NBA Player Murdered in Front of Girlfriend

Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues. The world's greatest Jazz Zolim blues from the world's greatest artists. This is Jazz FM. Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss in partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with Mishkondorea. It's the shape of the business world together with the musician, shaping Jazz Zolim blues. My guest today is Mardi Yaya, founder and C.L. of Ori Industries, an AI compute company building the invisible layer between artificial intelligence and the physical world. And Mardi is the president of Radiant, the first fully integrated AI infrastructure platform. Having left university after six months to launch a data center networking company, Mardi returned H23 to follow a long-held passion for theatre studying drama while also running his business as you do. Combining tech and the arts, he found it his second business, room one, working on amongst other projects. And I've seen this, the Damon Album Produce musical Fabulous Wonder.land. It was fantastic. And with a belief that global infrastructure would need to be newly built. Mardi launched Ori in 2017. And I'll tell you what Ori means later as well, based on their future vision rather than data and reality and creating the technology before the customers and the market called for it. How brave is that? In February this year, Ori was acquired by asset manager Brookfield, emerged into Radiant with Mardi accessing a $100 billion AI infrastructure investment program. Mardi Yachia is my business shape. I'm just going to enjoy saying your beautiful name many times until I get it right. You were like, "Elia, at some point, just give up and just say Mardi and say your word." And I'll give up, thank you. It's great to have you here, found with Ori and then merged acquired as it were. And this new entity called Radiant. Tell me in your own words the headline, what Radiant does. And then I want to ask a bunch of questions because we're in the world of AI, we're in the world of infrastructure, we're in the world of different and brand new. What's it like? Sure. So maybe I'll tell you a bit of a longer story to get to what Radiant actually does and what it is. Everyone in the world interacts with AI through an application or a website and so on. But the real work in AI happens in the background. To deliver these models, for these models to actually give you answers and operate in the way they operate today, there's a whole infrastructure operation that happens in the background to make them work. And we work in that area. So Radiant is in that area. And when I talk about infrastructure, I mean, there's a software that runs in this infrastructure that makes sure the models are delivered in the right way. There's physical, very large-scale servers that actually sit in what we call data centers. And then there is a huge amounts of power and energy that is being consumed by these servers to deliver AI for us as we know it today. And these components need to work in cohesion together so that we can basically deliver AI in the right way. And also they need to constantly evolve and grow from here. And they're very expensive. This infrastructure is extremely expensive. It requires vast amounts of capital and capital to be deployed in the right way so that we can basically keep scaling it from here as AI continues to scale. So Ori specifically started about eight years ago, founded, company eight years ago, to build first that software layer to run AI across this infrastructure. And as AI started to scale, we started deploying our own servers, our own infrastructure. These high-performance computing servers run AI computational today. So when you ask chat GPT or Gemini or Cloud something, that millisecond when it's thinking the answer is actually using one of these servers in the background somewhere to formulate an answer and then send it back to you. So we built the software and we built the infrastructure. And as AI started to grow and grow and grow and demand is unprecedented. Hungry for energy. Hungry for energy. Hungry for compute. You quickly realize that you need capital partners. You need energy partners to scale this. So the four components today to actually make AI work is power land, data centers, energy, capital, compute, the servers, and then software. So Brookfield had power land and the capital is one of the largest asset managers in the world. They're one of the best capital deployers in the world. And capital allocators in the world. We built the best software in the world, and we had the best team in the world to actually build large-scale compute infrastructure. It was a marriage made in heaven. Exactly. So merging these four components together, basically formed radiant today. And radiant is an AI infrastructure company. That is building the backbone of the next year off AI, as we see it. That's an excellent explanation of exactly what radiance is about. And actually, as we all think about AI, it isn't just what's happening in your phone. There's a lot of stuff going behind the scenes. You're Lebanese. You came to Britain 20 years ago. We worked out mathematically, not using an AI model, but just simply a good old fashioned mask. Have you been conscious of the fact that you are an immigrant? Has that shaped you think the way you look at life? Or is it something else that's made you a serial founder that's made you move from the arts to technology so seamlessly and all the other things that we're going to talk about? You know, I never thought about it. I never thought of myself as an immigrant. And there's something in the Lebanese psyche. You just go somewhere and try and do something. Amazing trading people. You are everywhere in a fabulous way. And renowned for being brilliant with business and making things happen. Yeah, I think we have agency. It's what I call it. We have a very strong agency to just do things. Why do you think that is? I always think about that. I don't know, to be honest. It's an ingrained in the society and the culture, I think, and the psychology. Partly, it's a survival instinct as well. Like, I don't remember the country not being in a state of chaos or war throughout my lifetime. And before that as well, you know. And I just love it. The entire region always had chaos and wars and from the Romans to the Ottomans to the British to now. So it kind of gets ingrained in psychology. I think the survival instinct of just doing something. I think I've read about you talking about businesses being the truth about businesses at the edge of chaos. And in a way that is replicating art and business of all there together. And that in a way you're just used to dealing with that because that is your life. That's a theory that the Netflix founder actually came up with. And I really like that. And I believe in it as well. Like you always, to operate a successful business, you always need to be operating on the edge of chaos. So it's not very chaotic, but at the same time, it's not regimental. Yeah, it's not a follows-by, follows-see. There's nothing linear in reality about running a business. And then I think about your mum and your dad. And mum into art, your into art, dad comes to the data center soon. And I read again about the sense of smell of this place. And I remembered my own dad taking me-- What's the point, though? Ah, you know, I assure. Sure. And we replace it. He goes to places that most people don't go to. The legitimate place is obviously a hasten to it. Don't mind. Don't mind, it's not the dark way. We haven't used your technology to go deep, but we weren't quite deep. But that sense of-- I remember my own dad taking me around chemists when I was a kid. And I remember even now, aged 55, the smell of a chemist, you still remember the smell of a data center. What is the smell of a data center when it's at home? It smells like metal. Metal on rubber, because there's so many cables and so much metal. And it's very cold, you know, because it requires cooling-- Cool. Yeah, because the systems there, like the servers and the machines and everything else that sits in there, produces a lot of heat. So cooling is a big part of the data center. And air cooling-- I mean, now we talk about liquid cooling, different forms of cooling. Back then, air cooling was what everyone used. And it's extremely cold. You like to-- I love that. Why? I mean, like, it's-- I love science fiction, as a kid. I have always loved science fiction. So it is a form of looking into the future type of science fiction environment, you know? And it's not something that a kid gets to see very often. So I was lucky that I actually went to a data at an early age. I didn't expect that I'm going to work in data centers, to be honest, when I went there. Now, when I'm doing it, I look back at it and say maybe that experience affected me or shaped me in some way. But back then, it was just an exciting place to be in. And it's a different world that not many people get to see. And it's a utopian place. It's like all these machines humming with sounds and it's cold. And you see all these cables running across meters and meters and meters and rows and rows of servers. It just gets you thinking. It just gets you thinking about it, that's my de-yo, it's my business shapers. can be much more from him. He's the president, Mr. President of Radiant, and he was the founder of Oremonks, other things as well, much more coming up from him shortly. Right now we're gonna hear a taser from the Michigan Innovation Series, which you can find in all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. And this clip we hear from Tarik Ralph, architect and founder and CEO of Catalog, a digital work hub aiming to give people a radically simpler way to coordinate work. The Michigan Innovation Series. Inspiration from founders of cutting edge businesses. In association with jazz shapers, with Michigan D'Area. I think founding your own business has a lot to do with understanding what you're looking to do in founding a business. Like why do you do it? Betting on yourself and acquiring all the skills necessary to build a team, build a product, market it, raise the capital. It can be quite a lot of friction, but it can also be quite a lot of fun. And if you know why you're doing it, it gets a lot easier. I've always been interested in making and building things, which is where I got into architecture, is where I've been making software. And so a large part of my job don't feel like a job. The parts that running your company still, there's a million friction points every day. There's friction with customers, there's friction with product, there's friction with, with all kinds of, you know, unforeseen issues that pop up every now and then. But when you find joy in the act of building, which is what I do, it just becomes a necessary pain on the side effect. And so knowing why you're building a company, why you want to start a business and what you're looking to get out of it and having clarity around that generally helps quite a bit. The Mishcon Innovation Series, in association with jazz shapers, with Mishcon D'Area. This is jazz shapers with Ali and Mars, in partnership with Mishcon D'Area. You can enjoy your law form of business shapers on the jazz shapers podcast. And you can hear this very program again, if you pop jazz shapers into your favorite podcast platform. I guess there's Mark the Yaya, founder and CEO of Vorry Industries and AI Compute Company building the invisible layer between artificial intelligence and the physical world and Marty's the president of Radiant, the first integrated AI infrastructure platform with Brookfield behind it and you explained incredibly eloquently how that all works and the coming together of everything. So you dropped out of university first time round and then later on went and studied theater. You're in the world of technology. You, my my mention, I briefly mentioned, she was an art historian, enjoyed art and you saw that, explain to me how you see yourself as a creator and yet you're in the world of tech. So I came to London, right? So, and then I thought, I don't think I have the patience to learn coding at university and go and study computer science. And I wasn't that excited about business school. Thought like I can learn that through doing and so on. I've always had an appreciation for the art and general performing arts and being in London, it's the theater capital of the world. So I thought, we'll give it a try, we'll go to drama schools, not even theater schools, it was proper drama school. And it's a way to understand humans for me and it was going to that because like I always look at plays, when you read the play, you're looking at the two-dimensional reality of the characters. When you create a play, then you start creating more dimensions to that. And a lot of work happens in the background to understanding why a character is saying a certain thing, like their internalized drives and what basically is driving them to do, what they're doing and to say what they're saying and how these shape their relationships with the other characters. And I thought that's a really strong view to look under the hood of how humans interact. And I've always believed that whatever you're doing in life, you need to understand how humans react and why they do what they're doing in order to achieve what you want to achieve. And I can see that side of it, but there's the other side of it, which is the artist in you and I quote, you have to do it, you have to create something, it defines you, it fulfills you. So if you're not William Shakespeare writing the play, you're Mardi Yaya and you're creating businesses. - Yeah, that's how I see it. I mean, I see creating businesses is also a form of art. It's a different medium, but it's a creation, right? And we as humans, we create things. That's what differentiates us from a lot of other species, right? - Yeah. - We get things done, we create things. A lot of times we destroy things as well, but we create a lot of things as well, right? And the form of creation could come in so many different shapes, I think. So even creating a business is a form of creating something and creating this art. - You bring things into the world. So Sam, I tell you, you were 20 when you set this business up. - Yes. - The room one, which I think was the Damon Alban part of that. You created that and now Ori, you create that. This is, there's a lot in you. - I mean, we have a lot of phasions here, as I said before, you know, and I do know. - It's my thing. - There is a lot of agency for this man. - Yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know where this comes from, right? A lot of people ask you, where does this come from, where this idea comes from, and so on. And I don't know, I don't think anyone knows. Like, why do people create things and why do people don't create things, right? And I just think it's something you're born with and there's an internal drive that basically pushes you towards making things happen, I would say. And I don't know where that comes from, to be honest, but I do know it exists and it's constantly been driving me since I was a kid. - Obviously, part of the journey of making things, Maldi, is finding the right people to help you make them. And a few years ago, you made an acquisition of a very small team of three people. And I'm guessing some of those people are still very, they're also there. Are they part of your senior leadership? Is it the show, is it, there was a couple of people I noticed in the interview. - So I can tell, and then you, they're all part of the leadership team as well in radiant numbers. - Right, that's what I figured, 'cause I was looking at them, I thought, I bet you there, they're the people. So how do you, what are you looking for? What are you looking for and how do you know when you found it? - Oh, that's a very hard question, I'm like, I like hard questions. - Of course. The main thing, like I've learned over the years, is you look for attitude. That's the only thing that matters when you're working with people. You can have people with the best CVs and the best logos behind them and all the years of experience, but if they don't have the right attitude, all of that doesn't matter within the environment that you're building. 'Cause some people could work better in different environments other people could work in your environment and so on. So like when a person does not work out in a company, it's basically, they don't work out within a group of people and the stage that a company is and therefore the stage of development, this group of people is the way I say it. So to be successful at building teams, you need to think about all of these variety of different things, whether it's the stage of the group and the development of the group and how advanced this group is, how advanced your company is and what your building is. And normally the most successful people that scale with that and constantly evolve with this group are the people who have the right attitude towards it. Couple with the attitude of the people, you as a leader need space. And again, I understand that you have said very early on, I need space to think. And most businesses are running and everyone's not looking where they're running. They're just running. How have you carved out space in all of these different endeavors so far? Most of the time I try and dedicate mornings for thinking, it's the best time I think for me at least to think. I think you're far the set the same. Mornings are the time for thinking. How did you find that? (laughing) Marty is getting free by the powers of Stuart Silver, producer. Yeah, so again, building a business is just making a series of decisions and you need to get these decisions right most of the time. If you make a series of wrong decisions, you're going in the wrong direction and things might fall apart. And to make the right decisions, sometimes you make decisions on a gut feeling immediately and you get the right decision as well, but sometimes you need to give that decision, some breathing space and some thinking time before you make it as well. And I think with experience, you start basically creating a balance between what can be made based on a gut feeling and what needs a bit more time to think about it before you make that decision so that you can increase the percentage of right decisions in making over a period of time. And just thinking time for you, Marty, is that involved being both solitary and with a few trusted people? Or is it purely a solitary thing? Purely solitary. Purely solitary. I either go for a run or a walk as well in the morning or sometimes I just sit and listen to some music as well. Some jazz. It's like we told you to say that. Farmer Jack coming up with my guest, I'm Marty, yeah, yeah, and we've got some dongle for you and him too. That's in just a moment, don't go anywhere. Maybe carry on thinking for a bit. This is jazz shapers with Elliot Moss, in partnership with Mishkondorea. A lot of what you've done over the years is guessing what the future might hold. I'm not worrying about whether it will or not, but you're hedging your sense of thinking, which has delivered the answer to. I'd probably over there has been right so far. Now look forward. Now the next few years thinking about AI, thinking about the internet, thinking about that. What does it look like from your perspective? Best guess. So with AI, I truly believe that intelligence is becoming infrastructure. The same way as electricity is infrastructure, water works are infrastructure. So it's on tap. Yeah, anyway, it's on tap. And the way we produce AI today, we are basically converting energy into intelligence. You have these large compute machines in data centers that are consuming a lot of energy, and they're spitting intelligence on the other end, basically. So I believe like the next iteration or the next evolution that is going to happen over the next few years is in the energy sector. How do we deliver energy? How do we deliver power? How do we consume it? How do we build it? How we distribute it as well? There's a lot of people working in that space. I think there's still a lot of work to be done in that space. In climate-friendly ways as well. Right? I mean, there must be a renewable element to this. Of course, of course. Significantly important. Yeah, I mean, when I talk about power, I'm talking about the envelope of power in general, like energy in general. So that includes renewable and everything else. But even renewable is not what we. The shape renewable is today is not what we're going to have in the future, I would say. And I think most energy is going to become renewable. But the way we deliver power and energy to our civilization today is going to change a lot, I would say. And there's a lot of room for innovation there. And that's something excites me at the moment. And in the room for innovation there, young humans coming up into the world, you know, our children in 20 years, our children in 10 years, what are they going to need to be good up in your opinion? You know, I think about this a lot because I lived in a time before the internet. We lived in a time before the internet, right? So the access to information we had was so different than it is today. And then you have people who were born in the internet, age, and they're used to a different form of access to information. And now we have people born in the AI, so that's this people who will not know the world without AI. And the thing about AI is that it kind of creates a uniform layer of intelligence over everyone, I feel. And in a way, it kind of removes individuality from us as humans. So, you know, the thing that I think about the most and is how do you keep individual? How do you create individual humans, you know, and people who deep down know who they are? And can actually create things because if everything is uniform, then the act of creation changes a lot, I would say. So how would writers be in the future, right? Today everyone uses AI to write things. And that's a uniform way of writing things now because it basically writes it in the same way for everyone else. If Shakespeare or T.S. Eliot or Hemingway or anyone who was born today, would they be these writers or not? And how would we get the same type of people moving forward with the access to AI? And for you personally, I mean, I look back at your working life, Maldi. And I go success after success after success and obviously, well, wasn't all success, right? The straight line is easy when you just look at it from, you know, 20 years later or whatever. And I'm sure it wasn't quite like that. For you personally in the world of business, what's the number one challenge in the context of everything you've just said? The challenge has always been the same from day one is to find the right people to work with. And it still is today, I would say. And that's the number one challenge for everyone. It's to get the most intelligent and the most driven people to work with you and to have them on your team or be part of their team. Good luck working and finding those people. I'm sure you will. It's been fabulous talking to you just before I let you go back into the metaphorical data center, the cold metal meats. What was it? You said metal meats. Rubber. Rubber. The smell of metal and rubber. Just for a let you just peer over into that world again. What's your song choice and why have you chosen it? The Moon song by Pat Muthini. It has one of the best double bass solos, I think, out there. And I love the sound of double bass. And the thing with the double bass is that it's always in the background, but it kind of makes sure everything is ticking properly, you know. And many people don't notice it. You need to focus really hard to notice where the double bass is. And in a way, I always feel my job is like a double bass, you know, because I'm always basically making sure the rhythm is correct. And while we're on the edge of chaos, we're also moving forward and actually operating together in the right way. All the teams operating together and creating the right environment. And it has, I mean, I love the sound of the double bass in general. So this piece basically portrays that because, you know, you have the guitars and the different instruments in and then they give some time to the double bass to come to the front and say a few words and then go back to leading basically the rhythm of the band. You know, so it's a beautiful story that beats the way it's weaved. The Moon song from Pat Muthini with Charlie Hayden, the song choice of my business shape is Dave Mardi Iaia. And I hope you could hear the double bass there pulling the whole thing together. He talked about so many things that were important. He talked about agency and talked about the art of creation and how both of his internal drivers for making things happen. You look for attitude, critical when you're thinking about business and founding businesses that operate at the edge of chaos, as he said, and finding those people that can deal with that and indeed flourish in that environment. And in simple terms, he talked about businesses being a series of decisions and the role of thinking in that is absolutely critical. And he talked about how important it is to find the space to do that. Really brilliant stuff. That's it for me and Josh Shapes have a lovely weekend. We hope you enjoy that edition of Josh Shapes. 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