Summation (formerly World of DaaS)
Summation: non-obvious ideas that move the world. Auren Hoffman hosts leaders across tech, business, markets, and government. Summation is the permanent home for the relentlessly curious. Auren is CEO of NQB8, GP at Flex Capital, Chairman of Dialog; former CEO of SafeGraph and LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP).
Episodes
Pat Gelsinger is the former CEO of Intel and longtime Silicon Valley leader. He joins Auren to unpack the forces reshaping technology, geopolitics and leadership.
After more than 30 years at Intel (including serving as its first CTO) and nearly a decade as CEO of VMware, Pat now sits at the intersection of deep tech and purpose-driven innovation as executive chair and head of technology at Gloo and general partner at Playground Glo...
Vlad Tenev (Robinhood co-founder/CEO) and Tudor Achim (former helm.ai CTO) are the founders of Harmonic, an AI lab pioneering the path toward mathematical superintelligence. Together, they developed Aristotle, a model that eliminates hallucinations by reasoning in Lean code rather than natural language. By shifting from probabilistic guesses to formal logic, Aristotle produces 100% verified mathematical outputs. The model recently ...
John Allen is a retired four-star Marine Corps general who commanded 150,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan and built a 65-nation coalition as Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition Against ISIS. After retiring from the military, he led the Brookings Institution as its president. He co-invented the term "hyperwar," holds five AI patents, and co-authored Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial I...
Adrian Aoun helped found Torch, a health data platform that was acquired by OpenAI earlier this year. He's also the co-founder of Seneca, which raised $60 million to build autonomous drones for wildfire suppression. Adrian previously founded Forward Health. He previously led special projects for Larry Page at Google, where he founded Sidewalk Labs and helped build Google's AI division.
In this episode of Summation, Adrian ...
Tod Sacerdoti is the CEO and co-founder of Pipedream, which recently sold to Workday. Tod is also a general partner at Flex Capital, where he's invested in over 400 companies including Chime, Vercel, Replit, CodeRabbit, Mercury, and many others. He previously founded BrightRoll, a programmatic video advertising platform that sold to Yahoo for $640 million in 2014.
In this episode of Summation, Tod and Auren discuss:
- Why see...
Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia on bowling alone, AI bots, and why the heartland is happier than the coasts
Nirav Tolia is the co-founder and CEO of Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR), the neighborhood social network with over 105 million users across 350,000 communities worldwide. After stepping down as CEO in 2018, he returned to lead the company in 2024.
In this episode of Summation, Nirav and Auren discuss:
- Why success kills innovation
- The death of physical community
- Why Nextdoor had to change their stock ticker
- Insider vs Outsider entrepreneurs
Lieutenant General Mike Fenzel recently retired as a three-star Army General. He most recently served as the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, navigating one of the world’s most complex geopolitical landscapes. His career is defined by high-stakes leadership, ranging from the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, where he was stationed in the bunker alongside Vice President Di...
Martin Shkreli is the co-founder of DL Software, the parent company of Godel Terminal, a Bloomberg competitor for financial data. He previously founded the biotech companies Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals and the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management.
In this episode of Summation, Martin and Auren discuss:
- The structural reasons fintech is less competitive than other industries
- How drug discovery actually works (and doing it f...
World of DaaS is now Summation with Auren Hoffman. While we’re proud of our roots in the data world, our conversations have evolved. Summation better reflects our obsession with finding the non-obvious ideas that shape our world.
What’s changing? Just the name. You’ll still get the same insights from the world’s most influential founders, investors, and thinkers.
If you’re already a subscriber, you’re all set. If you’re new here, we...
Jonathan Siddharth is the founder and CEO of Turing, a $2.2 billion AI company that provides coding and reasoning data to train frontier models for OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and more. Turing’s mission is to accelerate superintelligence to drive economic growth.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Jonathan and Auren discuss:
- How Turing creates expert data for frontier models
- Why SaaS is dying in the age of AI agents
- Disrupting t...
Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz is the co-founder and CEO of Chapter, an AI-powered Medicare navigation platform valued at $1.5 billion that helps seniors navigate coverage and enrollment.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Cobi and Auren discuss:
- Why medicare fraud costs over $100 billion annually
- How 24,000 medicare plans create impossible choices for seniors
- Why government tech keeps failing with Accenture contracts
- Provider network data ac...
Hans Swildens is a partner and Head of Industry Ventures at Goldman Sachs. Industry Ventures is one of the pioneers in the secondary market for venture capital, managing several billion in assets across LP stakes, direct secondaries, and primary fund investments. In October of 2025, Goldman Sachs announced they were acquiring Industry Ventures in a deal worth over $900 million dollars.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Hans and Aur...
Glenn Hubbard is Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School. He served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003 and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury. He has served on the boards of BlackRock, ADP, MetLife, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Glenn an...
Omar Tawakol is the CEO and founder of Rembrand, an AI-powered virtual product placement company. He founded BlueKai, a data management platform acquired by Oracle for $400M+ in 2014, and Voicera, an AI meeting assistant acquired by Cisco in 2019. He currently serves on the board of The Trade Desk and as a General Partner at super{set}.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Omar and Auren discuss:
- Why virtual billboards work better t...
This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the We the Builders podcast.
We The Builders: https://twitter.com/WeThe_Builders
Host Suffiyan Malik: https://twitter.com/suffiyanmalikk
Substack: https://wethebuilders.us
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This week I sat down with Auren Hoffman founder, builder, prolific investor, and one of the most connected peo...
Craig Fuller is the founder and CEO of FreightWaves, a freight media company, and SONAR, a supply chain data platform. He’s also the founder of Firecrown, which owns more than 50 publications across aviation, marine, and supply chain sectors, and he recently released his first book, Moving the World: How the Supply Chain’s Evolution Affects Us All.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Craig and Auren discuss:
- How FreightWaves predi...
Tanay Kothari is the co-founder and CEO of Wispr Flow, a voice-first AI assistant that recently raised $56 million in Series A funding.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Tanay and Auren discuss:
- Why Apple and Google's dictation tools fail
- What AI-first devices will actually look like
- Pivoting from hardware to software
- Voice replacing nearly three-quarters of keyboard usage
Microsoft is investing $17.5 billion to turn India into a global AI powerhouse — from training 20 million workers to building new data infrastructure. We break down what this means for the future of AI talent, innovation, and digital sovereignty.
Listen to this short podcast summary, powered by NotebookLM.
Vinicius Vacanti is the co-founder and CEO of YipitData, an alternative data intelligence platform that analyzes billions of consumer data points daily for institutional investors and corporations. The company reached unicorn status with a $475 million Series E from Carlyle Group in 2021.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Vin and Auren discuss:
- Why hedge funds dominate data usage versus corporations
- How AI is transforming data pro...
This week’s World of DaaS LM Brief: MIT’s new research reveals how large language models can be fooled by their own grammar. By prioritizing sentence structure over sense, these systems risk producing confident but misleading outputs—and even ignoring built-in safety rules.
Listen to this short podcast summary, powered by NotebookLM.
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