Competition, growth, tariffs, hacks, AI – what does it take to be an effective leader today? John Chambers, former CEO and Executive Chairman of Cisco and founder of JC2 Ventures, joins TechSurge host Sriram Viswanathan to share valuable wisdom on leading and growing businesses through times of significant change. As a leader who has transitioned from the c-suite to venture capital and now mentoring founders in emerging technology sectors, John has seen it all. 

He shares lessons from his time leading one of the world’s most influential networking companies at Cisco (the most valuable company in the world at the time), revealing what he learned while growing it from a challenger networking company into a $50 billion tech powerhouse, sharing how Cisco achieved and maintained its market leadership, particularly his bold M&A strategies. 

John offers hard‑won insights on navigating major technology shifts in AI, cloud, security, and more. Today’s founders and executives will find practical frameworks, real‑world war stories, and counterintuitive advice to help survive and thrive in an era of continual disruption. 

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MIT President Emeritus Dr. Rafael Reif joins host Michael Marks for a discussion about the state of U.S. competitiveness in technology, university research funding, current immigration policy, and more. Reif explains why universities remain the innovation engines of economies, educating top talent and generating the foundational research that powers emerging tech and creates new industries. He candidly assesses U.S.-China competition, warns that Chinese research output is rapidly outpacing our own, and urges renewed federal investment.

The discussion explores how restrictive immigration policies threaten the flow of global talent into the U.S and his own impression of current policies as an immigrant from Venezuela himself. As a TSMC board member, Reif also touches on the strategic need for domestic semiconductor fabs, Intel’s path forward, and TSMC’s edge in advancing cutting-edge nodes. Lastly, he addresses gaps in the venture capital funding space and why he created MIT’s The Engine incubator model to fund “tough tech” startups, which helped launch breakthroughs like Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Sign up for our newsletter at techsurgepodcast.com for exclusive insights and updates on upcoming TechSurge Live Summits.

Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, Chief Strategy Officer at Microsoft, joins TechSurge host Sriram Viswanathan to offer a rare glimpse into the strategic playbook of one of the world’s most powerful tech companies. Bobby shares how the company navigates today’s biggest technology paradigm shifts, placing bets with trillion-dollar implications. Touching on Microsoft’s AI strategy, OpenAI partnership, quantum computing, its approach to acquisitions, and much more, this candid and wide-ranging conversation is not to be missed. 

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In this episode of TechSurge, host Sriram Viswanathan sits down with Charlie Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO of Pure Storage, to discuss the evolution and future of data storage in the digital age. Charlie shares insights from his career spanning his pivotal role in Cisco's success as a networking pioneer, to his leadership in transforming Pure Storage into a leader in innovative storage solutions.

They explore the evolution of data center infrastructure, and the critical role of storage architecture in enabling AI and cloud technologies. Charlie also explains how Pure Storage's software-driven approach is creating new efficiencies and opportunities for enterprises, offering a compelling vision for a unified "data cloud" that breaks down data silos and unlocks new insights.

This episode delves into the intersections of networking, compute, storage, and AI, providing an essential perspective for anyone interested in the future of technology infrastructure.

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Many in venture capital and biopharma are anointing artificial intelligence the savior of drug discovery—but what can AI actually do? 

In this eye-opening episode, Michael Marks sits down with Mike Nohaile, CEO of Prellis Biologics, to explore the hype versus reality in AI-enabled drug discovery. Mike details why, despite significant breakthroughs like AlphaFold and recent Nobel Prize win for computational protein design, fully AI-generated medicines still present challenges. He also discusses why we urgently need more effective medicines and details Prellis’ unique system which combines laser printed human organoids and an externalized human immune system with AI, enabling the discovery of fully human antibodies. 

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Artificial intelligence is evolving at an unprecedented pace—what does that mean for the future of technology, venture capital, business, and even our understanding of ourselves?

Award-winning journalist and writer Anil Ananthaswamy joins us for our latest episode to discuss his latest book Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI.

Anil helps us explore the journey and many breakthroughs that have propelled machine learning from simple perceptrons to the sophisticated algorithms shaping today’s AI revolution, powering GPT and other models. The discussion aims to demystify some of the underlying math that powers modern machine learning to help everyone grasp this technology impacting our lives, even if your last math class was in high school.

Anil walks us through the power of scaling laws, the shift from training to inference optimization, and the debate among AI’s pioneers about the road to AGI—should we be concerned, or are we still missing key pieces of the puzzle? The conversation also delves into AI’s philosophical implications—could understanding how machines learn help us better understand ourselves? And what challenges remain before AI systems can truly operate with agency?

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