TechSurge: Deep Tech Podcast
Exploring topics at the intersection of emerging technology, geopolitics, and business.
Hosted by Celesta Capital.
The TechSurge: Deep Tech VC Podcast shares the latest insights directly from legendary Silicon Valley leaders, daring new founders, and visionary technologists.
Join us as we examine the factors shaping the next major technology cycle shift of AI, examine emerging global tech hubs, and analyze where investment dollars are flowing next.
Each discussion delves into the intersection of technology advancement, market dynamics, and the founder journey, offering insights into the vast opportunities and complex challenges ahead.
For entrepreneurs, investors, or anyone interested in where we're headed next, this is your guide to understanding the technologies and companies poised to transform the future.
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Patrick Pilarski: Alberta Plan Co-Author On Reinforcement Learning & AI-Powered Prosthetics
For all the competition among AI labs, their primary products are built in much the same way: a large language model is pre-trained on enormous datasets, post-trained, deployed, and refreshed every so often. In 2022, three researchers in Alberta, Canada published a contrarian roadmap for AI that rejects that entire premise.
In this episode of TechSurge, host David Goldman speaks with Patrick Pilarski, who co-wrote the Alberta Plan with Richard Sutton and Michael Bowling. Pilarski is a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, an Amii Fellow, and a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alberta, where his lab builds prosthetic limbs that learn to anticipate what their users intend. In 2017, he was one of three Amii researchers who brought DeepMind’s first international research office to Edmonton, serving as its co-lead until 2023.
The conversation opens with the Alberta Plan’s core premise: an agent that constructs all of its knowledge from its own stream of experience, with no artificial separation between training and deployment, what Pilarski calls “temporal uniformity.” He contrasts this with how today’s major AI labs bolt reinforcement learning onto pre-trained language models during post-training, and addresses head-on why his co-author Rich Sutton has publicly argued that LLMs are a dead end.
Pilarski also breaks news on the podcast: he will soon join ExperienceFlow.AI, a San Francisco-based company with a research lab led scientifically by Richard Sutton, as Head of Edge Superintelligence, focused on bringing continual learning to computing environments where connectivity and compute are limited. He argues that the industry’s massive data center build-out does not lock AI into a single architectural path, and that existing hardware and software stacks have far more flexibility than commonly assumed.
The episode closes with a tour through Pilarski’s own research: how AI-powered prosthetic limbs learn to predict user intent in minutes rather than months, a landmark bone-anchored prosthetic surgery performed in Alberta, and the prospect of supernumerary limbs and wearable technology as a path toward genuine human augmentation. Pilarski also discusses a paper he co-authored arguing that AI agent safety concerns dominating recent headlines are, in fact, reinforcement learning problems the field has studied for decades.
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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?
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.
With global economic alliances shifting and new threats emerging, will the U.S. maintain its dominance in an increasingly complex world?
From cryptocurrency to chips to cyberterrorist threats, the battle for global dominance is no longer just fought on the battlefield—it’s playing out in markets, boardrooms, and cyberspace. In this episode, we sit down with Juan Zarate, a key member of the post-9/11 Bush Administration team fighting terrorist financing and financial crimes, and an architect of how we view modern financial warfare.
We explore how the U.S. has used its economic dominance as a powerful weapon—and whether countries like China and Russia are now using the same playbook to push back. Juan shares insights on the weaponization of the dollar, how financial crime networks are evolving in the digital age, and why strategies around cryptocurrency could either threaten or reinforce U.S. economic power.
The conversation dives into the intersection of technology, economic, and national security strategy, tackling key issues like cyber threats, semiconductor supply chains, and the growing role of AI in financial security. Juan also introduces his latest venture, Consilient, which is pioneering federated AI to revolutionize the fight against financial crime.
The world is evolving faster than ever – how will we keep up?
From AI breakthroughs to global supply chain disruptions, the forces shaping business and technology today are relentless. In this episode of the TechSurge Deep Tech VC Podcast, we sit down with Bob Sternfels, Global Managing Partner of McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm who has been on the frontlines of helping businesses and industries navigate relentless change for the past 100 years.
We explore the shifting landscape of venture capital and opportunities for VCs, startups, and consultancies to explore new partnership models. Bob shares his view on shifting global supply chain strategies, why full economic decoupling between the U.S. and China is a dangerous and difficult proposition, and how India may be on track to become the economic powerhouse of the twenty-first century. The discussion digs into the complexities of housing affordability and why the future of housing insurance is at risk – could our homes of the future soon be uninsurable due to climate change?
Bob helps us dive into the evolving demands of 21st-century leadership, where resilience, adaptability, and even humor are becoming essential CEO traits. Bob explains why today’s leaders must rethink their approach to disruption, risk, and innovation – or risk being left behind.
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The future of wireless technology is unfolding, are you ready for what's next?
How can Intel regain market dominance? How will AI and IOT shape the next generation of wireless? What are the challenges in transitioning to 5G, NextG, and beyond? How will academia and the startup world intersect in the 21st century economy?
We explore these questions and more in our latest episode of the TechSurge Deep Tech VC Podcast, as we sit down with Dr. Andrea Goldsmith, Dean of Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and a pioneer in wireless communication. Dr. Goldsmith shares insights from her groundbreaking research in multi-antenna systems, the evolution of wireless networks, and the future of cellular technology. We explore her journey as a successful entrepreneur behind Quantenna and Plume WiFi, and her current leadership role as Dean working to build a vibrant engineering and startup ecosystem around Princeton. Dr. Goldsmith also shares her thoughts on the future of Intel, the strategic choices that lie ahead, and its important role within the U.S. tech economy, as well as the broader geopolitical landscape.
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In this episode, host Michael Marks dives into the transformative role of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Michael is joined by Dr. Alex Sardiña of WhiteRabbit.ai and Kalyan Sivasilam of 5C Network, two early adopters bringing AI to medicine through sharply contrasting market models in the U.S. and India, respectively. The discussion unpacks how AI is revolutionizing diagnostics, helping to address labor shortages, and improving patient experiences. Learn about breakthroughs in cancer detection, radiology efficiency, regulatory challenges, and the global potential of AI-driven solutions in medicine.
Celesta Capital is a global deep tech venture firm enabling visionary founders at the forefront of scientific and engineering breakthroughs.
Celesta's team has spent decades founding, leading, and scaling global technology businesses, collectively founding more than 40 companies. We understand how to partner with founders to help turn prototypes into powerhouses.
From semiconductors and systems to breakthrough biology, we seek out the physics‑defying, code‑rewriting breakthroughs that will power the next decade of technology advancement.
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