For this episode, we sat down with Roman Shaposhnik, co-founder of AiNEKKO, for a conversation about open-source technology and the future of AI hardware. We explore why the semiconductor industry is ripe for disruption, how open-source chip architectures could change the economics of hardware development, and what it takes to make AI computing more accessible.

Roman draws on decades of experience building software infrastructure and contributing to the open-source community to share his perspective on the intersection of hardware and software, the power of collaborative development, and why the next generation of AI innovation might look very different from the last.

Links & Resources

• AiNEKKO — Open-source, composable AI silicon
• AI Foundry — Open AI hardware and software ecosystem
• OpenHW Group — Open-source processor development
• RISC-V International — Open-standard instruction set architecture
• Roman Shaposhnik on LinkedIn
• Roman's Substack — Yellow Submarine
• Chat Jimmy — AI Demo by Taalas
• CrankGPT — Taking Local LLM inference to the extreme.

For more information on the podcast, check out https://tradeoffs.fm

Episode: T-26-017

• (00:00) - The Next Thousand Chips
• (00:24) - Introduction
• (04:12) - What is Hugging Face?
• (05:53) - Why Hardware?
• (07:20) - Customers & Use Cases
• (12:58) - ASIC & MOSIC Explained
• (14:55) - Memory: SRAM, DRAM & MRAM
• (20:41) - Where Chris originally asked about RAM and ASIC
• (20:46) - Etched, Cerebras & Talas
• (25:35) - YOLO & Computer Vision
• (32:39) - The Next Thousand Chips
• (33:41) - Open Source & AI Foundry
• (42:00) - Background: Sun Microsystems
• (52:21) - Immigration Story
• (58:23) - Contrarian Take
• (01:00:29) - Recommendations & Wrap

For this episode, we sat down with Jenny Sharpe, Director of Workforce Development for the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, for a candid conversation about the people behind the robots. We explore why Pittsburgh’s hiring challenge is about matching the right people to the right teams (not simply finding more talent) and what’s making it harder for early-career engineers to break in.

Jenny shares practical advice on building genuine relationships, telling your story, and standing out in a sea of AI-generated applications, with a clear message: building the future of robotics is still a deeply human endeavor.

• Pittsburgh Robotics Network and PRN newsletter
• Pittsburgh Robotics Job Board
• Pittsburgh Robotics Ecosystem Profile and 2026 Report

For more information on the podcast, check out https://tradeoffs.fm
Episode: T-26-016

For this episode, we sat down with Rob Leonard, founder and CEO of Vector7, a product development, R&D, and business development consultancy. Rob is a serial entrepreneur and hardware operator who previously led the shows at Pensar and Tactile, two legendary product development firms in Seattle. He’s also an autodidactic who taught himself most of what he knows about hardware and manufacturing, and somehow still has time on the side to be a sculpture artist who uses math and CNCs to make beautiful installations that do beautiful things with light and shadow.

Rob is a fascinating person who’s career has taken countless turns over the years. His deep experience in hardware has given him a world class network and insights into the tradeoffs inherent in building effective hardware organizations and agencies that’s unmatched in the industry.

We drop a lot of names in this episode! Here are a few of the key links Rob mentions during the conversation:

Vector 7 (Rob’s consultancy): https://vector7.com/

Mathscaper (Rob’s art practice): https://www.mathscaper.com/

Mathscaper Instagram (art practice visual smorgasbord): https://www.instagram.com/mathscaper/

Laced Golf (one of Rob’s key clients where he is the Technology Architect): https://lacedgolf.com/

For more information on the podcast, check out https://tradeoffs.fm