Is Chalk.ai the ‘Next Databricks’? + Tollbit’s Bot Paywall for AI Agents | E2167

This episode of the podcast features two interviews. The first is with Marc Freed-Finnegan, CEO of Chalk, a company focused on providing fresh data to machine learning and AI models at inference time. Marc explains how Chalk's data pipelines differ from traditional batch systems, enabling real-time data updates for AI applications. He discusses Chalk's technology, which allows data scientists to write in Python, which is then transpiled into C++ for faster execution. The second interview is with Toshit Panigrahi of Tollbit, a company addressing the issue of AI bot traffic and data licensing. Toshit discusses the rise of RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) queries and how AI agents are increasingly scraping websites, creating a need for publishers to monetize this data access. He introduces Tollbit's "bot paywall" as a solution, allowing publishers to charge AI companies for data usage, and shares insights from Tollbit's State of the Bots report.