#1244 Rajiv Khemani | Bitcoin Can Save American Infrastructure

Rajiv Khemani is the co-founder & CEO of Auradine, a leader in web infrastructure solutions including blockchain, artificial intelligence, and security. With over 25 years of experience in building and scaling technology businesses, Rajiv is a serial entrepreneur, and an industry leader who has successfully led multiple exits of multi-billion dollar companies. In this conversation, we talk about his new company, Auradine. They are trying to solve one of the biggest problems United States faces from a national security standpoint. Rajiv and team want to build American infrastructure for all our advanced computing needs. Throughout this conversation you will learn about the geopolitical problem, risks, and how Silicon Valley legends are trying to build solutions. ======================= Trust and Will has simplified the process of creating and managing your will or trust online. They leverage a data-driven, design-first approach and amazing customer support to help you protect your legacy from the comfort of your home starting at just $159. Sign up today for 10% off using ⁠https://trustandwill.com/pomp⁠ ======================= Get Better Crypto Data: Do you want faster, easier crypto data? Sign up for Velo Data, a new product that we have been working on to solve this problem: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠velowaitlist.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 250,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Rajiv Khemani is the co-founder and CEO of Auradine, a leader in web infrastructure solutions, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, and security. With over 25 years of experience in building and scaling technology businesses, Rajiv is a serial entrepreneur and an industry leader

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  who has successfully led multiple exits of multi-billion dollar companies, done a number of acquisitions and investments in infrastructure, artificial intelligence, security, and software platforms industry. In this conversation, we talk about his new company, Auradine, and they are doing something very difficult, but something very special. They are trying to solve one of the biggest problems the United States faces from a national security standpoint. We have tons of hardware and computational services that are being built outside the United States, especially in China, but they are being exported here to America. Now, Auradine, Rajiv, and the rest of his team, they want to build American infrastructure right here for all of our advanced computing needs.

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  This is obviously a really tough problem, but it's one that they've already made a lot of progress on. They've raised an immense amount of money. They already have something called TerraFlux, which is the only US company today that delivers a very unique, wide-ranging Bitcoin mining solution. And then they're setting their sights in the artificial intelligence space as well. Throughout this conversation, you're going to learn a lot, not only about that geopolitical problem between America and China and what some of the risks are to our country, but also how a group of Silicon Valley legends who've raised quite a bit of money from some of the top investors in the world are tackling and trying to build a brand-new solution. Rather than complaining, they're going to compete, and they want to build the infrastructure for advanced computing right here in America.

• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Here is my conversation with Rajiv Kamani.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:42Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:25Anthony Pompliano?

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• 4:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Before we get into this episode, I also want to tell you about a brand new product called Velo. Velo is faster, easier crypto data. Everyone in the industry is always looking for, what's the price? What's going on on the exchanges? Where are assets flowing or not flowing? How is things like open interest and derivatives actually playing out in the market? Well, that's where Velo comes in. It's faster and easier crypto data. You can go to velowaitlist.com today. Myself and a couple of friends, we invested in the business. We're advising the founder and we think it's pretty cool. This one is something that keeps me informed on a daily basis. So you should check them out at velowaitlist.com. That's V E L O waitlist.com.

• 4:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang, I've got Rajiv here with me. I thought a great place to start this conversation would be to unpack the geopolitical conflicts and potential risks between the United States, China, and other places around the world. Help me understand Auradine and your personal perspective on the importance of American manufacturing and what the national security implications are of actually making stuff here in the United States.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, thanks a lot, Pom, for having me on your show. Geopolitics is become a fact of life for all of us in the computer industry and in life in general. And what the, there are several factors that drive geopolitics. Clearly, there's, you know, countries have their own national interests at stake that they care about. There's also reasons that that were exposed and became clear in the pandemic supply chain shocks that the world saw. But from a United States point of view, there are a couple of things that are very critical.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  In this era of geopolitical change and and reality, the United States cares about its national security. And that's a very, very important aspect because in a world where there are bad actors and bad national states, it's important. The national security becomes of elevated importance.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  In addition, you know, while the world went through an era of globalization, now the world is moving towards an era of what some people call deglobalization and where you want to have greater manufacturing within your borders or certainly within countries that are friendly. And it becomes a matter of self-sufficiency. And so the United States has a CHIPS Act whose goal is to drive that in the semiconductor area. And so that's a very, very important topic for the country and for all of us as citizens of the United States.

• 7:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when we start to think about some of these risks, what are the main concerns? Are they, people are worried that there's like backdoors in the hardware? Is it just a pure self-reliance? And so if a pandemic or something like that happened again, there wouldn't be the ability for us to manufacture stuff here in the United States. When you categorize these risks, what are the big ones that you think actually have validity and people should be paying attention to?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  I think it's all of the above that you said. You know, it's very important to make sure that there aren't backdoors. You know, it's very important to make sure that our national secrets remain secrets. So that's a very important aspect of it. But what has happened is that because of the increased self-reliance of each country on other countries, there is the opportunity for somebody to hold you hostage and really cause a big impact to your economy, right? So it's no longer nuclear warfare, it's economic warfare. That's become very critical. And so in order to protect against that, having manufacturing in the United States

• 8:12Speaker 02

  such that we can supply what's essential for our economy, and that's our financial system, our mobile and communication system and the infrastructure to make all of these applications that we have become so used to. And so that's really why this has become extremely important in the recent few years.

• 8:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when we start to look at kind of solutions for this, obviously, one is sanctions and kind of political or diplomatic actions. We have seen the United States begin to ramp up some of those kind of, you know, weapons in our arsenal, if you will, to address this problem. But also, companies, whether they're in China or elsewhere, seem to be finding ways around it. Huawei being one that's been covered pretty extensively in the media. Talk a little bit as to like, what is the United States doing in terms of either sanctions, tariffs, or other types of kind of more diplomatic style weapons to address this problem? And then what are companies in China or other countries doing to try to evade those sanctions or other diplomatic means?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  You know, I think the United States, in my view, doesn't, is not fully aware of everything that's going on. I think there's, because of some of the more recent news, it seems like they are just starting certain investigations to really get to the bottom of what's going on. And I think that I expect to see that more of that to happen as things go forward. Now, the specifics of what's going on and how people evade, I'm not privy to. There are people who are a lot smarter in trying to figure out how to evade United States sanctions and so forth. And there are companies that do this all the time.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  But I think the effort and the initiative to prevent evasion of these sanctions is just starting. And I think that that will, as the United States uncover some of these things and understands what's really going on, that they will take steps. I'm fully confident that that will happen. It may take a little time, but I think we are on that path to ensuring that everybody complies with the laws and the sanctions that are in place.

• 10:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when we look at some of the headlines for these specific companies, one is Huawei building a secret network for chips, a trade group warns. Another is mainland China's development of a new 5G chip amid US sanctions is expected to prompt another round of investigation by Washington. Those are specific to chips. And I think when people hear chips, they think artificial intelligence and machine learning and cloud computing and kind of this rise of the AI world. How much of the concern is specifically just around these chips versus its hardware in general? And whether it is advanced computing, things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, or it could be something completely different, just maybe your smartphone hardware. It's a concern across all hardware categories.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  It is definitely a concern across all hardware categories. It's essentially a concern about access to leading edge technology because technology has this interesting attribute which people call diffusion, right? You can use leading edge technology if you start using it in one area, it diffuses to other areas, right? So you could start in artificial intelligence and have it diffuse to other areas. Or for example, in our case, for example, we are working on Bitcoin chips which require absolutely leading edge process technology. You could start in a Bitcoin area and then it starts to diffuse into artificial intelligence and other areas. So it's not one area versus another. It's really a competency. It's really access to leading advanced technologies.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  That's what is very, very critical.

• 12:03Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's talk about Bitcoin specifically. Obviously, there has been a lot of improvement and innovation around the hardware. If you go all the way back, people were mining Bitcoin on laptops. And eventually now we have ASICs that seem to be pretty advanced. Where do you all kind of evaluate? How much better can the hardware actually get? And where do you think the biggest areas of opportunity are?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean clearly Bitcoin has evolved a lot. It's in a short decade or so. You know, as you said, it started in laptops, went into GPUs and FPGA type solutions. And people had the option of mining it in their basements or in their garages. That era is over. It's simply not economical to mine Bitcoin in those environments. So Bitcoin has gone from being more of a hobbyist and speculator phase. It has moved into industrial scale mining where Bitcoin is mined in data centers that are co-located close to energy sources and where, you know, you can get access to cheaper energy, if you will.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And, and further, I think Bitcoin is moving into an era where it's not just being mining of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is moving into what, what I see and what we see is the third phase of its evolution. We call it Bitcoin 3.0, where Bitcoin is becoming a constructive partner to the energy ecosystem and being, providing certain value in terms of using wasted energy and balancing the grid in ways that people never imagined before, right? Now, in order to do that, clearly, energy efficiency is very critical and you have to make sure that the power consumption of Bitcoin mining is as low as it can get.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  And that requires very low voltages. It requires, you know, making sure that it's leading edge process technology, but it, it requires more than that, right? And that's what we are focused on at R9 in terms of building products for, for this third phase of Bitcoin and making sure that we are delivering incredible value for that.

• 14:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk about the specifics of what you all have built. You know, the team is comprised of people who are very smart, people with a lot of experience. A number of people on the team would be considered, you know, kind of legends of Silicon Valley and some of the other businesses that they were a part of and helped to build. Companies that I think the modern age of cohort of startups look back and say, "Wow, if we can only accomplish a fraction of what those companies did, we'd be in good shape." And so when you bring these smart, intelligent, hardworking people together, you can really do anything, right? You, you, there are so much opportunity. How did you all decide, okay, what is the mission of the business? And what exactly are we going to go start to build first?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, when we started this company, we saw that we are in a period of unprecedented innovation and change. In particular, blockchain and AI are technologies that will exist with us for decades going forward and will have a multiple trillion impact on our lives, on economy and as well on IT. However, if you look at those technologies, the infrastructure associated with those technologies, the foundational infrastructure is simply not at the level as the prior generations of technology. And so we felt like we could make a serious dent in this area and really unleash the innovation that can happen on top of these technologies going forward.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  So that's really what our big vision and mission was. I'm particularly proud of the team that we have. The team that we have has prior experience at industry-defining companies like Talal Alto Networks, which is a giant cybersecurity leader in the world, and then in companies like Nvidia and Cavium and Marvell and so forth. And between us, what we have done is we really built foundational technologies, infrastructure technologies that drive secure commerce, secure enterprise, that drive mobile and cloud infrastructure. So things that we have taken now for granted and have become part of our lives, but we think we can make a massive dent going forward in that.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  And so the team is extremely capable of not just innovating, but building great companies and working across many transitions going forward.

• 16:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, let's talk about what this means practically for a miner. So, a large-scale miner comes to you all and says, "Show me your products, show me your services. How can you help me?" What is the difference before they start working with Ardyne to what they actually can do after they start working with you guys?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so today, if you take a look at the miner, and any miner, first of all, they are buying all their products from Chinese-based companies. That's number one. Secondarily, the products have evolved from being a hobbyist product to being deployed in industrial-scale mining. So, what they do is they typically get the miner. In some cases, they have to change the control board, the firmware running on it. They have to apply a variety of additional software patchwork. Sometimes, they do it themselves. Sometimes, they work with ecosystem partners. So, it's really a patchwork to get to operation and going forward. In addition, these products don't work because the world has not a single climate all the time.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  You know, things get hot, things get very cold, and the miners simply stop working. And then, in addition, energy providers sometimes want the miners to curtail, and they want them to shut down these miners so they can shift that energy to consumers. So, it's a very kluge system that exists in place today, okay? And what we are bringing to market is a revolutionary product that's built from the ground up. It's built for data center scale as opposed to hobbyist operation. We have leading energy efficiency. We have a first product. We have an amazing roadmap in front of it that's coming behind it. So, we have leading performance and energy efficiency, which I believe is stable stakes at this point in time.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  But beyond that, what we have done is we've added some unique innovations that fall in a few areas. First is something that we call Energy Tune, and that technology allows for these miners to go up and down in terahash rates or in power consumption in a very dynamic fashion without reboots, and be able to achieve that within a matter of seconds because utilities need that level of responsiveness for appropriate demand response. Very beneficial for miners and very beneficial for utilities. Second thing is, you know, as you deploy these miners in harsh conditions in the middle

• 19:04Speaker 02

  of a desert where energy is stranded, for example, renewable energy is stranded, or next to a natural gas flaring site, you want these miners to keep operating in a wider operating temperature range, you know, very low temperatures, very high temperatures, and we build a system with very high quality to keep operating, delivering higher uptimes. Okay, so that's another important attribute. And then finally, all of this boils down to a much better total cost of ownership from a miner point of view, right? So they don't have to do a lot of CapEx upfront, R&D upfront to get these products deployed. They are out of the box. They can be deployed very

• 19:46Speaker 02

  easily. They are up more of the time, so they get a better benefit. They get better economics from curtailment. So all in all, it's just a much, much better total cost of ownership for the miners.

• 20:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when you start to look at these individual miners, one of the parts that becomes fascinating to me is this ability to have very specific control, right? You can actually turn things on, you can turn them off, you don't have to do entire sites. Talk a little bit about the interface with these electrical grids. We've now seen a number of stories that came out in August as an example, where Riot and other large miners were actually quote-unquote "paid money" from the electrical grids for turning off their power. Now, that's not a secret deal, it's not some special deal that they got with ERCOT, but it's something that's available to anyone in kind of these industrial facilities. But how do you think this evolves over time? You know, we're entering a weird world where if you are going to use ASICs, you can mine Bitcoin, or you can shut them off, right?

• 20:46Anthony Pompliano?

  You can get paid from the electrical grid. If you look at other things like, you know, Ethereum mining, in the past, you're able to use GPUs, which obviously many people were using specifically for Ethereum mining, but we've now seen companies like Core, we've come out and say, "Actually, we're going to pivot. We're going to go after artificial intelligence or machine learning type applications." You then see Ethereum move from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake system. All of that hardware becomes, you know, obsolete in regards to Ethereum, and so it has to be redirected somewhere else. Is it something where you just stay focused on Bitcoin mining and ASICs are going to be ASICs? And that's kind of the the full focus? Or do you all see some of the lessons that you're learning? Some of the technology and innovation that you're driving? You can actually go and apply to other areas than just Bitcoin mining specifically?

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so well, first of all, Bitcoin mining is a product line that we are executing on. Uh, as I mentioned, we have uh initial products. We actually have uh uh probably the most comprehensive set of products in this area that range from air cool to single phase to to dual phase immersion. Uh, a bunch of unique uh form factors that people care about, and we'll continue to uh innovate and build roadmap uh on on that. But what we are finding, as you pointed out, uh, you know, accurately, is that companies are looking at adding AI. And uh, um, you know, certain Bitcoin miners have very strong interest in becoming AI data centers. Uh, and AI is has applicability not just outside the few large cloud companies,

• 22:17Speaker 02

  but also in the edge and in data centers that are outside it. So from our point of view, we are we are seeing customers asking us to uh flex our muscle in our infrastructure talents in those areas in unique ways, right? And uh, as I mentioned earlier, our team has uh outstanding talent in being able to deliver um sustainability, uh security and scalability for uh blockchain and also now for AI. And so um here, generative AI has come and exploded on the scene. Uh, everybody is now familiar with ChatGPT. Everybody is familiar with LLM, large language models.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  And uh, there are certain initial use cases, but we all know that over the next two, three, five years, those use cases will explode. Having said that, there are two big issues that exist. One is this whole notion of uh IP leakage. This notion of copyright infringement. You get a response from one of these LLMs. Can you use it or are you infringing on someone's IP? Or are you leaking your own intellectual property to a model that's going to take it and train it? Um, and uh, there are additional issues, regulatory issues, compliance issues, cybersecurity issues.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  And so any new technology has positives, has holes and gaps and has negatives. And so we believe we can bring to bear certain unique security capabilities in this new area. And we are working on just amazing products here that we will bring to market. So not only will we enable the next generation of AI data centers and next generation of AI applications, but make sure that they can happen in a very secure fashion, that people's privacies can be protected, that bad actors cannot attack them and bring down. And then over time, I think AI right now is too expensive.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  It is extremely power consuming and it's really not at that level for extremely wide adoption. And we will play a role in making that happen as well.

• 24:27Anthony Pompliano?

  When you look at what's going to be needed to be able to do that, how much of this is hardware innovation versus maybe it's just a capital game? If you can get enough capital, then you can go and do it. Maybe there's a courage element to it, right? It's just somebody's got to stand up and say, hey, doing this in the United States in a certain way is very important and we're willing to go, you know, kind of be the flag bearer to do it. What's needed to go from where we are today to kind of this world that you guys envision moving forward?

• 24:52Speaker 02

  It's just bright folks, working with customers, understanding applications and pain points. But more importantly, people who have the stomach and the ability to attract the capital and go long. Okay, that's a very important aspect of it. And you know, we have shown time and again across years that the United States really delivers the world's best technology. And I think we will continue to do that. And so in terms of hardware versus software, it's a combination. You know, we all know that Moore's Law is at its limit. You know, the world is moving from general purpose computing to accelerated computing,

• 25:37Speaker 02

  in part to address the slowdown of Moore's Law and the rate of compute growth. So it will be a combination of accelerated hardware coupled with innovative software and a ground-up security design, because some of the legacy architectures.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  That really made sense in a pre generative AI era, simply don't work in a world when the two endpoints that are talking to each other are not talking through networking language or computer language, but they are talking through human language. And in a world where devices are talking to each other using human language, the challenge of understanding that human language and enforcing security on that is much more complex and much more different. And so it opens up incredible opportunities to build us groundbreaking products and deliver incredible value for this upcoming wave.

• 26:38Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the aspects that we talked about earlier was the US government using political and diplomatic means in order to prevent certain hardware from entering the United States. What about in reverse? As you all manufacture many of these, whether they're chips, Bitcoin mining equipment, or other types of hardware, will there be limitations on your ability to sell it to people internationally? Or to get into the hands of individuals or companies that are in various other jurisdictions?

• 27:07Speaker 02

  You know, there very well might be. I mean, this whole notion of, you know, doing the right thing for the country is very important. As I mentioned earlier, we are working on leading edge advanced technology in the semiconductor space, as well as in the security space, as well as in the artificial intelligence area. And so from our point of view, we are, while we obviously want our technology to be adopted as widely and as globally as possible, we are also very mindful of the fact that we live in a different world and geopolitical factors and national security factors have become more important than ever before.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  And so certainly we are going to comply with and really partner with the US government to make sure that the right policies are put in place.

• 27:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And then when you start to look at the Bitcoin mining kind of industry, we have seen a number of the large miners. They are playing this game of, hey, we're going to do mining, whether that is Bitcoin or other assets. And we also are going to play in the advanced computing space. What it makes me think is you all are doing something similar in a different way, right? You guys are obviously going to go much more after kind of chips and hardware manufacturing and distribution. Is this going to be the natural state of companies? Is this kind of like the end game where all of these businesses that are in the computational kind of industry are going to end up having to have one foot in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world, but also another foot in artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, and other kind of advanced computational sectors?

• 28:41Speaker 02

  You know, I think they're not two completely different worlds. I think they're worlds that will converge in the future. And I think that it makes a lot of sense, right? In a world, in an AI world where there are AI assistants who are doing transactions on your behalf. They are buying airline tickets or making restaurant bookings and giving your credit card information out. You know, blockchain has a critical role to play as part of that because these transactions will be done in using internet rails as opposed to your credit card rails. You know, money transfer and so forth will happen. So that's one place where AI and blockchain will converge.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Another place where AI and blockchain and certain related technologies like zero knowledge proofs converge is the fact that when you're talking to somebody, for example, right now, how do I know it's the real pump or is it really a deep fake that I'm talking to? You know, I want to be able to be sure of that. And technologies, blockchain technologies will allow me to feel the confidence that I'm talking to a real person rather than a deep fake that was created using generative AI. So there are opportunities of convergence. There are also, if you look at the flip side of it, when you're executing smart contracts on blockchain.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  AI will provide the data and the guardrails and capabilities for those smart contracts to execute. So there is a convergence in our future that is definitely coming. And so what you see here is not an opportunistic play, but a long-term thinking of how these things converge and how we take advantage of it. On the technology side, as we build these products, there is a lot of complex math. That is the underpinning of both of these technologies, right? And so some of the silicon capabilities and low-power capabilities that we have applied to both areas. And so there is a natural convergence going forward. And I think what you're seeing is the beginnings of that.

• 30:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, you all have products out in market. You're already been executing on this. You raised quite a bit of capital for an early-stage company to go and do this successfully. What has been the response so far from customers? What are they saying in terms of the things that you all are doing well and serving their needs? And then what are the areas where they're saying, hey, if you guys could do A, B, or C, that'd be really valuable for us?

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we've spoken to a number of customers. Every time we go and tell them about what we are doing, they're telling us that we hit all of their pain points, right? You know, this whole notion of energy tuning that people refer to as overclocking and underclocking, you know, in this, in a previous era. So they just love it, this notion of, you know, making sure that everything works well with each other. They just simply love it. The response has been extremely positive. And so we have a number of customer engagements in process. We actually have orders of our products in process and people are encouraging us to keep executing on this.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  And then people also are very interested in what we are going to bring to market in the AI space. So I think there's a great relationships that are forming at this stage. And we are delighted to partner with a number of leading mining customers as well as enterprise customers.

• 32:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, there's a whole wide range of people who listen to this podcast. And so I thought maybe we could kind of do a little bit of round robin and you could deliver a message to each one of them. Maybe first what we could start with is US politicians and kind of people who are in that apparatus where they may or may not be aware of some of the problems or the risks that we face and they likely have the ability to do something, or at least suggest to their colleagues to do something. What do you think is kind of the best message for us to deliver to them?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  I think for US politicians, I think one thing has become clear. Everybody has become aware and in alignment for the geopolitical issues that exist in our world across both parties. So that's extremely positive. Historically, that's not always been the case, but I think the time is now to move to action beyond talking. And I think the time is now to really investigate and make sure that the right things are happening with regard to regulation and making sure that all the laws that they have put in place are really being complied to. So I think that's the most important message I would convey to the politicians.

• 33:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Another group of people are founders and technologists. These are people who probably are sympathetic to kind of this uphill battle that you all are taking on and are cheering for you. But what would be the message to those technologists, whether they're potential people who could come and work with you all, people who could partner with you, or people who are just building other technology companies that happen to just be in a very broad, similar field?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially in deep tech, which is the area that we focus on. Building companies is not straightforward, but I think that the thing that works is, number one, is, you know, track record helps tremendously. The ability to attract capital helps tremendously. But then beyond that, innovation and persistence is absolutely key. And what we've seen time and again is that people get into a market, try to do something for one or two years and then they find it's too hard and then run away from the market. And if you look at the, the reason, one of the biggest reasons for the success of the team we have

• 34:29Speaker 02

  is the fact that not only are these extremely talented people, but they have the ability to go long and ability to go through ups and downs. And I think that is very critical for any entrepreneur or founder that wants to build a company in the deep, deep tech space.

• 34:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Another group is obviously customers and potential customers. These are people who look at TerraFlux and they say, hey, that could be interesting for me. What is your message to them?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  You know, reach out to us. We are, as I mentioned, we are, we are engaged with a number of customers. You know, you can come to our website. We'd love to talk to you and explain to you in great detail, not just what we have today, but what's coming in the pipeline behind this. And, and then the second thing I want to tell these customers is we are here to stay. So don't worry about, you know, folks that came in and jumped out of the market. Our intention is to stay and build an infrastructure company that is going to be around for a very long time, an iconic company, we think in the, in the Silicon Valley in the United States. And we'd love to partner.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  And, and so, you know, that's, that's what I would tell these folks.

• 35:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And lastly, maybe is like, what's the message to yourself? Every morning when you get up and you go to work and you're excited to do it. And, you know, I spent some time talking with myself and the team and obviously you guys were really, really, I think ambitious, but also rational in terms of the work that needs to be done. And this is not going to be easy. But what do you tell yourself every day when you get up to go to work and, and kind of stay motivated to keep going after this hard problem?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  You know, there's a lot of people, as everybody says entrepreneurship is hard and so forth. I've done it a few times. You know, I'm not doing this to pay the mortgage or save money for retirement. I'm doing it because this is an opportunity to make a massive impact. It's an opportunity to learn and it's an opportunity to have fun. The team that we have, the culture is extremely fun. It's extremely collaborative culture. And the other important thing is we are going long. And so the only way you can go long is when you're having fun. If you're stressed out and working hard and you're killing yourself,

• 36:54Speaker 02

  you'll burn out. That's not a recipe for long-term success. So every morning when I get up, I'm excited about what's happening around me in the world. I, you know, I see your tweets. I read a lot about both blockchain and AI. And then, you know, I come in and we have great fun solving some amazing problems.

• 37:18Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome. Where can we send people to find more about the company online or more about the products you guys already have that people can come and order?

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Well, the best place is to go to our website, auradine.com. That's A U R A D I N E dot com. And I encourage people to reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you.

• 37:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Rashid, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I learned a ton. And, you know, as I said in the intro, one of the things that is compelling to me is people in the United States who recognize the geopolitical risks that we face and say, rather than sit and complain about it, or rather than yell and scream at our politicians, there's also something that private citizens can do. And, you know, this idea of competing rather than complaining, to take on, you know, this problem and say, look, if we can go and we can build something that is as good quality, if not better, if we can innovate and really iterate our way to solutions to these problems and do it here in the United States with American manufacturing, it is something that hopefully will inspire other founders or private citizens to say, look, complaining isn't necessarily the solution.

• 38:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Instead, I can actually go build something. I can act. And so hopefully more and more people will follow the steps that you and your team have taken.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Well, thank you very much, Pomp. It's been a pleasure and thank you for inviting me to the show and I look forward to seeing you in person soon.