Is NVIDIA’s Moat a Psyop? 28x More Efficient AI Chips | Elias Almqvist, Zetta (YC S24)

The entire AI industry runs on hardware that the people using it don't actually like. Why? Elias Almqvist believes the answer is Inertia and the window to displace it is opening faster than most realize.In this Deeptech Decoded Live AMA, we sit down with Elias Almqvist, founder and CEO of ZettaScale AI (YC S24), to discuss the hardware layer the AI boom is quietly outgrowing. Elias makes the provocative case that AI is not a bubble—but LLMs are, and that betting the future of intelligence on Transformer models alone is a failure of imagination.In this episode, we cover:- The 27.6x Efficiency Leap: Why reconfigurable XPUs are the end-game for data center energy costs.- The CUDA "Psyop": Why NVIDIA’s dominance is more about psychological lock-in than a technical moat.- Hardware Bias: How our current chips are dictating which AI models get built and why that limits science.- The Founder Journey: From dropping out in Sweden to meeting his co-founder Prithvi at first sight, and why building at the frontier is the only thing worth doing.Timestamps:0:00 - 0:23 Elias introduces himself: self-taught dropout from Sweden 1:49 Why Silicon Valley is the only place to build deep tech 2:51 The "Jante Law" effect: why Swedish founders are so resilient5:31 How Elias fell in love with chips and computing7:21 What is ZettaScale and the big picture vision9:16 "AI is not a bubble, LLMs are"11:01 Hardware-software co-design and why CUDA isn't a real moat16:49 The 10-year vision: architecture-agnostic AI computing19:25 Go-to-market: why great software matters more than great hardware22:50 Co-building the product with early frontier researchers26:11 How ZettaScale actually works under the hood30:45 What is intelligence?33:11 Team structure: five and a half people, no roles, full stack35:11 Setting goals on an exponential curve37:16 Manufacturing partnerships and navigating suppliers as a startup40:49 Why Elias cares: building a future for the people he loves43:19 Near-death moments and dealing with startup suffering47:07 Meeting co-founder Prithvi: "co-founders at first sight"49:08 Audience Q&A begins51:14 How YC shaped the journey54:05 Advice for making Europe more founder-friendly56:01 What triggered the decision to drop out58:30 Integrating into the Nvidia ecosystem without disruption1:00:48 If we had a time machine: AI's missed forks1:04:30 What would cause ZettaScale to fail?