Sourcery

CJ Desai, CEO of MongoDB, joins Sourcery at the RAISE Summit in Paris. We cover why data is the downstream winner of the AI cycle, how hyperscaler capacity limits are pushing workloads back on-prem, the return of data sovereignty, & what a bank's real agentic architecture actually looks like.
"Data is the unsung hero and data is back. You cannot create an AI application without a great data layer, and your AI application is as good as your data."
"You see these hyperscalers, some of them are running out of capacity. And the hyperscaler said, 'Sorry, we don't have a capacity.' And they are one of the top 50 customers for that hyperscaler."
CJ took over MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB) in November 2025 after Dev Ittycheria's 11-year run, with a mandate to reposition the company as the default modern database for AI applications. MongoDB carries a market cap of roughly ~$25 billion. CJ runs on a cadence of speaking to 10 to 12 customers a week, and in this conversation he brings that view straight from frontier labs, AI-native startups, and Global 2000 enterprises.
Plus prediction markets under World Cup load, the open vs closed source model debate, data centers in space, and the mentors who shaped him.
We cover:
› The 3 classes of AI customers MongoDB serves
› Why hyperscalers are telling top-50 accounts "no capacity"
› On-prem, sovereign AI, and the data-center comeback
› ElevenLabs running 50M+ agents on MongoDB
› MongoDB (OLTP) vs Snowflake and Databricks (OLAP)
› Why there is no standardization in enterprise AI models
› Auto-scaling and the death of the expensive DBA

CJ Desai: https://x.com/cj_mongodb
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: ⁠https://youtu.be/Ts-f5ZBwDFw

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• MongoDB–Millions of developers and more than 65,200+ customers across industries, including ~75% of the Fortune 100, rely on MongoDB for their most important applications. With integrated capabilities for operational data, search, real-time analytics, & AI-powered data retrieval, MongoDB helps organizations everywhere move faster, innovate more efficiently, & simplify complex architectures. https://mongodb.com/ai
• AssemblyAI–Millions of developers use AssemblyAI to power their voice ai applications and features. One API gives you access to best-in-class speech-to-text, voice agent, and speech understanding models for both pre-recorded and real-time audio.  Granola, ClickUp & HeyGen are scaling with AssemblyAI - get $50 of free credits today at http://AssemblyAI.com/sourcery

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) CJ Desai, CEO at MongoDB
(01:12) Top CEOs at the Raise AI Summit
(03:24) The 3 types of companies powering the AI boom
(07:25) Why on-prem is making a shocking comeback
(09:01) Hyperscalers are quietly running out of capacity
(11:06) What actually separates MongoDB from Snowflake and Databricks
(13:18) Why Frontier Labs treat MongoDB as their memory layer
(15:23) The truth about data labeling companies
(16:22) From Oracle intern to first-time CEO
(19:19) Becoming CEO during the AI chaos
(23:53) The World Cup crisis that tested MongoDB's scale
(28:19) The real complexity behind simple AI agents
(31:22) Open source vs. closed models: what customers actually pick
(34:36) CJ's honest take on data centers in space
(36:50) The mentors who shaped a first-time CEO
(40:32) MongoDB's next big bets
(41:36) Data is back?

Day 2 of RAISE Summit in Paris, the biggest AI summit in Europe. 12 founders, operators, and investors give us their hottest takes on the debates splitting the room right now: is token maxing genius or a waste, is open source dying or about to take over, and are we in a bubble.The disagreements were the best part. Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis) loves token maxing and says open source is dying quickly, while others call token maxing the wrong approach entirely. Qasar Younis (Applied Intuition) on the opulence phase of the cycle and the pullback he sees coming. Apoorv Agrawal (Altimeter) on the four seasons of AI and planning for the climate, not the weather. Plus enterprise ROI, physical AI, petabyte-scale search, and why data is back."Open is dying quickly." - Dylan Patel, SemiAnalysis. "There are four seasons in AI. They're called OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, and Google." - Apoorv Agrawal, Altimeter.Guest lineup:Dylan Patel, CEO, SemiAnalysisQasar Younis, CEO, Applied IntuitionApoorv Agrawal, Partner, Altimeter CapitalArvind Jain, CEO, GleanAriel Cohen, CEO, NavanCJ Desai, CEO, MongoDBGil Feig, CTO, MergeNikhil Benesch, CTO, TurboPufferBarak Kaufman, Chief Strategy Officer, WonderfulMax Junestrand, CEO, LegoraMarc Boroditsky, CRO, NebiusLaura Diorio, Social Media, NYSEThis episode is brought to you by Brex, MongoDB, and Assembly AI.Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOShea𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • MongoDB–Millions of developers and more than 65,200+ customers across industries, including ~75% of the Fortune 100, rely on MongoDB for their most important applications. With integrated capabilities for operational data, search, real-time analytics, & AI-powered data retrieval, MongoDB helps organizations everywhere move faster, innovate more efficiently, & simplify complex architectures. https://mongodb.com/ai• AssemblyAI–Millions of developers use AssemblyAI to power their voice ai applications and features. One API gives you access to best-in-class speech-to-text, voice agent, and speech understanding models for both pre-recorded and real-time audio. Granola, ClickUp & HeyGen are scaling with AssemblyAI - get $50 of free credits today at http://AssemblyAI.com/sourcery𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒00:00 RAISE Summit Day 200:12 Qasar Younis (Applied Intuition)03:46 AI Trends at RAISE05:29 Applied Intuition Updates09:46 Bubble Risks and Books15:37 Self-Driving Future17:29 Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis)22:05 Tokenmaxxing Debate24:31 Marc Boroditsky (Nebius)28:37 Arvind Jain (Glean)32:02 Laura Diorio (NYSE)35:03 Apoorv Agrawal (Altimeter): Four Seasons of AI38:23 Nikhil Benesch (TurboPuffer)42:18 CJ Desai (MongoDB): Agent Data Layer43:00 Barak Kaufman (Wonderful)45:34 Max Junestrand (Legora)49:35 Gil Feig (Merge)51:58 Ariel Cohen (Navan): Bullish on Humans54:54 CJ Desai (MongoDB): Data Is Back#podcast #investing #technology #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #siliconvalley

Day 1 of RAISE Summit in Paris, the most high-profile AI summit in Europe. We pulled 10 of the sharpest founders, operators, and investors aside for their hottest takes on the debates defining AI right now.Open source vs closed models dominated the room, alongside agents rewriting how work gets done, the death of the keyboard and mouse, the economics of inference, and physical AI moving from data centers into cars, devices, and even orbit. Real numbers, real disagreements, and a few pieces of breaking news, straight from the people building it."The keyboard and mouse are slowly dying." - Max Cook, Coatue. "In the next 12 months, 90% of tokens will be going to open models." - Matan Grinberg, Factory."Most of AI is just glorified data science." - Pim de Witte, General Intuition"The SpaceX IPO is going to be viewed historically as the most undervalued IPO of all time." - Philip Johnston, Starcloud"People don't even understand how transformational agentic AI is." - Mark Papermaster, AMDGuest lineup:Max Cook, Sector Head, CoatueMatan Grinberg, CEO, FactoryRodrigo Liang, CEO, SambaNovaPhilip Johnston, CEO, StarcloudMark Papermaster, CTO, AMDPim de Witte, CEO, General IntuitionRamin Hasani, CEO, Liquid AIRobin Rombach, CEO, Black Forest LabsChris Madden, CEO, Good Future MediaHenri Delahaye, CEO, RAISE SummitThis episode is brought to you by Brex, MongoDB, and Assembly AI.Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOShea𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • MongoDB–Millions of developers and more than 65,200+ customers across industries, including ~75% of the Fortune 100, rely on MongoDB for their most important applications. With integrated capabilities for operational data, search, real-time analytics, & AI-powered data retrieval, MongoDB helps organizations everywhere move faster, innovate more efficiently, & simplify complex architectures. https://mongodb.com/ai• AssemblyAI–Millions of developers use AssemblyAI to power their voice ai applications and features. One API gives you access to best-in-class speech-to-text, voice agent, and speech understanding models for both pre-recorded and real-time audio. Granola, ClickUp & HeyGen are scaling with AssemblyAI - get $50 of free credits today at http://AssemblyAI.com/sourcery 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒00:00 RAISE in Paris00:16 Max Cook (Coatue)01:01 Keyboard and Mouse Dying03:42 Future Interaction Models06:32 Open Source vs Closed12:20 Henri Delahaye Hosts the Night13:21 Pim de Witte (General Intuition)14:46 Mark Papermaster (AMD) on Agentic Workflows16:38 Robin Rombach (Black Forest Labs)20:31 Matan Grinberg (Factory): Droids in Europe21:03 Open Models Token Shift23:17 Philip Johnston (StarCloud): Space Bets24:01 SpaceX IPO Bull Case25:13 Chips for Space Compute26:58 Chris Madden (Good Future Media): Clipping28:23 Viral Clip Hook Secrets32:03 Ramin Hasani (Liquid AI): Physical Models34:50 Three-Axis Foundation Models38:43 Rodrigo Liang (SambaNova): $1B Raise#podcast #investing #technology #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #siliconvalley #ai #elonmusk #spacex

Rodrigo Liang is the CEO and Co-Founder of SambaNova. The company just announced a first close on a $1B round at an $11B valuation, led by General Atlantic with T. Rowe Price and Capital Group participating.
Rodrigo has spent 32 years building chips. We covered the 101 of semiconductors and data centers: what inference is, why it is a different problem than training, and why inference will require orders of magnitude more chips than training.
He walks through SambaNova's chip lineup from SN10 to the new SN50, why a 10 kilowatt air-cooled rack changes where AI can be deployed, and why running a trillion parameter model in a single rack matters for agents, latency, and edge.
We also covered the era of premium inference, how providers measure revenue per rack, coopetition and traffic routing across Nvidia and AMD, sovereign models, the move back to on-prem, and why tokenmaxxing is the wrong goal.
Special thank you to Brex, MongoDB, & AssemblyAI for helping make this RAISE AI Summit mini-series in Paris, France happen.
Sourcery covers the people building the future across AI, hardware, and the private and public markets, subscribe for more.

Rodrigo Liang: https://x.com/rodrigoliang?s=21 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊
YouTube: ⁠https://youtu.be/etod19D9IEg⁠

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 
• MongoDB–Millions of developers and more than 65,200+ customers across industries, including ~75% of the Fortune 100, rely on MongoDB for their most important applications. With integrated capabilities for operational data, search, real-time analytics, & AI-powered data retrieval, MongoDB helps organizations everywhere move faster, innovate more efficiently, & simplify complex architectures. https://mongodb.com/ai
• AssemblyAI–Millions of developers use AssemblyAI to power their voice ai applications and features. One API gives you access to best-in-class speech-to-text, voice agent, and speech understanding models for both pre-recorded and real-time audio.  Granola, ClickUp & HeyGen are scaling with AssemblyAI - get $50 of free credits today at http://AssemblyAI.com/sourcery

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Rodrigo Liang , Co-Founder & CEO at SambaNova Systems
(00:59) SambaNova’s Series F : $1B raise at an $11 billion valuation
(03:00) The Inference problem nobody saw coming
(04:52) SambaNova's chip evolution
(07:19) Running a trillion-parameter model on a single rack
(11:00) Do $100 billion data centers actually make sense?
(14:14) What "premium inference" really means
(18:28) Speed is about to become AI's biggest price tag
(20:43) Starlink, edge computing, and AI reaching every corner of the planet
(24:27) Working alongside NVIDIA and rival chipmakers
(27:49) How customers actually measure inference performance
(32:07) The biggest bottlenecks in AI's global land grab
(35:12) Justifying the billion-dollar AI valuations
(37:53) Why SambaNova refuses to build its own cloud
(41:03) The "AI sovereignty" debate
(43:48) Data privacy fears are driving the return to on-prem AI
(47:55) How to actually get ROI out of AI spend
(51:16) The one question every business should be asking about AI
(56:09) The mentors and lessons behind a 32-year career in chips 
(58:02) Unveiling SambaNova's newest chip, the SN50

"Elon Musk was really good about keeping the mission as a forefront focus for what we were doing, & just energized everyone to get it done."
Now Chief Tech & Product Officer, Senra Systems Ken Venner spent 11 years at Broadcom, joining at 1,000 people and $400 million in revenue and leaving at 10,000 employees and $8.6 billion, across 52 acquisitions. Then he became CIO of SpaceX, where Elon hired him to build the digital nervous system for a 21st century rocket company. The result was Warp Drive, the custom operating system that helped scale SpaceX from about 1 booster a year and 1,000 employees to 40 boosters and 9,000 employees.
He recently joined Senra Systems as Chief Technology and Product Officer, this is a sit-down on how he scales companies.. wish we had more time."
Scaling up & scaling out are my core skills."
We cover the Broadcom years & why process kills growth if you add it too early, the tour of the Hawthorne factory that got him to leave, working for Elon & Gwynne, why he spent two years thinking Warp Drive was a terrible idea.. & what changed in year three.
Ken also breaks down Elon's playbook: first principles thinking, "remove before automate," and the responsible engineer model where one person owns a part from requirements through post-flight with no handoffs.
Plus: why he had 175 engineers building core platforms at SpaceX and only needs 6 at Senra, the law of threes for scaling factories, why he still works after one of the largest wealth creation events ever, and his winery in Sonoma.
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
00:00 Meet Ken Venner
00:17 Why Join Senra
01:26 Scaling Playbook
02:08 Broadcom Growth Lessons
03:48 Broadcom Jump to SpaceX
05:16 Building SpaceX Systems
06:39 Elon Leadership Principles
07:43 Gwynne & SpaceX Culture
09:39 Why Keep Working?
11:14 Law of Threes - Scaling
11:56 AI & Automation Changing the Game
13:35 Senra Name Story
14:07 Winery Side Project (Auteur Wines - Healdsburg, CA)
14:55 Next 12 Months Outlook
Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOShea𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery
• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery
• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com
• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery
• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery
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Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time. #podcast #investing #technology #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #siliconvalley #spacex #elonmusk