Today’s show:

In this founder-focused episode of This Week in Startups, we sit down with Republic’s Kendrick Nguyen to learn more about the company’s efforts to make the private markets accessible to the common investor. Best known for its work in equity crowdfunding, the Valor-backed startup now offers access to secondary shares, tokenized assets, and much more. Following, TWiST spoke with Positron CEO Mitesh Agrawal to learn more about his company’s inference-focused AI compute hardware. Related to fellow TWiST500 company Etched, Positron is building custom chips to take on the computing work required to deliver your AI query results faster and with less power draw than what GPUs can offer. With AI inference compute demand rising, the fellow Valor-backed startup has even more powerful systems coming to market in 2026 that have our hopes up that the AI cost curve can continue to point downward.

Timestamps:

0:00 - A future with more efficient and accessible intelligence
0:41, the following sponsors are mentioned: AlphaSense, Vanta, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
1:26 - Introduction to the episode and the two featured companies, Republic and Positron
2:43 - The history and purpose of Republic, a financial crowdfunding platform
5:39 - Discussion of the current state and growth of equity crowdfunding
9:19 - Kendrick Nguyen explains Republic's role as a financial infrastructure company, not a competitor to venture capital firms
11:17 - Sponsor: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
12:25 - Republic's different products, Republic Capital and Republic Venture, are explained
14:00 - The challenges and progress of secondary trading for non-accredited investors
20:14 - Sponsor: Vanta
21:21 - The concept of a unified "e-finance" infrastructure is introduced
25:45 - Positron CEO Mitesh Agarwal discusses the future of AI chips and the limitations of current GPUs for inference workloads
31:12 - Sponsor: AlphaSense
32:22 - Discussion on the inefficiency of GPUs for inference and how Positron's Atlas system addresses it
38:30 - Positron's strategy of using their Atlas system to prove their technology and generate revenue
42:51 - The market shift from AI training to inference and the future of Positron's chips
51:14 - The confidence in Positron's capital efficiency and their ability to compete with NVIDIA
52:47 - Positron's focus on linear algebra acceleration rather than just transformers

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Republic opens private markets as Positron takes on GPUs: A TWiST500 doubleheader! | E2176

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