Republic opens private markets as Positron takes on GPUs: A TWiST500 doubleheader! | E2176
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s show:
In this founder-focused episode of This Week in Startups, we sit down with Republic’s Kendrick Nguyen to learn more about the company’s efforts to make the private markets accessible to the common investor. Best known for its work in equity crowdfunding, the Valor-backed startup now offers access to secondary shares, tokenized assets, and much more. Following, TWiST spoke with Positron CEO Mitesh Agrawal to learn more about his company’s inference-focused AI compute hardware. Related to fellow TWiST500 company Etched, Positron is building custom chips to take on the computing work required to deliver your AI query results faster and with less power draw than what GPUs can offer. With AI inference compute demand rising, the fellow Valor-backed startup has even more powerful systems coming to market in 2026 that have our hopes up that the AI cost curve can continue to point downward.
Timestamps:
(0:00) A future with more efficient and accessible intelligence(0:41) the following sponsors are mentioned: AlphaSense, Vanta, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure(1:26) Introduction to the episode and the two featured companies, Republic and Positron(2:43) The history and purpose of Republic, a financial crowdfunding platform(5:39) Discussion of the current state and growth of equity crowdfunding(9:19) Kendrick Nguyen explains Republic's role as a financial infrastructure company, not a competitor to venture capital firms(11:17) Oracle - Try OCI and save up to 50% on your cloud bill at https://www.oracle.com/twist (12:25) Republic's different products, Republic Capital and Republic Venture, are explained(14:00) The challenges and progress of secondary trading for non-accredited investors(20:14) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist(21:21)The concept of a unified "e-finance" infrastructure is introduced(25:45) Positron CEO Mitesh Agarwal discusses the future of AI chips and the limitations of current GPUs for inference workloads(31:12) Alphasense - Get deeper insights into your business with the power of AI search and market intelligence. Start with a free trial at https://www.alpha-sense.com/twist(32:22) Discussion on the inefficiency of GPUs for inference and how Positron's Atlas system addresses it(38:30) Positron's strategy of using their Atlas system to prove their technology and generate revenue(42:51) The market shift from AI training to inference and the future of Positron's chips(51:14) The confidence in Positron's capital efficiency and their ability to compete with NVIDIA(52:47) Positron's focus on linear algebra acceleration rather than just transformers
Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com
Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com
Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp
Follow Lon:
Follow Alex:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow Jason:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
Thank you to our partners:
(09:04) Netsuite - Download the ebook CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at https://www.netsuite.com/twist
(21:20) Coda - Empower your startup with Coda’s Team plan for free—get 6 months at https://www.Coda.io/twist
(31:43) .TECH: Say it without saying it. Head to get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today.
Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
Follow TWiST:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups
Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | It just strikes me that we're going to have a future that's going to be a little bit more |
| 0:03.6 | efficient than people think. |
| 0:04.7 | We're not going to boil all the oceans. We're still going to have power for our appliances. And we're going to have essentially infinite intelligence in our pockets and all of our screens. And to me, that's a pretty exciting future. And we better. We will need to have infinite intelligence. And that's the whole goal. Like, if you ask in video, if you ask us, |
| 0:21.2 | if you ask any other silicon company, I think they're all trying to say that, you know, we are, |
| 0:25.1 | we are approaching it with some different approaches. But basically, it's like, how can we bring |
| 0:29.3 | like cost per token or cost per generation down so that we can afford to have infinite |
| 0:34.3 | intelligence while increasing our energy production as much as we can. |
| 0:40.6 | This weekend startups is brought to you by Alpha Sense. Get deeper insights into your business with |
| 0:47.0 | the power of AI search and market intelligence. Start with a free trial at Alpha-sense.com |
| 0:53.7 | slash twist. |
| 0:55.9 | Vanta. |
| 0:56.8 | Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. |
| 1:01.7 | Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC tube report fast. |
| 1:05.7 | Get $1,000 off for a limited time at Vanta.com slash twist. And Oracle. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or |
| 1:15.7 | OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and |
| 1:21.4 | AI needs. Save up to 50% on your cloud bill at oracle.com slash twist. |
| 1:27.8 | Hey everybody, welcome back to this week in startups. |
| 1:30.4 | My name is Alex, and today I am bringing you two startup interviews. |
| 1:33.8 | Now, both of these companies share a backer, Valor, equity partners. |
| 1:38.3 | So if you want to know what one venture capital firm sees in the future, well, here is a good |
| 1:42.1 | look at it. |
| 1:43.1 | First up, we're going to talk to Republic. You may know them back in the day as an equity crowdfunding platform, but since then, it's gotten into quite a lot more activities, a little bit of venture capital, some secondary shares, tokenization of assets, you name it, they're working on it. I care about this company because it's democratizing finance and bringing more investment |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jason Calacanis, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jason Calacanis and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.