Unblock'd

The industrial age was forged in coal and oil. The age of artificial intelligence is being forged in electricity, and there isn’t enough of it. Data centers now demand gigawatts from a grid that makes new connections wait five to ten years.Shin Gomi, Senior General Manager of Data Center and Energy Management at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, joins Dr. Jemma Green to unpack what it will take to power the age of intelligence, and who pays if we get it wrong.In this episode:The three bottlenecks holding back AI power: interconnection queues, transmission and generation supplyWhy on-site power alone can’t economically deliver five nines reliabilityWhy gas turbines paired with battery storage get financed first, and where SMRs fitRising household electricity bills, data center tariffs and citizen backlashCo-location, behind-the-meter generation and who will operate itVirtual power plants, AI-based frequency control and workload shiftingModular data centers, labor shortages and soaring build costsEnergy security, national security and Shin’s warning for the decade aheadGuest: Shin Gomi, Mitsubishi Heavy IndustriesTo know more, visit https://www.mhi.com/...................................................................Unblock'd podcast with Dr. Jemma GreenFor more information on Dr. Jemma GreenVisit: https://www.powerledger.io/Or connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemmagreen/

Annabelle Huang, co-founder of Altius Labs, explains why Robinhood, Stripe and Circle buy blockchain infrastructure instead of building it, and what AI pulling young talent out of crypto means for DeFi.Annabelle spent a decade moving from Deutsche Bank's FX options desk to AirSwap on early Ethereum to co-founding Amber Group, and now builds full stack, high performance chains for crypto applications at scale through Altius Labs. Dr. Jemma Green asks her where blockchain infrastructure still trails traditional finance, and Annabelle says the gap is risk management and how chains connect to the players in financial markets.Topics covered:- Why large companies partner or acquire instead of building a chain in-house, and how that cuts time to market from years to weeks or months- Tokenized AMC stock versus options: venues, margin rules and offshore wrappers- Why perp DEX failures trace back to oracles and liquidation engines more than chain speed- Privacy, transparency and decentralization after a decade of building- Nasdaq's move toward near 24 hour trading, prediction markets and what stays on-chain- Women in crypto, conviction and management style...........................................................................About the guest:Annabelle Huang is co-founder of Altius Labs, which builds full-stack blockchain infrastructure for applications that want to own their chain. Altius Labs: https://www.altiuslabs.xyz/Annabelle on X: https://x.com/_annabellehuang.................................................................................................Unblock'd podcast with Dr. Jemma GreenFor more information on Dr. Jemma GreenVisit: https://www.powerledger.io/Or connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemmagreen/

Aya Kantorovich on Institutional DeFi, Tokenized Assets and Raising a Seed Round the Week FTX Collapsed | Unblock'd Aya Kantorovich co-founded August and Upshift, which give institutions access to DeFi with counterparty risk they can underwrite. Her seed round closed the same week FTX collapsed. In this episode, Dr. Jemma Green talks with her about institutional DeFi, tokenized real world assets, stablecoins, DeFi security and what it takes to run two companies as a new mother. Aya explains why she left FalconX to build on-chain, why DeFi still has no true prime brokerage, and how Upshift vaults now sit inside Kraken's qualified custody so institutions can earn yield on idle Bitcoin and ETH without leaving the platform. She also covers composability, tokenized treasuries as collateral, why market makers matter for tokenization, and why she thinks accredited investor rules are out of date. In this episode How Hack VC doubled down after FTX, and why Aya calls FTX an opsec failure rather than a blockchain failure Why DeFi still lacks true prime brokerage, and how Morpho, Aave and Kamino are closing the gap Kraken's kBTC receipt token and how bankruptcy-remote qualified custody limits hack risk Build or partner: why exchanges buy readiness instead of spending 12 months on vault infrastructure Stablecoin vaults for remittances, payments and treasury management Composability, explained with tokenized money market funds as collateral Why accredited investor thresholds miss the point, and what AI agents mean for them The Drift hack, human attack surfaces and delayed settlement as a security layer Motherhood, AI agents and running two companies Upshift as the first major vault provider on Solana The bets Aya is making that the market thinks are too early: regulated crypto infrastructure and AI everythingAbout guest:Aya Kantorovich is co-founder of August and Upshift. Know more here. https://www.upshift.finance/Unblock'd podcast with Dr. Jemma GreenFor more information on Dr. Jemma GreenVisit: https://www.powerledger.io/Or connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemmagreen/

Lisa Emme spent a decade in finance and private equity before co-founding Frontier AI lab Inversion. In this episode of Unblocked, she breaks down why the real AI conversation has already moved past chatbots into architecture, control, and autonomous agents.Emme explains why bolting AI onto workflows built for humans produces no real ROI, and why the next shift, from multi-agent systems to fully autonomous AI, will restructure entire departments rather than individual tasks. She argues Europe's dependence on foreign frontier models is a strategic risk, points to the model access restrictions under the Trump administration as proof, and calls for the continent to build its own foundational AI infrastructure before the gap becomes unclosable.Topics covered:Why enterprise AI adoption is stuck at the surface level, and what AI-native restructuring actually requiresThe shift from agentic to autonomous AI, and what it means for finance, procurement, and marketing functionsWhy Emme believes the AI infrastructure buildout is a bubble, and which layer she expects to pop firstThe case for Europe building sovereign AI models instead of depending on US and Chinese labsWorld models, defensibility, and why frontier labs eating the application layer is a five-year risk for most AI startupsCareer advice for professionals with only a few reskilling cycles left before AI reshapes their industryGuest: Lisa Emme, co-founder, Inversion LabUnblock'd podcast with Dr. Jemma GreenFor more information on Dr. Jemma GreenVisit: https://www.powerledger.io/Or connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemmagreen/-------------------------------------------------------------Produced by: Podcasts Done For YouView this episode on YouTube @PodcastsDoneForYou_clients

Telco is quietly having its AWS moment.For decades, wireless carriers have carried the full weight of building coverage themselves: towers, real estate, hardware, maintenance, tens of billions of dollars a year in capex per carrier. Helium Foundation CEO Scott Sigel joins Unblock'd to explain how a tokenized, community-built network is turning that fixed cost into usage-based infrastructure, and why it's already partnering with AT&T, T-Mobile. We get into how HNT tokenomics actually work, why Helium walked away from token buybacks, and why the network's biggest win might be that a major part of 3.5 million daily users have no idea a blockchain is involved at all. Scott also breaks down how AI-driven data surges could bring Uber-style dynamic pricing to wireless, what's next as Helium expands into Mexico, Brazil, and the UK, and the emergency deployment that got thousands of phones connected after a hurricane knocked out power on the US East Coast.Visit here to know more about Helium:https://www.helium.foundation/https://www.helium.com/......................................................................Unblock'd podcast with Dr. Jemma GreenFor more information on Dr. Jemma GreenVisit: https://www.powerledger.io/Or connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemmagreen/-------------------------------------------------------------