Unlock five decades of artificial-intelligence evolution insight in one conversation. Amadeus Partner Manjari Chandran-Ramesh sits down with Professor Steve Young—Cambridge academic, Venture Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners, and the serial entrepreneur who notched exits to Microsoft, Google, and Apple—to trace the journey of AI from 16 kB rule-based speech systems to today’s trillion-parameter large language models. Skip to the bottom of the page to watch or listen now.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
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How to build “acquirable” startups – Steve’s three-part playbook for courting strategic buyers from day one. Sharing from his personal experience with Entropic and VocalIQ.
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The missing four pillars of AGI – Embodiment, Memory, Causal Reasoning, and Grounding—and why LLMs still fall short of common sense.
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DARPA’s hidden role in modern AI – Annual government benchmarks that turbo-charged speech recognition and spawned a generation of voice-tech companies.
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Pricing pressure on LLMs – Why commoditisation is inevitable and where defensible value is migrating in the AI stack.
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Founder mindset – “Keep calm, never panic”: lessons in timing, resilience, and closing deals.
Why It Matters
Whether you’re an AI researcher, deep-tech founder, or venture investor, this episode delivers actionable intelligence on:
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Launching and scaling AI ventures in an increasingly competitive landscape.
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Anticipating market shifts as foundation-model costs plummet.
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Positioning your company for acquisition by Big Tech or specialised industry leaders.
Listen & Subscribe
Watch below or listen on podcast sharing platforms Apple Podcasts and Spotify.