Why the Brain Computes 1,000,000x More Efficiently Than A GPU: Unconventional AI's Naveen Rao

Name: Why the Brain Computes 1,000,000x More Efficiently Than A GPU: Unconventional AI's Naveen Rao
Uploaded: 2026-05-07T16:15:36.832Z
Duration: 14 min 13 s
Channel: Sequoia Capital
Description: Naveen Rao, founder and CEO of Unconventional AI, argues at AI Ascent 2026 that the 80-year-old digital computer is the wrong substrate for the next era of AI. He walks through the math: the entire human race runs on 160 gigawatts of brainpower, and within a few years the world simply won't have ...

By Sequoia Capital

Categories: VC, Startup

Transcript Excerpt

We're going to jump into our next set of frontier talks. The first is which from Naveen Rao. Naveen is a pioneer in the AI space. He did his PhD in neuroscience. Then he started one of the first ever AI chip companies way before it was cool. He's actually the person who ran Mosaic ML, one of the first AI training companies, and then built all of Data Bricks AI. He left that amazing role to do something new and redefine the future of computing bringing cool back to neuroscience. Naveen, come on u...