The Nebius for Startups Podcast

Henry Wang built a consumer app that 10 million people use for 150 minutes a day. For most of that time, the assumption in the industry was that you needed a frontier model to deliver a great AI experience. Henry found a different answer. In this episode, Joshua Liss, Head of Media and Entertainment at Nebius, sits down with Henry (Lifan) Wang, Co-founder of Kaon Labs, to get into how you actually...

Brian Zhan doesn't want your business plan. In fact, if you hand him one at the seed stage, that might raise some red flags. In this episode, Anu Maheshwari, Head of Venture Ecosystem at Nebius, sits down with Brian Zhan, partner at Striker Venture Partners. They unpack what it actually means to back people, not products, at the frontier of AI. From reinforcement learning's generalization...

Tavily hit one million users without a single outbound cold email. Not because of a viral moment, but because the founder understood earlier than most that the unit economics of agentic search are fundamentally different. When you’re returning context to an AI agent rather than links to a human, token waste, latency, and information density become the variables that determine whether your product...

In October 2024, Alberto Taiuti was trying to solve a 3D asset problem and ran into a wall. The labeled data didn't exist. What he realized next reshaped the trajectory of his company. In this episode, Josh Liss (Head of Media & Entertainment at Nebius) sits down with Alberto Taiuti, CEO and Co-founder of Reactor, the developer platform for world models. They unpack what real-time world models...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast In this episode, we sit down with Scott Kveton—serial entrepreneur, Co-founder and CEO of CaseMark, and Co-founder of the Association for AI in Legal (A4L)—to explore what it means to build across multiple generations of the internet. With over 20 years of experience s...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast In this episode we sit down with Tariq Sheikh, Co-founder and CEO of Nova, a contract intelligence platform transforming how teams manage and analyze business documents. A self-described “third culture kid,” Tariq’s journey spans numerous countries across both Africa a...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast At Slush 2025 in Helsinki, we sat down with Accel’s Sam Folds to unpack the breakneck pace of today’s AI startup landscape. From identifying emerging investment opportunities to how his technical background in gaming with Blizzard and as VP of Engineering at Checkout.c...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast In this episode, we explore cutting-edge technological advancements with leaders from Abridge. Zach, an AI researcher and co-founder of Abridge, shares the company's mission to enhance human connections in healthcare by developing AI solutions that alleviate doctors' a...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast In this insightful episode, Rong Yan, the CTO of HeyGen, discusses the groundbreaking technology behind AI video generation and its potential to revolutionize video storytelling. Rong shares insights on HeyGen’s aim to make video creation accessible without the need fo...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast Xuedong Huang is the Chief Technology Officer at Zoom. A leader in the AI revolution, he is currently spearheading the development of the Zoom AI Companion and its mission to transform how the world gets work done. What happens when your meeting software starts acting...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast Join us as we dive into the transformative world of Motion, a company delivering 'AI and business in a box' solutions to SMBs and mid-market enterprises. In this episode, we discuss how Motion is automating workflows, bridging the gap between small businesses and Fortu...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast Grant Lee is the founder of Gamma. A former consultant who started his career in the advisory world, Grant previously worked at the startup Optimizely before deciding to tackle the universal frustration of manual slide formatting. In this conversation, Grant dives into...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast Alex is the founder of Higgsfield AI and a veteran of the social media space, having previously seen his company acquired by Snap. In this episode, we explore how Higgsfield AI is filling the gap between a creative idea and a finished video. Alex breaks down why they a...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast Marc Boroditsky is a seasoned leader and ex-founder who has successfully built and scaled multiple companies. He currently holds a senior leadership position at Nebius, where he leverages his extensive background in enterprise sales and infrastructure to help the next...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast In this episode, we sit down with Amit Zavery, the President, Chief Product Officer, and Chief Operating Officer at ServiceNow, who shares insights on the integration of AI into ServiceNow's platform. Amit discusses the importance of AI being a seamless part of the sys...

🚀 Apply to Nebius for Startups: https://www.nebius.com/startups 🎧 Explore more episodes: https://www.nebius.com/startups/podcast Alex Ren is the Founding Partner of Fellows Fund and the organizer of Fellows Forum. A former entrepreneur, Alex has spent the last decade building a high-quality community of AI leaders, researchers, and tech executives—bridging the gap between deep technology and ven...

In this episode, host Anubhav Maheshwari speaks with Lukas Pankau, co-founder and CEO of Industrial Next, an award winner from the NEAS Robotics and Physical AI Summit and Awards competition.  Lukas shares how his and co-founder Alan’s experience at Tesla during the Model 3 ramp inspired them to bring modern autonomy and intelligence into factories, where industrial robots are typically pre-progra...

Curious about the latest in autonomous systems? In this episode of The Nubius for Startups podcast (special series from the Nebius Robotics and Physical AI Summit and awards competition), host Anubhav Maheshwari speaks with Mustafa Bal, co-founder and CEO of Nomadic ML. In recent years, the realm of autonomous systems has experienced rapid evolution and innovation, paving the way for groundbreakin...

Sean Mitchell is the Vice President of Customer Operations at Gather AI, where he has spent the last six years scaling the company from its early advisory stages through to its Series B funding. With a deep focus on customer experience, Sean bridges the gap between complex robotics and the practical, high-stakes needs of modern warehouse managers. In this episode, we sit down with Sean to discuss...

Matt Schwartz is a biomedical engineer and the CEO and Founder of Virgo. Before launching Virgo in 2017, he served as a product manager at Intuitive Surgical, where he worked on the Da Vinci Robotic surgery system. Inside the Episode In this episode, Matt sits down to discuss how Virgo has captured the world’s largest dataset of gastrointestinal endoscopy videos, now totaling over 3 million proced...

In this episode of The Nebius for Startups podcast special series from the Nebius Robotics and Physical AI Summit and Awards, Anubhav Maheshwari speaks with Kangwook Lee (KW), Chief Business Officer of RLWRLD, an award winner in the foundation models, robot brains, and runtime category. Dive into how they are revolutionizing the robotics industry with their innovative approach to dexterous hand ma...