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It is almost impossible to find investment alpha in AI without understanding the technology. The days when a business-only founder could build a great AI company without deep technical fluency are probably behind us, at least for the next few years. Unless you fundamentally understand what the technology can and cannot do, what is driving the gains in capability, and what might reduce its current limitations, I don’t think you can build a truly great AI company. For me, that means looking for founders who can see around the corner technically, and who are building companies around durable cust

I spend anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a day. I am grateful to the friends and companies that have given me heavily subsidized access. Otherwise, I would probably burn through our entire fund just learning about AI.

The two biggest constraints on India’s sovereign-AI ambitions are compute and data. With better access to both, Indian talent could produce far more high-quality research. Should India build frontier AI? Should we invest in it? Absolutely. The AI ecosystem, which will effectively become the broader technology ecosystem in a few years, is currently heavily dependent on an ally whose priorities can change from quarter to quarter. It is extremely risky not to have a credible alternative to fall back on. We need to reduce our dependence on, and net imports of, foundational technologies like these.

The hackathon may generate ideas, but turning them into products is a much tougher challenge. Experts question whether enough developers working in India’s many low-resource languages have the time and expertise to participate. Even if they do, promising prototypes would still need long-term funding, engineering talent, government support, and customers. “Hackathons are an effective way to surface grassroots innovation and identify solutions tailored to local languages, affordability, and accessibility challenges. But breakthrough ideas alone are not enough,” Sagar Vishnoi, director and co-fou