AI doesn’t slow down because we run out of ideas. It slows down when the data can’t move fast enough, the racks can’t get enough power, and the infrastructure stack can’t evolve quickly enough to keep up with GPU-scale reality.

In this episode of Uplink, Michael Reid sits down with Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data, to unpack the infrastructure challenges shaping the next era of AI. Renen shares the long arc behind what looks like “overnight success,” and why he believed early on that AI would fundamentally change the requirements for storage and data platforms.

The conversation explores how software-defined storage eliminates old trade-offs between performance and capacity, why decoupling software from hardware creates leverage during supply shortages, and what efficiency really means when supporting modern AI training and inference workloads. They also dive into the rise of neoclouds, the changing competitive landscape around hyperscalers, and why AI infrastructure is being rebuilt layer by layer.

Finally, the episode looks ahead to agentic AI, where thousands of specialized agents behave more like artificial workers that require orchestration, observability, and governance at scale.

Join a conversation about AI infrastructure, cloud evolution, storage architecture, and the next bottlenecks shaping the future of compute.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid.

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