This video features a discussion with Brazilian entrepreneurs Luana Lara and Luciano Hook, hosted by Bruno Kerati, about their experiences building companies and navigating the challenges of innovation. They share insights on the importance of discipline, resilience, and execution in entrepreneurship, drawing parallels between their journeys and the broader economic landscape of Brazil. The conversation also touches upon the impact of background and environment on an entrepreneur's path, and the stories of individuals who have transformed their circumstances through innovation and determination.
Happy Tuesday uh everybody. I am Bruno Kerati, a BSV fan. since the very beginning, the very first version in 2019. I am also a Stanford graduate MBA class of 2012. And for the last eight years, I've been an entrepreneur like a lot of us here. I'm a founder of hashtags. We're a company in a quest to bring highquality crypto investing to investors all over the world. Uh we nowadays have a large presence in Europe, in the US where I'm based. Uh but we have very proud Brazilian roots and as such it's it's an honor for me to facilitate today the conversation with these two remarkable Brazilians. Uh Luana Lara. So Lana is a founder of Koshi, a pioneer in the space of prediction markets. At only 29, Lana has also been breaking her own records as a female business leader. Luciano Hook, I'm sure most of you will agree, needs little introduction. Uh, what I'll remind us here for the the purposes of our conversation is that Luciano has been for over two decades telling the stories of Brazilians that a lot of people don't tell the stories of. And he of course has a lot of great perspectives on this. I'm sure he's thought a lot about how these stories can evolve to a happy ending. So, uh, Lana Luciano, I'm sure the crowd is eager to, uh, hear from you both here. So, let's jump right into it. I'll take my seat here. Welcome. Lana. Uh, I'm I'm compelled to start with you. you have a a very peculiar background uh which I'll I'll give cues about here before attending MIT before founding Kawhi you were a professional ballerina right as if I'm not wrong you performed in Austria to Swan Lake uh and and then you left to pursue your own academic and and professional endeavors. I have to ask you, are there things that this peculiar background taught you that you've been using now in your entrepreneurial journey? And and and what are they? >> Yeah. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Um it's it's funny that that question because I think in a lot of ways I have a very very weird background. Um but I think a lot of the the reason that Kochi is where it is now um has to do with I think a lot of things I learned growing up. I think one of them with ballet obviously comes a lot of discipline. It really is about like it doesn't really matter what how bad your day today is, if you got injured or not or whatever happened. You need to be there the next day and you need to train again and you need to be there the next day and kind of having that mental kind of like that that the psychological thing of it doesn't really matter what's happening. You need to keep keep pushing and keep doing what you're doing and and having kind of a very stable mentality is very uh important. And the other thing about ballet that also helps is like the the concept of delayed gratification, right? like in ballet you're training for like over a year to have you know one hour on stage and it's very it's kind of like the the most important thing is like you you go through that very painful you know rehearsing every day hours a day getting all these things to get one hour and and and keeping yourself motivated and disciplined through that entire process very important and Koshi uh I don't know how much how many pe how much people know about it but we took four years to get regulated in the US before we could launch a product and and throughout that period it's like most companies is they start they start iterating on the product uh and you know getting users and growing and all those things and me and my co-founder we were actually doing none of that for four years and having kind of the discipline to keep doing the work every day even in a very long term time frame and understanding that that very painful process of trying to get regulatory approval uh was going to hopefully have a day to to turn that switch I guess was u was very helpful to get the company here. Um so those are two things. >> Thank you. you touched on this uh but um we got to ask as as I've heard you from you the the idea for Kawoshi came uh during a walk home with your co-founder Tar uh right? >> uh and please tell us you know what made you trust the idea what made you trust uh uh the person to put uh you know your career behind it? >> yeah it's a great I think it was very organic to be honest it wasn't like there was one day that was like we should jump into this and do it and you were the perfect co-founder or anything like that. It was um Tar and I have very uh very very similar background. So we were like very close in college. We worked at the same place. We wor both worked at Citadel and Fibbrings together. Um and we always talked about work and things that we liked doing and I think both of us experienced what we said is like this couch behavior. So the first thing is like the the famous story I guess is the Brexit story that t was with the Goldman Sachs and um and what he realized that the the big trade of 2016 was whether Brexit was going to happen, how to get exposure to that and then whether Trump was going to win the election and how to hedge or get exposure to that and every way you could do that was very bad. Right? So like if you if you're trying to say Trump is going to win the trade of the time was shorting the S&P which would have lost an insane amount of money because the S&P moved in another direction. Um I kind of saw the exact same thing when I worked at Bridgewater that the entire Bridgewater team is like the researchers that actually come up with themes about future then portfolio construction and then the trading teams. The portfolio construction and trading actually don't need to exist if you're able to just trade directly on your thesis uh about what's going to happen in the future. Um and it all came together when we were working at five rings and we were learning about actually we were learning about the theory behind prediction markets and how you know when people put money where their mouth you put money where your mouth is it better it you get way better forecasts about the future the wisdom of the crowds and it kind of all clicked for us. It's like okay so there's the wisdom of the crowds and data aspect of it that's fascinating there's the side of it on the hedging and the kind of getting exposure directly to events and we were just kind of like fascinated by all of it. We were never the kids in college that were like let's go start a company type of thing or build a lot of products. Uh we were going to go to trading but it was really just this idea that pulled us into it and we started actually very small step. We went to the YC hackathon first. We won the hackathon then we got into YC and then we started. So it was it was very organic and I think the most important thing on on on finding the right co-founder it really is like you're gonna be with a person like look like 14 16 hours a day. Tark is the person I see the most in my life. Right. It's just like having making sure you trust them and you trust that they are like very resilient. The most important thing for companies is just not giving up and making sure that you don't have to worry about the other person giving up. It's kind of like a very big blessing that you need to kind of like find someone that that you can kind of like count on in that way and you admire. Uh so even though it's organic, I'm very very lucky that that it worked out the way it did. >> Nice. I I can empathize with that myself. Alana, uh Luciano, uh on to you. Uh I think you've been quoted many times uh stating that in Brazil, the place that you're born, your your zip code is a huge factor in determining someone's destiny. Uh and and you've met thousands of young entrepreneurs across the country. I'll ask you, hearing to Lana's story now, listening to her story, what comes through your mind? Do you think a story such as hers is is a great inspiration for those young people that you meet out there? Or maybe does it feel too impossible to be reached? >> We we cannot hear you Lucen. Okay. >> Paul, thanks for invitation Bruno. It's a pleasure to be back here and an honor to share this panel with Luana. I've been following your journey for a long time. So congratulations and my English will sound like >> Thank you so much. >> It's cool kids comparing to Luana. So sorry about all the ones that know that we can speak Portuguese, but we're going to try to speak in English. Okay. Uh I think that uh maybe my biggest contribution today since this event is called Brazil the Silicon Valley all in English and with a Z is to remind us that the real Brazil is with an S, the one with the real problems and of course the real opportunities that we we are facing. We have it. I truly believe that that my generation can still leave an important legacy in Brazil with an S. But my biggest bet and as I'm sure it will win I think by the predictions is better than bats are on the next generation that are you guys that are here on and on on this event that I truly respect a lot. And speaking of that, uh I love this connection that you guys provoke here with Rana because uh as a professional former professional ballerina, I have a ballerina 30 years old daughter Eva and BV brings a level of discipline to life that is incredible. And I always say that discipline is often more important than talent. Discipline is is what really takes you far. Uh it's like if you brush your teeth 10 times a day today won't keep your it clean for the next 10 days. Or if you spend 10 hours in the gym today, it won't make you fit tomorrow. So uh if you brush every day, if you work like half an hour every day, for sure you're going to be clean and and in shape. So I think that uh uh the takeaways from here is about discipline, about execution, about follow your dreams, but not only ideas and money, but execution. And if you want a story, I can share but can be in the next round. Go ahead, Bruno. >> Okay. Uh, Amaz, let me switch gears a bit. When we're in the middle of Silicon Valley and we're talking about innovation here, we're usually talking about artificial intelligence. We're talking about prediction markets, crypto, cryptocurrencies, biotech. Uh but in the Brazil that you know best that Brazil with s Luciano uh I think innovation often looks completely different. uh are you able to give us as you hinted us now uh one story uh of an entrepreneur that you met that this audience perhaps has never heard of uh but should >> I think what pop pop popsups in my mind is not exactly entrepreneur but I think something that we can bring to this stage and to this conversation and maybe can add some takeaways for the people who is watching us uh I have a big respect of the academic world I'm a son of professors. My my both parents were university professors. Now they are retired. But I like to say them the most important things I learned in life didn't come from classrooms of Stanford of Harvard or MIT but came from the living rooms of Don Maria Cello who from many Brazilians men and women's families were who opened their doors and shared their stories with me. And there one story in particular that can be good to share here uh because as far it's so far away in many ways from even geographically what you're talking about but it brings a really important reflection for this ecosystem that you are part of uh on this afternoon uh it's about the community up in the henegro from the one who know Brazil well negro pass just in front I'm talking about like 5 hours by boat going north close to Navilana's National Park is a place called Tumbra. I love this story because it's about Hobberto. Herto is the third generation of illegal loggers in his family. He said to me that over time his team he cut down more than 60,000 trees by himself. And about 10 years ago, environment regulation in the region changed a lot and the the enforcement become much stricter. Uh and have to change his life. So someone suggested him to why why don't you try echo ecoturism ecourism he thought it was a joke but he gave it a chance and in one day he made almost what he used it to make in the entire month today his community is completely transformed you see the church is beautiful renovated you have the school looks great the have two restaurants you have like seven goadas seven lodges an amazing experience for the one who goes there and I remember this just a finish line I remember sitting with him in front in the middle of the jungle in the forest in front a huge tree like 50 m diameter 50 m tall looking at the tree and he told me Luciano in the past when I walked into the forest I saw a tree like this I saw price and today I see value and I think that is the the powerful reflection for us today here if you're not careful in this environment ecosystem especially here in Silicon Valley you can end up giving more importance to price than to the value and that's bring it to Lana I think everybody in this room knows the price of valuation of her company but the value of the journey she's built to get there I'm sure and it's just the beginning it's truly priceless so I think you have to know what is price and what is value >> wonderful insight Luciano coming from I hope is still in business I'll be sure to look out for him >> when I visit my >> Lana, back on to you. Um I know people have told you that the odds of Koshi working were minimal, less than 1%. Okay. And and for years, as you mentioned earlier, I think uh it took you guys four years to be able to start doing something. Uh it may have seemed like it was going nowhere. If if this is it, what kept you going? uh when everyone around you was telling you to stop perhaps? >> Yeah, it I think it was a mix of of I would say a mix of two things mainly and then I feel like there's some like tactical things that we've done that actually helped us. I think the two main things that both me and T we were both very stubborn and we were very naive at the time. So when we started the company, we realized the biggest problem was going to be the regulatory piece, right? It's like, how do Okay, great idea, but how do you make this legal in the US? It sounds illegal. Uh how do you figure that out? And at the time, we were very naive. We're like, well, we took the hardest MIT classes. We're working in Citadel Securities. Like, we are smart people. We're going to be able uh to figure out the federal government. Um which was an extremely naive take. Uh I think that it's not the the skills of like smart at MIT and figuring out how to you know uh convince regulators is not very uh transferable in a way. Um but we're very naive and like trying to do things because we really believed in what we wanted to do. We really believed that like if there was going to be someone to make these markets big, it should be us. And we really just I think we really cared and we really wanted to see this be true. And then it ties to the second point which we were very stubborn as well. So when we talked to the government, it's like the first time The first thing that we did is like, okay, let's just call every single lawyer that deals with commodity futures or deals with gambling or deals with all these things. Let's call all of them that we can find and see what they say. So, we made a list of 65 of them. We split the spreadsheet in two and I was going to call, you know, 30ome. Tar was going to call 30ome and all of them said no. And then we actually found actually through a Brazilian connection. I had this I knew this Brazilian girl at Harvard Law School that actually knew another guy that was in a crypto law firm. Then another guy that knew a person that worked in the CFTC before and then he told us I'll get you one meeting. Um and we were like well one meeting sounds good enough. Let's go and let's try to figure that out. And then from there the government was always like we would there's 23 principles that the CFTC goes by. We're like, well, these markets clearly comply with these 22 principles. And they would be, no, here's a list of 20 questions and why we disagree. And we'll get that list, work on the list, do the legal analysis, but also a lot of data analysis, a lot of things we need to mute. And they flip the list back to them. And then, you know, they would come up with like, okay, we accept answer number one, we don't accept two to 20. Uh, these are kind of our follow-ups. And that kept us going. And that really was what was going for four years on top of like beating the whole systems and and and everything like that. I had that this whole like convincing the government to do things which I think we were very stubborn and we didn't take no for an answer unless we really agreed with the reason from the regulator and we didn't because we really believe the markets are positive and they should exist. They're not different from any other type um of markets. Um but one thing that helped us a lot was kind of like at the start we thought it was going to take six months and every every kind of day every week we realized it would be like another month or another two months. Uh but what really helped us kind of like the biggest problem with this type of things is they get very overwhelmed, right? You're like I don't really know what to do. This sounds impossible. And it's it's we would really like break down on like this is what we need to do. Uh and then we would do it and and and kind of like avoid thinking too long term every day because if you're thinking too long term every day, you're going to kind of go insane. So you need to kind of like think short term uh for the for the majority of your time. You should be thinking on the execution of it up until you find uh the next case. But it's funny because um at some time we had we had a rule ourselves that everything from the government would take like uh like a day to get back to. So we would like not sleep and then sleep for 24. So we had like very up sleep schedules and all that. But I think at the end it was it really this mix of like how important it was and and how much we believed in it, how stubborn we were and how naive we were. Um but it was very difficult. But I think it's just like probably like some of the most f fragile moments of the company was the start that it was just dark and I and like some lawyers trying to figure figure things out. But I think that it's just uh you take it a day at a time again of the discipline and it just somehow it works out. >> I I I I love some of those lessons. I I empathize with some of those. my my company, the company I co-founded as a crypto ETF issuer. We've had our own regulatory journey and I'm sure that our loyal list overlaps in many ways of 65 names that you have. Uh you touched on some things here uh in in in going through adversity, right? That I think may have uh lessons for for other founders. I loved your insight of thinking a day at a time. At hashtags, we call it, you know, the long term when it's hard. just focus on small victories. What would you say, Lana, to founders who are in in a similar position now? They're trying to build disruptive products, trying to push the boundary. It more often than not, it seems too hard or impossible. What would you say to them in addition to what you have already mentioned here? >> Yeah, I I think that like the in a lot of ways like everything is hard, so you just kind of have to do it. And I think that sounds kind of probably not great advice, but it's more like you just kind of have to go through kind of like see things through. I think the biggest problem that people have is when they just like stop doing it because it's actually true that you don't know like how far you are from from success. So actually the other problem that we had at the company was actually after we launched after four years, right? The the other problem we had so most most companies when you have like some big approval um you're done after that, right? If if you're doing a like whatever some new like drug or some new pharmaceutical whatever you have if you get the FDA approval you can launch your product next day and you pretty much know like okay if you're better way to fix headaches you're going to make a lot of money but for us the approval was just a shot at starting the company and starting to try to get a product that would work and starting to get product market fit and we launched and the company didn't immediately explode at all um it was actually very very slow for many years a lot of it because of a continuous regulatory um trouble and push back and everything. And it took us like it took us to like the point that like we were like, "Wow, we put four years into this. We could have making like millions of dollars in Citadel. Did it make did we make the right call?" And um and we ended up not giving up. We kept put up pushing because we again was like we have these kind of like new hypothesis that we want to test about the business. We're going to go through them um and try to do it as fast as possible. and and it got to the point that like we had to sue our own federal regulators. So, we had to to they didn't want us to um list election markets. So, basically, who's going to win an election in the US um for political reasons or whatever, but they didn't want us to list these markets, but these markets are very important for prediction markets. They're the holy grail of prediction markets. We knew that we needed them to be very big um and and everything. We ended up having to sue the regulator. And that was kind of like the extent of like we really thought that like we were not going to give up up until we actually tried every single thing including suing the suing the regulator and that when we won it really changed the the trajectory of the company right like now our latest round was at 22 billion and again not value valuation and price and all those things but it's like the vast majority of that growth just came in the past year and a half right and it was before that it was six years that the company was pretty much going nowhere um and I think I really think that it sounds everything is hard. I don't know a single company in Silicon Valley that people didn't go through. Even the ones that sound like obvious like whatever cursor or deal or whatever that just it's like seems like a check on the floor. They're all extremely hard. It's just always the the grass always looks greener on the other side. And I think you just have to go through it and uh and not give up. Um and of course I'm biased because it ended up working out for us but I feel like people always give up before they should if that makes sense. >> Okay, Luc on to you. Uh same theme a bit of a different angle on on the role of governments and innovation and startups. I know you think a lot about this. Uh can you tell us a bit how do you think public policy can help unlock the next generation of entrepreneurs in Brazil and elsewhere? Luciano, >> thank you Bruno. I love to listen to Lana here because I think she's the big dream of the high-end entrepreneur but you see that things the path wasn't easy. six years moving to know sideways and now suddenly it happens and I like this is the about execution as I told before and nothing annoys me more these days than people who never built anything never really started a business or even they did they fail and now they they make living selling courses taking advantions of the goodwill of uh even I think the naive of small and medium entrepreneurs in the end is just like recycle content from like handful self have books. Okay. So I truly believe that Brazil has enormous entrepreneur potential on the big opportunity sides as as Lana Brazil can adopt innovation fast and change behavior incredibly quick. If you take Pix example in two years it completely transformed the payment system in Brazil. one single idea drastically reduce the use of cash around Brazil. I take like new bank an example in two years is now already entering US. But I I I gotta go back where I started here to think about the potential of the Brazil with an S, the one with the about the small entrepreneurs that I truly believe in like because the the the the the real the real economic the real economic like the backbone of of Brazil today. Yeah, that's great. >> And cosmetics >> and cosmetics and and what drives the the small interpreter entrepreneurs is not valuation multiples of the funding rounds is exhaustion is exhaust stone. I'm gonna explain just one number. 85% of the Brazilian need more than one job to make uh the ends of the the month. >> 85 L >> 84 84 more than one job to make ends meet. Okay. Like six out of seven and 80 83% of Brazilians want to have their own business mainly uh so they don't have to work for someone else anymore. So this is what they call the the impism stone entrepreneurship of exhaustion like that people are not dreaming about building a build business they are dreaming about stopping to struggle. So uh open a small business or selling homemade products uh is like the only way out. So at the top of the interpernal pyramid, I believe that sometimes the best thing is to government to do is simply not uh to to simply not to get in the way. Okay? Provide legal certainty, stop passing the cost of public inefficiency into entrepreneurs. But at the base of the pyramid is different. We need public policies to support small inter entrepreneurs. Uh improve access to credit. Simple ideas that can be transformative if you see Colombia that where startups only start paying taxes after like seven years. So I believe uh ireneurship in in all levels of the pyramid. >> Uh Luciano, great to hear. Let me ask. I assume there are young aspiring entrepreneurs both here and in in the audience out there as this is being streamed. Uh what would you want them to walk away with uh as they listen to to your lessons there? What do you think that they need to take to go on their own journeys? >> I think simple things that I say at home seem to wrap up. I I'm going to end as I began. I I have a lot of respect of the ecosystem behind this this event because even uh thought it's it's a small and highly privileged environment that we are talking about here >> I understand something fundamental that knowledge plus work leads to great execution as Lena said and I always tell my kids at home my voice creativity and initiative a lot of people have around the world but execution are very few do and that's what really can change the world. >> Okay. Okay. We're we're coming up at time. I have a couple more questions for both of you. Uh Luan and I I'll condense two questions in one. Uh you're in this part of your journey now. One is how do you think about your connection to Brazil today? Uh and uh I know that you guys have had tremendous success at Koshi so far. Uh we all truly hope it continues to be so but what does the next chapter look like for both Koshi and you? >> Yeah. U so well Brazil obviously is like born and raised in Brazil. Brazil my parents live there. Very important part of my life. Uh and I I you're trying we're starting to bring couch to Brazil. I think international expansion is very important for us. Uh so we're starting to to do that. Brazil is actually the first country we announced. We're going into uh I think more Latin America, Asia and all of that that we're the next steps for us. But Brazil is very important. I think that it's like a for the data that these markets bring, how much better they are than the polls that you can see the kind of US 2024 election as the as the example of what we can have and bring good data into a lot of these very big problems in Brazil that we need to kind of have unbiased information about what's going to happen. uh is that the value is very important especially for kind of like developing countries and I think that bringing that to Brazil would be a dream. Uh in terms of what um next for me I mean I I want to you know I want couch to be as big as it could be. Uh for us I think that we think we can build like over 100 billion dollar company and it's just a matter of like how fast can we get there and like just how fast we execution our execution is how good our team is and all of that. So for me it's like I want to be at Kosi forever. It's a matter of how how how big can it get. >> Amazing. Lana, I know we'll be cheering for you, Luciano. One final question for you. Let me see this. Uh you're right. This is a privileged group uh here. I feel that myself. Uh then what do you think this group here, this audience can do to help in this mission that you've been so so active on uh Luciano, of nourishing entrepreneurship in Brazil? Come back. >> Come back. >> All right. It's It is I agree. It's a good ending there. >> Thank you, uh, Lana. Thank you, Luciano. I am so glad I went through this without saying. >> Thank you so much, >> Lano and Luciana. Uh, so success for me there. Hope to see you guys. Bye. I hope stage next year start. >> Good morning everyone. My name is Daniela Santerna. I'm an MBA candidate at Stanford and the audience co-leader of Brazil at Silicon Valley, which means I spent the past months thinking carefully about who should be in this room for conversations like this should matter. And looking around, I would say we got it right. I'm so excited to be here with you all today. Over the past few years, I've built and deployed AI products in the Russian industry and saw firsthand how seriously Brazil is showing up. The country has embraced AI faster than many and is already one of the most active in its usage. But consuming the wave is not the same as making it. So the real question is how does Brazil move beyond riding the wave and actually build infrastructure to lead to discuss AI native capital efficient building Brazil's AI infrastructure for the road. We're joined by two exceptional leaders. We Shiao is the director of developer relations at NVIDIA, which at this point needs no introduction, where she works closely with founders and startups at the forefront of AI and accelerated computing, providing a strategic technical guidance, industry insight, and support across product market fit and scaling. Before joining NVIDIA, she led AI ecosystem efforts at ARM and Samsung. She also teaches AI at the Graduate School of Computer Science at Santa Clara University here in the Silicon Valley. Few people see AI from as many angles as she does, from GPUs to founders to the classroom. Bianca Martinelli is a general partner at Alexia Ventures, an early stage VC firm investing in top Latin American founders transforming industries through software and AI. She's also a Kaufman fellow and an Endeavor mentor. Before Alexia Ventures, she spent 12 years at Endeavor leading global operations and driving expansion into four countries and also served as a VP of international expansion at RD station. She brings a rare combination of investing experience and years of operating across multiple geographies. We bianca, we're so excited to have you. The stage is yours. Good morning everyone. It's a pleasure to be back at Brazil at Silicon Valley. Um, and I'm particularly excited to be joined today by Wei Shiao. Um for the next 30 minutes we're going to be focusing on a very meaningful tangible discussion about how to actually build AI native capital efficient businesses. What are the real edges for Latin American founders and in particular Brazilian uh founders ways it's in a very very important position between what Nvidia is building globally and what's happening on the ground in emerging markets. So I couldn't be more excited to be here with you. Thank you for joining us. >> Absolutely. The pleasure is mine. And I'm glad I have the opportunity to connect with uh the startup founders here. Would love to share my experience and the learning to help you avoid some pitfalls along the way. >> All right, so let's dig in. Um I'd love to start by setting the record straight because of course Nvidia is one of the most well-known companies when it talks about infrastructure um for AI native companies, but still so many people think of Nvidia as building chips. So, first of all, we think there's a good opportunity to set the record straight on what Nvidia does. And earlier this month, um earlier this month, we had an interesting uh uh uh webinar focusing on the five layer cake, uh framework, which I would love for you to also tackle and explain a little bit more so founders can tangibly know which ones they are building on or exposed to and how does this affect uh their buildup. >> Great question. Um a lot of people even media introduce Nvidia as a chipmaker semiconductor company. In reality Nvidia is what we call AI accelerated computing platform company or AI infrastructure company which means on top of the chip we also have the full software and toend solution to help you build your AI use cases. Um as Bianca mentioned um couple of weeks ago our CEO published an article talking about AI is a five layer cake. So there are five different layers here. The first layer is what we call energy layer. It doesn't matter what type of AI solutions you are building especially in the gen uh generative AI scenario your um query your prompts needs to translate into large language model queries with resulting tokens that requires energy. On top of that is the chip layer. Nvidia produces GPUs for parallel computing. In the meantime, we also have our own CPU and CPU GPU combined architecture from edge devices all the way to data center compute. One layer above it is the infrastructure layer. How many of you knows that Nvidia is actually the world's largest networking company? That's great because now we re uh we reach the stage that AI cannot run on one single GPU or one single CPU. You need the interconnecting interconnectivity part between CPUs, between GPUs, between different clusters and the nodes. Um one layer above it we have large language model. The model is critical. What Envyia promotes is what we call open ecosystem approach which means we open source everything. We open source all the models we created for example Nemo model, Cosmo model for physical AI applications. What this translate to startups is you do not have to start from scratch. So for those of you who are old enough to experience the mobile application boom, you probably know that the reason we had this mobile application boom is because of open source. Android is open source. The Linux operating system beneath iOS is open source. Because of the open-source ecosystem, nobody needs to start from scratch. you can build upon everyone else's intelligence and which significantly brought down your development cost and reduce your go to market time. So Nvidia not only open sourced the model, we open source the data set we utilize. In the meantime, we publish a lot of what we call blueprints. So think those as recipe books where you can follow step by step to cook a meal. We published the ingredients we used to build an AI agent. We published the data set and the stepbystep procedure for you to build those solutions. So always utilizing that as the starting point when you create your AI solution. And the fifth layer which is the top layer again it's very relevant to our startup founders here is the real life use case. How do you want to utilize all the resource around you to build vertical specific use cases to build AI native startups? >> Thank you. And may I add, I think I mean from an investor standpoint and in particular investing across Latin America and in Brazil, we're absolutely bullish on the on the ability of Brazilian founders being very very competitive on the application layer. And uh what we're seeing is that there's you know across the board in different verticals there's a a lack of you know productivity. So the opportunities are huge to build on the application layer and I think uh differently from you know different tech waves that we've had in the past. Now we see Brazilian founders building at the same time as Silicon Valley players. So being able to be competitive right the AI models have leveled up this access to technology. So this is a crucial aspect and would you agree that the application layer is an important edge for Brazilian founders? Is there another angle and in particular as well way how do you think about AI sovereignty? Right. Jensen talks about the infrastructure that is being built out as one of the largest ones in human history. How AI sovereignty will play a very important role for Brazilian founders and how's Nvidia working with the government on that point? >> Absolutely. That's a that's another great point. So AI comes with many layers. So there's the infrastructure layer which means you have to have access to compute infrastructure. There's the talent layer which uh um I think uh Brazil is really leading the pack here. I got the opportunity to travel to Brazil and host Nvidius the first AI summit uh in S. Paulo early this year and I was amazed by the talent pipeline in Brazil. In the
