Arya Bolurfrushan is the Founder and CEO of AppliedAI, the company behind Opus, a platform enabling enterprises to design AI-native workflows. The company raised a $42 million seed round in November 2022, days before ChatGPT launched, and earlier this year closed a $55 million Series A led by G42, with Palantir and Bessemer also participating.
Arya joins the podcast to discuss why he was "doing AI before it was cool," how the company had to rebuild its tech stack post-ChatGPT, why he believes democracies will struggle with AI-driven displacement, and how Opus is designed to keep humans as moral decision-makers rather than obsolete bystanders.
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Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
04:02 - Raising Before ChatGPT Was Cool
05:08 - The COVID Quarantine Epiphany
11:07 - From Oil to Electricity: Why Applied AI is Like General Electric
17:07 - Opus: Building the Machine That Builds Machines
23:50 - Hiring Less Than 1% of Applicants & Building an AI-Native Team
32:57 - The Large Work Model: Mapping 2.7 Million Business Processes
37:20 - Sharing Productivity Gains with Labour: Lessons from Das Kapital
43:57 - The $2 Trillion Investor Who Believes Humans Will Have No Work
49:21 - Building for His Son's Future in a World Where AI is Always Smartest
Resources and episode mentions
Books
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin: https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123
Das Kapital by Karl Marx: https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Vol/dp/0140445684
Concepts
Robert Solow's Productivity Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox
The Solow Growth Model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solow%E2%80%93Swan_model
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