Claim Ownership5 Year Frontier
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© 2026 Daniel Darling
Description
Fast forward 5 years to view the future of an industry through the eyes of its most innovative entrepreneurs and CEOs.
Learn what key industries could look like in 5 years.
Witness the evolution through the eyes of leading CEOs.
Discover who gets disrupted and who wins big.
Hear of mind blowing technology set to reinvent all the rules.
Reshape your mental model to thrive in the change ahead.
Delivered as short (~30 mins), insight-packed discussions, that will spark imagination and leave listeners with a preview of what lies ahead.
39 Episodes
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The future of coding. We cover multiplying engineering output, vibe coding bottlenecks, agents as reviewer, AI roll-ups, and the future of developing software. Merrill Lutsky is co-founder and CEO of Graphite, bringing AI-acceleration and automation to code review. Founded in 2020 out of New York, Graphite has become a key part of the developer ecosystem — as more code is generated with AI, they enable developers to scale the evaluation, testing, and review process before it is released. A growing bottleneck that has become incredibly important. The startup has raised over $70M from leading VC’s such Accel, A16Z, Menlo as well as a receiving a strategic investment from model provider Anthropic. Last year Graphite grew its revenue 20X and is trusted by over 45,000 developers at top engineering organizations such as Shopify and Figma. His second startup, Merrill has helped develop and manage software products for high output engineering companies such as Square, Oscar Insurance, and SelfMade. He holds a degree in Applies Math and Economics from Harvard. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of carbon conversion. We cover the global energy race, turning CO2 into biofuels, propelling interplanetary travel, modular military refueling stations, and the future of clean energy. Guiding us will be Greg Constantine CEO of AIRCO, one of the most ambitious startups reimagining the role of carbon in our economy and climate future. Headquartered in New York, AIRCO has developed a proprietary technology that captures carbon dioxide and converts it into high-value products, including sustainable aviation fuel, rocket fuel, and even consumer-grade ethanol. Rather than burying carbon underground, AIRCO turns it into something useful—fueling commercial flights, defense operations, and potentially even Mars missions. To date, AIRCO has raised over $100 million from a roster of strategic investors including Carbon Direct Capital, Patriot Capital, Toyota, JetBlue, and has secured large contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA—including recent work on developing rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere. Greg Constantine brings a rare blend of operating and investing experience—previously holding senior roles at Diageo and serving as a venture partner at LocalGlobe, where he backed early-stage deep tech and climate companies. Now, he’s at the helm of one of the most frontier-pushing climate startups in the world, blending advanced chemistry, automation, and strategic focus to rewire how we think about carbon. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of selling. We cover AI-copilots for sales, forecasting engines for CROs, real-time procurement layers, and the future of revenue intelligence. Guiding us will be Andy Byrne CEO of Clari, the #1 Enterprise Revenue Platform trusted by over 1,500 companies managing more than $4 trillion in revenue. From pipeline to close, renewal to expansion, Clari brings end-to-end visibility, control, and predictability to every revenue-critical function in the enterprise. The company has raised $520 million in funding from top-tier investors including Blackstone, Silver Lake, Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Sapphire Ventures. Recognized as a 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ winner and growing at 227% over three years, Clari is leading a movement to modernize how businesses run their revenue process — transforming it from siloed and reactive to unified, intelligent, and data-driven. Andy is a defining voice in the future of revenue operations. A serial entrepreneur and two-time CEO, Clari marks the fourth company he’s helped build with backing from Sequoia Capital — a rare feat that speaks to his track record and long-term vision. Known for being thoughtful, resilient, and a true builder, Byrne has helped scale Clari into a global platform used by the world’s most sophisticated sales and finance teams. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of AI employees. We cover training and managing an AI workforce, instant agentic collaboration, new AI economics, the death of SaaS, AI lifting up the developing world and the future of agents. Surojit Chatterjee is CEO of Ema — short for Enterprise Machine Assistant. Ema is on a mission to reimagine how work gets done in large organizations by building “universal AI employees.” These aren’t just standalone chatbots — they’re sophisticated, mesh-like networks of specialized agents that can autonomously execute workflows across departments like HR, customer support, sales, and compliance. What sets Ema apart is its no-code, fully agentic platform — allowing non-technical users to configure, onboard, and manage AI employees using only natural language instructions. With over 150 pre-built agents and a proprietary ensemble model called EmaFusion that orchestrates over 100 large language models, the company is pushing the edge of what’s possible in enterprise AI. Ema last raised a $50M Series A led by Accel and has become a rapid riser in the AI landscape. Surojit has one of the best product resumes in tech. He was most recently Chief Product Officer at Coinbase, helping scale one of the most important companies in the crypto economy. Before that, he led product teams at Google for nearly a decade, overseeing products across Mobile Ads, Shopping, and Search, and earlier served as Chief Product Officer at Flipkart, where he helped build India’s leading e-commerce platform. In addition to building Ema, Surojit is also an active angel investor, backing startups like Udemy and Palantir. He holds a Master’s in Computer Science from SUNY Buffalo, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Aman Singh is Co-founder and CTO of Contextual AI, a company helping enterprises deploy AI and agents with accuracy, control, and safety. Founded by the team that pioneered Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Contextual is building next-generation AI that is deeply specialized to each business — answering with the context of your organization, not just the internet. With customers like Qualcomm and over $100 million raised from Greycroft, Lightspeed, Bain Capital Ventures, and Nvidia, Contextual is fast becoming one of the most important startups in enterprise AI. Aman leads the company’s technology development and brings a deep background in research engineering. He previously worked at Hugging Face, a leading force in open-source AI, and at Meta’s FAIR lab, where he contributed to the development of RAG and cutting-edge multimodal models. He holds a master’s in computer science from NYU, where he focused on the intersection of language and vision. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of autonomous driving and robotics. We cover simulating physical environments, helping car makers leapfrog Tesla, real world AI models, the economics of self driving cars, autonomous mines, and the future of autonomy. Vlad Voroninski is CEO and co-founder of Helm.ai. An early pioneer in training AI for autonomous cars, robotics, and aviation, Vlad has been instrumental in shifting the industry toward advanced simulation and synthetic data—a radical alternative to the traditional reliance on large-scale, manually labeled training sets. Helm.ai has raised over $100M from top investors, including Freeman Group and Goodyear Ventures, and works with major automakers like Honda and Volkswagen. Vlad Voroninski, Helm.ai's co-founder and CEO is a UC Berkeley PhD, former MIT instructor, and author of 20+ research papers on machine learning. He has been at the forefront of unsupervised learning—an approach he believes will define the future of AI. Before founding Helm.ai, Vlad was Chief Scientist at Sift Security, a machine learning cybersecurity startup that was later acquired by Netskope in 2018. After that, he set out to build Helm.ai, rethinking how AI can be trained for autonomous systems. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of the US healthcare system. In it we cover the mission for radical transparency, challenging entrenched insurance providers, personalized healthcare, and AI’s empowerment of patient choice. Cobi Gantz is CEO of Chapter, a company revolutionizing how Americans navigate the complexities of Medicare and optimize their healthcare coverage. Founded in 2020, Chapter has rapidly become a leader in providing personalized, technology-driven Medicare guidance, aiming to simplify decision-making for seniors across the nation. They have taken on the enormous task of bringing greater transparency to the complex and multi-layered US healthcare system for the benefit of consumers. The company has raised over $100M in funding from investors such as XYZ Venture Capital, Susa and Marverick. Before founding Chapter, Cobi spent 6 years at Palantir, a $230B big data, analytics, and AI company embedded into the public and government sector. Cobi holds degrees from University Pennsylvania, an Economics degree from Wharton, and Masters in Public Policy from Cambridge. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of data infrastructure. We cover the explosion in compute demand, the petabytes of untapped enterprise data, energy-efficient GPUs, DeepSeek, the $500B Stargate project, and how AI is transforming data processing. Craig Dunham is CEO of Voltron Data, a company at the forefront of accelerating data processing for AI, analytics, and enterprise-scale workloads. Voltron provides the infrastructure necessary to handle enormous amounts of data — transforming bottlenecks into breakthroughs. By championing open-source frameworks like Apache Arrow, Voltron is building the connective tissue that allows businesses to process data at orders-of-magnitude speed and efficiency, reshaping industries from finance to healthcare to national security — partnering with the likes of Snowflake and Meta. Voltron have established themselves as a key part of the AI infrastructure stack and have raised a total of $110M from the likes of Coatue, LightSpeed, Google Ventures and BlackRock. With a deep background in scaling data infrastructure businesses, Craig is Voltron’s CEO. Before Voltron Data, Craig was the CEO of Lumar, a leading SaaS technical SEO platform. Prior to that, he held significant roles including General Manager at Guild Education and Seismic, where he led the integration of Seismic’s acquisition of The Savo Group and drove go-to-market strategies in the financial services sector. Craig began his career in investment banking with Citi and Lehman Brothers before transitioning into technology. He holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of AI infrastructure. We cover Open Source supremacy, DeepSeek disruption, building small expert models, and staying ahead of the blazing pace of AI innovation. Lin Qiao is the CEO and co-founder of Fireworks AI, a company pioneering scalable AI infrastructure to help businesses build, customize, and deploy AI models and applications with speed and efficiency. Fireworks provides seamless access to over 100 AI models, including those from OpenAI, DeepSeek, and other leading providers, making enterprise AI adoption faster and more flexible. Founded in 2022, Fireworks AI has already gained high-profile customers such as DoorDash, Verizon, and Upwork. Backed by Sequoia, the company has raised $77 million to date and is currently valued at $550 million. Lin brings a wealth of experience in AI infrastructure and engineering leadership. She has held key technical roles at IBM and LinkedIn, but is best known for her tenure at Meta, where she led a team of 300+ world-class engineers in AI frameworks and platforms. She played a pivotal role in scaling PyTorch, deploying it across Facebook’s global data centers and billions of devices, cementing it as one of the most widely used open-source AI frameworks today. Lin holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara and a Master’s in Computer Science from Fudan University in China. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of material science. In it we talk about discovering new materials with AI, carbon neutral compute, data centers in space, and the convergence of biology and materials. Jonathan Godwin CEO of Orbital Materials, a material sciences company that leverages AI to discovery and design of advanced materials, particularly for clean energy, carbon capture, and data center applications. Founded in 2022 out of London, Orbital have raised over $20M in funding from the likes of Radical Ventures, Nvidia, and Toyota. They have already developed the world fastest and most accurate AI model for simulating advanced materials, including their own proprietary foundation model. The startup has also entered a multi-year collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop new data center decarbonization and efficiency technologies. Jonathan’s impressive background includes a tenure as a senior researcher at Google DeepMind, where he honed his expertise in artificial intelligence. He holds advanced degrees in physics and computational sciences, with a degree from University College London. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of online advertising. In it we cover co-pilot for marketers, brand ecosystems, disrupting ad agencies and a privacy first internet. Mike True is CEO of Prescient AI, a marketing technology company advancing the use of predictive AI models to maximize paid advertising efficiency and return on spend. Their technology works counter to how $700B in online ad spend is done today, by not relying on tracking users via cookies and instead building a platform to help marketers succeed when a privacy-first internet arises and cookies go away. With the most precise solution in the market Prescient can forecast future campaign performance across multiple channels three months out with a 90% level of accuracy. Calling over 100 iconic eCommerce brands as their customers Prescient has raised $20M from VC firms such as Headline, Blumberg, as well as the first check from us here at focal. CEO Mike True has been helping brands take advantage of AI and analytics solutions throughout his career prior to starting Prescient, working at IBM, Oracle, and App Annie. Mike has become a great friend and a founder held in high-regard as reshaping the online advertising industry. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of industrial robotics. In it we cover turning the physical world into data, robots that climb, fly, swim, AI’s ability to predict failures, and America’s $5T aging infrastructure problem. Troy Demmer is Co-founder of Gecko Robotics, who use a fleet of advanced robots and AI software to help government and heavy industry maintain and manage their critical infrastructure. From navy vessels to power plants to dams, Gecko collects data on and delivers insights across over 500,000 of the worlds most important and critical infrastructure. It has developed a digital layer of intelligence over the built world to improve performance, prevent breakage and failures, and increasingly predict how an asset will behave in the future. The company has raised over $220M from top investors including Founders Fund and US Innovative Technology Fund. Gecko’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer is Troy Demmer. A graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, Troy was previously in the healthcare industry working at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center before launching his first startup 360Showings, which 3D rendered homes for the real estate market. Along with his work at Gecko Troy also runs his own venture firm, First Order Fund, which invests in early stage startups building moats using data. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of biology. In it we cover machines controlling cells, manipulating biology with light, algorithms for drug development, and how biotech is becoming a low cost and mass production industry. Deniz Kent is CEO of Prolific Machines. Prolific is the first biotech company to harness light as a more efficient way to produce lab grown food, life saving drugs, and novel biosolutions. Offering a full stack tool kit from bioreactor to AI-software, Prolific’s groundbreaking technology provides dynamic control over virtually any cell function in any cell type. Until now, biomanufacturing has been limited to indirect cell control via expensive, inefficient, and imprecise tools like chemicals. Prolific’s platform enables direct control using light to produce new and superior biolsolutions faster, cheaper, and at greater scale. Based in Silicon Valley, the four year old company has raised $87 million in venture capital from the likes of Mayfield, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, In-Q-Tel and Fonterra. Prolific’s co-founder and CEO is Dr Deniz Kent, an expert in biological systems who earned his PhD in the Center for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London. During his studies he co-discovered a new human liver stem cell, worked on cures for Asthma at GlaxoSmithKline and develop research in the field of cancer immunotherapy. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of cybersecurity. In it we cover cybercriminal organizations, network effects of security, data as our biggest weapon, crypto’s gift to bad actors and the threat of cyberwarfare. Nick Schneider is CEO of Arctic Wolf, one of the leading companies safeguarding the enterprise from cybersecurity threats. With a global presence and over 2,000 employees protecting more than 3,000 customers, they are a force in security operations. With an eye on going public, Arctic Wolf has been valued at over $4B calling KKR and Viking Global amongst its deep pocketed investors. Leading the company is Nick Schneider, a veteran in the security industry, Nick has developed expertise in creating best-of-breed technology platforms and sales organizations, which have been the driving force behind Arctic Wolf’s explosive growth. Prior to Arctic Wolf, Nick led organizations at Dell and Code42. Of key interest to me is how Nick is deeply involved in being at the frontier of artificial intelligence’s influence on cybersecurity — in particulate the dual role of AI, as both an enabler and inhibitor of cybercrime, which epitomizes the modern cybersecurity conundrum. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of biomanufacturing. In it we cover the emerging $4T bioeconomy, nature’s ability to manufacture products, AI’s acceleration of scientific discovery, China’s quest for biological supremacy, and rethinking sustainability. Edward Shenderovich is CEO of Synonym, prior he was both an investor and entrepreneur, founding commercial real estate company Knotel where he raised over $400M and managed 200 locations across 4 continents. As an investor he founded Kite Ventures as well as Essential Capital, which include Delivery Hero and Fyber as their investments, both reaching IPO. Uniquely, Edward is also an accomplished Poet, having published multiple books in his native Russian. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of the industrial economy. In it we cover Generative Engineering, digital twins, AI for the physical world, data that dwarfs the internet, Saudi Aramco the tech giant, and the digital future of heavy industry. Greg Fallon is CEO of Geminus, a company at the forefront of simulating and automating industrial operations through cutting-edge AI technology. Geminus is revolutionizing how industries operate by bringing unprecedented speed and scalability to AI model deployment, with successful implementations in energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, and semiconductors. With heavyweight investors and partners like SLB and LAM Research backing them, Geminus is a key player in the digital industrial landscape. As a proud early investor in Geminus almost six years ago, alongside our friends at The Hive, I’ve had the privilege of watching this company innovate the industrial complex. Greg, who holds a Master’s in Science from the University of Virginia, has a wealth of experience, having held senior executive roles in product and commercialization at both Autodesk and ANSYS—two of the most influential companies in industrial software. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of home building. In it we cover putting construction in the cloud, home buying simulations, AI co-pilots for builders, onsite computer vision, advances in material science, and the future of new homes. Marc Minor is the CEO of Higharc, a software platform that helps new home builders get to market with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Higharc’s mission is to modernize the $100 trillion U.S. residential real estate market and make home ownership more affordable. The platform has been used to design over 4,000 homes and has raised more than $80 million from top built-world investors such as Fifth Wall, Spark Capital, Lux, and a host of strategic partners, including Home Depot. Marc spent his career in the 3D printing and fabrication space, leading the marketing departments at Carbon and Desktop Metal before founding Higharc in 2018. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of human potential and performance. In it we cover the quest to be superhuman, making biological enhancement mainstream, cyborg athletes, human longevity, and endeavoring to build the biggest sporting spectacle the world has ever seen. Aron D’Souza is the Co-founder and President of the Enhanced Games. This new model of the Olympic Games places performance-enhancing drugs and genetic modifiers front and center. The Games strive to showcase humanity’s unbounded potential by embracing scientific innovations and breakthroughs. In an era of accelerating technological and scientific change, they believe the world needs a sporting event that embraces the future, particularly advances in medical science. By doing so, they promise to give us all a glimpse of what the future of human performance could look like. Set to debut in 2025, the Games have the deep-pocketed support of some of the most successful and polarizing technologists and investors, including PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan, the futurist and former CTO of Coinbase, as well as an upcoming documentary series by Ridley Scott. Prior to the Enhanced Games, Aron founded Sargon, a technology infrastructure company for the pensions and superannuation industry across the Asia-Pacific region. Now owned by Vista Equity, Sargon has 200 employees and nine offices. Aron, the author of three books, studied law at both Melbourne University and Oxford. Sign up for new podcasts and our newsletter, and email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of coding. We will discuss the competitive AI landscape, NVIDIA and the hyperscalers, specialized versus generalized models, synthetic data, software that writes itself, and the future of software development. Jason Warner is co-founder and CEO of Poolside. Poolside is an AI startup challenging OpenAI and Anthropic by creating its own models to build the most capable AI for software development. Although less than two years old and launching this summer, Poolside has already raised over $500M from leading investors such as Redpoint, Bain, and DST. Jason was previously the CTO at GitHub, the world’s largest developer platform, both before and after Microsoft’s $7.5B acquisition, where he helped develop Co-pilot. Prior to that, he was the Head of Engineering at Heroku and a senior technical leader at numerous other companies. In addition to leading top software development teams, Jason served as a General Partner at Redpoint Ventures, who have invested in companies like Snowflake, Stripe, Hashicorp, and Netflix. He also sits on the Operator Board at Bridgewater Associates, helping them innovate at the technology frontier. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The future of the brain. In it we cover digital therapies, psychedelics, co-evolving with AI, technologies impact on society, and re-inventing how clinical trials are run. Guiding us will be Dr Adam Gazzaley, a Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at UC San Francisco and the Founder & Executive Director of Neuroscape, a neuroscience center engaged in technology creation and scientific research of novel brain assessment and optimization approaches. Adam is also co-founder of Akili, a company developing therapeutic video games, that brought the first FDA approved game to market. He is also a founder of JAZZ Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with close to $1B AUM investing in experiential technology to improve human performance. He has been a scientific advisor for dozens of companies including Apple, General Electric and PepsiCo. Adam has filed multiple patents and authored over 180 scientific articles. Subscribe for the latest episodes. Email me on danieldarling@focal.vcSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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