Niamh Gavin sit down with Vention founder and CEO Etienne Lacroix and CTO Francois Giguere. Vention’s mission: to become the default operating system for factory...

Our hosts chat with Liran Belenzon, CEO and co-founder of BenchSci. Based in Toronto, BenchSci has raised more than $215-million to date, and is backed by such funds as former U.S. vice-president Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, private and public markets investment giant TCV, Google-backed Gradient Ventures and F-Prime Capital Partners. More than half of the world’s largest pharmaceuti...

Joining the usual Derby Mill team of Ajay Agrawal, Rich Sutton, Sendhil Mullainathan and Niamh Gavin are two experts in the automation of business workflows: AppliedAI CEO and founder Arya Bolurfrushan, and member of the technical staff Phillip Kingston. AppliedAI closed a $55 million USD Series A round of financing in February 2025 led by G42 and with backing from Palantir and McKinsey, among oth...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently described physical AI, a category that includes robots that can perceive, understand and act in the real world, as the next wave in artificial intelligence. So in the last episode before Derby Mill’s summer break, and our first-ever in-person recording session, the team of Ajay Agrawal, Rich Sutton, Sendhil Mullainathan and Niamh Gavin welcome Suzanne Gildert, the...

Headquartered in Toronto, Private AI detects and removes personally identifiable information (PII) from data using large language models (LLMs), all without compromising individual or institutional privacy. In this episode, Private AI co-founder and CEO Patricia Thaine offers a behind-the-scenes look at the company’s technical strategy, including the scalability challenge inherent in protecting co...

Hospitals in jurisdictions around the world face tight budgets and staff shortages. Artisight offers an AI-powered suite of software services designed to help hospitals do more with the limited resources they have available. Based in Chicago and led by a medical doctor who also has an MBA, Dr. Andrew Gostine, Artisight’s mission is to improve quality metrics and financial outcomes with the help of...

StackAdapt is an advertising platform that leverages AI to optimize digital ad campaigns across multiple channels, including display, video, native, and connected TV. With an auction system, it evaluates millions of ad opportunities each second using predictive analytics to maximize ROI and enhance audience targeting. By integrating customer data and providing privacy-conscious, scalable solutions...

Derby Mill co-host Richard Sutton and his former student, David Silver, recently published a paper about the future of artificial intelligence, called Welcome to the Era of Experience . So in this episode the show’s other hosts—Ajay Agrawal, Sendhil Mullainathan and Niamh Gavin—take their chance to interview Rich about the essay, and provide their take on its implications. Today’s large language m...

Skin Analytics is a UK company using AI to automate the diagnosis of serious skin conditions, starting with skin cancer. Its core product, DERM, is the only Class III CE mark AI medical device for autonomous dermatology in the UK’s health system. Used on more than 150,000 real-world patients, DERM achieves 99.8% negative predictive value, outperforming dermatologists. The company is expanding into...