Crypto’s Hottest Startup, Upgrade CEO on Future IPO, Questions Ahead of Nvidia GTC | Oct 20, 2025

Key Takeaways

[Applause] Welcome everyone to the information ti. My name is Akos Basria. It is Monday, October 20th. Hope you had a great weekend. We have got a great show planned for you today. First up, we go inside Hyperlquid, the exchange in the spotlight after crypto's recent sell-off. We'll also preview Nvidia's GTC conference in Washington DC with analyst Patrick Moorehead, and we're going to talk about which company is closest on Nvidia's tale. We've then got fintech company Upgrade coming on the show to talk about their big funding round and about the company's plans to go public. And finally, tech is transforming the healthcare industry. and we're going to talk to a CEO who is looking to bridge the gap between the traditional healthc care category and new consumer gadgets altogether. It is going to be a busy show and so let's get right on into our first guest. Earlier this month, crypto markets plunged after President Trump threatened more tariffs on China imports. But behind the scenes, the crash has brought a littleknown exchange called Hyperliquid into focus. The company handles more than $13 billion in trades a day with around 11 employees. I want to bring on our crypto reporter, Yuichi Yang, to tell us more about the exchange and about a story she wrote today. UI, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. >> Hey, Akash. >> So, tell us about Hyperlquid, what this new company is, and also why we should be paying attention to it right now. >> Great. Um, so Hyperlquid is this uh two-year-old exchange that's uh created by a small team of about 11 people largely based in Singapore and is not widely known outside of the crypto world but within the crypto community. It is quickly becoming the most favorite trading venue for uh traders who want to use leverage and who want to stay anonymous. And I think the role of hyperlquid and their impact on the market was really illustrated during the Friday's uh last Friday's crypto market crash when more than $10 billion worth of trade were liquidated on the hyperlquid platform. And that's really the first time that drew um people's attention uh to hyperlquid from investors outside of the crypto market where they they're starting to realize that this is a platform that has outsiz impact and that could potentially present systematic risk. >> Why have been traders why have traders been flocking to Hyperliquid specifically? What is it about their platform that's different? The exchange was really born out of um a response to FTX collapse. So its founder Jeff Yen talked about his vision of building a decentralized exchange which means that the exchange will not will not hold uh custody of customers funds and customers themselves will be able to retain control of their assets and that's a big draw. But then more importantly because it's a decentralized exchange it doesn't need to perform KYC know your customer check for their users and that's a hugely popular um draw for people who trading crypto who largely want to stay anonymous and the other reason is that it provides leverage and uh the most popular product on hyperlquid is what's called perpetual futures um and >> these are these are the crypto derivatives that that people were all excited about during the the last crypto boom. >> Yes. Um Yes. And it's something that uh allow traders to make either make a lot of money very quickly or potentially get wiped out. >> Now, so I mean I I am just kind of curious about I mean high leverage, you know, anonymity. It all sounds great for traders. It also sounds like a bit of a risk and something that some of these newer crypto regulations for example have tried to sort of guard rail against. I mean it it it seems a little bit risky that this platform has taken off in the way it has, right? >> Yes. Um yeah and it's important to note that hyperlquid does not accept US users and that's largely because of the regulatory environment in the US but um there are people uh who are able to try to get around that by using VPN. >> Right. Right. And what about the the the founder of the company? Tell us about him. >> So Jeff Yen is a fascinating character. Uh I talked to quite a few people who know him and they all say that he's someone who's deeply technical, who's extremely ambitious and who really is an independent thinker and his career path uh was that he uh grew up in Silicon Valley. he uh went to Harvard to study math and computer science and after graduating from Harvard he went to a well-known highfrequency trading firm called Husten River Trading and I think the first break uh from this conventional path was when he decided to leave Husten River Trading within less than a year and he wanted to do something on his own. So he tried to start a prediction market which didn't really take off and then he went on to do uh crypto market making um as a one person trading shop and that became hugely successful. He was able to hire um extremely talented people later on to join him and that includes some of the famous AI talent that we later saw. Um and then eventually that led him down to the path of creating uh hyperlquid which is a exchange >> and he hasn't really raised much venture funding for this initiative at all. Right. >> Yes. So he refused to take VC money and he mostly um bootstrapped the platform by using his own wealth but also through a very successful token airdrop event which is essentially to give away tokens for free to early users and is a mechanism to incentivize people to join the platform and trade more. Hm. So, you actually I I just want to take a little bit of a step back here and looking at sort of what hyperlquid tells us about the state of crypto broadly because on one hand in the US you have these regulations being passed. You have a lot of people saying hey crypto is coming into or or or becoming more uh overlapping with the traditional financial sector and you're seeing more of these traditional financial firms buy into it. And on the other hand, you have these firms that aren't operating in the US. It's a it's it's a little bit of the flavor of the wild west I think that we're used to. What does this tell you about the current state of crypto more broadly that hyperlquid is so in focus right now? So people that I talk to are generally optimistic about the regulatory future of Hyper Liquid uh given the current uh crypto friendly environment under Donald Trump and Hyperlquid did show some interest in weighing in on crypto rulemaking in the US. Uh they submitted a common letter to the CFTC earlier this year to advocate for the role of decentralized exchanges such as Her hyperlquid. The company itself hasn't said whether they will want to enter the US market one day. Um but from regulatory and legal experts uh who I talked to there will be a pathway for them to do so if they desire so and they can either try to acquire a license entity or try to uh start and apply for a license from scratch by themselves. And I think the broader takeaway is uh the expectation is the activities that are happening on hyperlquid will likely become legal in the US um under the current administration uh just because how the CFTC and also the SEC are pushing for more innovative products uh in crypto and that's a good sign for hyperl uh regulatory future. >> Great Yui. Well, thank you for coming on. That is Yui Yang, our crypto reporter here at the information. Okay, it is a busy time for the chip sector, not just because of the flurry of deals all these companies are signing with cloud providers and with open AI, but also because many of these companies are hosting conferences right now. It's a good time to step back and look at some of the broader trends that are shaping the sector and its biggest businesses. And so I want to bring on Patrick Morehead, founder, CEO, and chief analyst at More Insights and Strategies. Patrick, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. >> Yeah, thanks for having me on. This is a first time guest. I think I need to say that. So I appreciate that. >> Well, I know I what you've done over a thousand broadcast appearances. Is that right? >> Uh yes. Uh I have a lot of experience, let's say. I also have my own uh my own podcast as well. >> Great. Well, and we didn't even get to your weekend at F1. It looked like you had a big weekend. >> Oh, it was it was fantastic. And if you look at the sponsors, I mean, the technology sponsors are pretty much the the the lead sponsors. I mean, I >> Yeah, >> thanks to IBM for being out there, but I, you know, Dell, AWS, a lot of different chip companies. tech. I ran into uh Perplexity CEO and founder as well, who sponsors uh the top of Lewis Hamilton's helmet. >> Really? We're talking like like the the part up here. >> Exactly. And when you get the uh the camera on the back of the driver, sure enough, you can see the >> perplexity right there. >> Logo. So, yeah, it was great running into Arvin uh in the Paddock Club. Well, there's no question it's the tech companies that have the money right now and so it's it's great to see where they're putting that to work. I want to talk about Nvidia. Nvidia has its GTC conference coming up next week and you're putting on a bit of a pregame show which I'm excited to watch. But I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the questions facing Nvidia as it goes into this conference. What are the things that you are hoping that they address and what are the things that you think investors are going to be watching for at that event? Yeah. So, Nvidia always will make some major announcements at these shows and I think we first of all, we're going to see some victory laps on what uh Nvidia has done. I think specifically for the country, right? We're sitting here in Washington DC and there's a reason that the conference is there. So I think it's going to talk about how it has pushed uh major technologies forward uh whether it's life sciences uh creating new new drugs uh and all the different breakthroughs that we've seen in high performance computing but we'll probably get uh some more details on Vera Rubin and its architecture and that's the uh 20 uh slated for 2026. Uh we could even see some more details on 2027. Uh Nvidia talked about uh a system called Kyber. Uh and this >> Kyber is Kyber is what? >> Uh Kyber is the 2027 uh uh rack scale architecture that >> Yeah. And then I think we're going to see a lot about manufacturing and robotics. uh over over the last year uh Nvidia has talked a lot more about how it's enabling what they call physical AI which is shorthand for robots uh manufacturing uh even uh uh in inhome uh elder care. >> I want to talk to you a little bit about Nvidia's the the structure of its business. The chips are expensive. There's no two ways about it and and that has boded really well for them as a leader in this market. It has also made it very difficult for other companies and AI to to make any money at all because of the fact that it all relies on those GPUs. I wonder if you see at all their advantage in terms of pricing power, the idea that they can keep increasing the price as their models get better and better. Do they have less flexibility in terms of pricing now compared to 2 3 years ago? Do you see that that power I guess dwindling at all? Well, Bertoff, these chips do cost an enormous uh amount of money, and the company went from a three-year cadence to a 2-year cadence to a one-year cadence, and that added a tremendous amount of R&D. And the other thing is these chips are what are called reticle limit, meaning these are the largest chips that a company like TSMC can can manufacture. And then you add on that this expensive memory that goes on it. that's called HBM. Uh it costs a lot and and if something costs a lot, Nvidia has to charge for it. And right now, Nvidia has a lot of pricing power. In fact, Nvidia can sell everything that they can make uh likely through the um end of 2026. So, they literally have uh uh pricing power, >> right? I I I guess my question is though a as it as it remains hard for other companies downstream to make money in AI because the chips are so expensive, do you see them do you see their their their pricing power I guess are they going to be a little nicer? Will they have to be nicer at all? >> Well, let me let me put it like this. Uh nobody is comfortable having a sole source for anything. And that's not just true for technology. It's true for every industry out there. And typically the healthiest markets have three strong competitors. Some argue all you need is two. Uh so this is where you see companies like AMD come to the table. Uh you're the hyperscalers are creating their own homegrown uh accelerators. Uh widespread being uh Google TPU and after that what what AWS is doing >> right. Do you do you do you see uh you know the the chip startups I'm talking about Grock Sonova how much competition do they post to this market? >> Yeah. So let me answer the question this way. uh there's nobody who feels comfortable with a single source in tech that's true but any other industry healthy markets typically have uh three strong competitors driving innovation lowering price uh and some argue two so what what that does is it's providing opportunities for companies like AMD that have a light you know a a GPU architecture uh Intel that has also announced their GPU uh in 2026. uh and also I would say one of the biggest competitors just on just based on market share today is on hyperscaler custom chips from and and Amazon >> right now with we've been watching these these chip startups here at the information companies like Grock and and Somnova and one of the aspects that I've been interested in is the fact that a lot a lot of these companies they just all rely on TSMC to make the chips and I I wonder if you've done any research or any analysis on how to what extent TSMC is the bottleneck here because it feels like any company that wants to compete with Nvidia, I mean they have to produce their chips with the same player right now. TSMC is kind of the head honcho there. Yeah, TSMC is what we would call the long pole in in the tent. uh you know to their defense uh it does take uh two to four years to stand up a new foundry and you're pouring billions of capex in before you're going to see a penny of revenue uh coming out and also if if you had told me the amount of capex we were going to spend this year 5 years ago I would have said you're completely crazy the estimate may have been a hundred billion but now it's 300 billion and that's hard to react to uh very quickly and it also provides opportunities for Intel and their foundry business as well as Samsung and their foundry business. >> Right. Right. Well, look, I'm excited to see what comes of GTC next week and I'm also excited to watch that pregame show that you have. So, Patrick, thank you for joining us. That is Patrick Morehead, the CEO, the chief analyst, and the founder of Morehead Insights and Strategy here on TITV. Okay. Fintech company Upgrade raised $165 million last week at a valuation of $7.3 billion. The company has been around since 2016 and has built a big business in the online lending market. Now, the company is looking ahead to the poss to a possible IPO in the coming 18 months. Join me joining me now is Renault Launch, the CEO of the company. Renault, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. >> Good morning. Thank you for having me. So you recently said that this funding round would be your last funding round privately before you IPO. Talk to me about what your timeline is for going public. >> Yeah, I mean as you know it will depend on a lot of factors that are not entirely in our control uh including the the markets, the economy. Um but but I think as far as our own readiness and and process, we think we're about 12 to 18 months away from uh from being ready, >> right? And I I am kind of curious about about the uh desire and the goal to go public because on one hand it's a fundraising event. On the other hand, I totally understand that you have investors that would like to see a return on their investment. But if you look at some of the other fintech companies that have gone p that have gone public like CLA and like Chime, the public markets have not been so kind to them after their debuts. And so I wonder, you know, how do you grapple with that? I mean, what is your plan to succeed in that environment where new fintech IPOs aren't being treated that well? >> Yeah. So if you look at the broader range of of of public fintech companies, you see companies like Sofi or New Bank, a firm to some extent that have a a business model that's closer to to ours and have been performing well in the public market. So we will try to sort of emulate their success. >> And I'm curious about what you think this next wave of fintech looks like because we we had the Zerp era of fintech and when then we had the sort of the reckoning. I I am curious to see where the sector goes from here. Where do you see these online lending products, buy now pay later and some of these newer uh agentic AI or agentic commerce I guess um categories where do you see all this going? Yeah, I think the the most successful fintech companies of this this new generation new crop of of fintech um really manages to deliver more of a full uh banking and credit solution to consumers. Um, most consumers don't want to have s of eight different financial apps and have to juggle uh between them and and have their data disseminated into a lot of the different apps and and companies. um companies that like upgrade uh I think have have sort of understood this and and really are trying to deliver a full suite of banking and credit services and really become this of primary relationship uh that uh the sort of financial partners that that knows you and and and can can be there when you need it and and really beh >> you know you say full suite of of banking products and it's it's something that we've heard from all the other fintech companies out Like you said, it's a crowded market. There's eight other apps that people can go to. How do you actually differentiate yourself with companies that literally seem to have that same mission? Full suite of banking and and credit card products. >> Yeah, I mean it might be a mission in terms of of execution. I think I think upgrade is further along. Uh so we we have like six different ma major products including auto loans, personal loans, BNPL. I mean just just these three. there's no other fintech company that delivers on on on these three uh different different dimensions and then there's there's a lot of product innovation. I mean to your point Agentic finance uh is coming fast and I think upgrade is at the forefront of of that innovation. >> Great. Well, Renault, thank you so much for coming on the show. That is Granola Leon, the co-founder and CEO of Upgrade here on TITV. Okay. We have talked a little bit on this show about how health care is turning into a tale of two cities as tech gets more advanced. The first is the traditional health care system covered by insurance and the second is the tech enabled private healthcare category with new therapies and consumer gadgets that are everywhere nowadays. I want to bring on a founder who is trying to build a bridge between these two camps. Senita Moanti is the co-founder and CEO of Vibrant. Senita, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. >> Thanks so much. It's wonderful to be here. Appreciate you having me on. >> So, I want to talk about your company. We're going to get there in a second, but you were at this conference last week, the Doc Conference, and we had the co-founders of the conference, John and Jordan, on the show prior to the conference having started, and they told us all about the debate that was going to kick off the festivities, whether or not AI was going to replace doctors, what that would even look like. The conference, of course, was multiple days long. tell us about what your takeaways were from that event, what you learned, and then we'll talk about your business specifically. >> Great. Doc was a tremendous gathering of thought leaders from all these different intersections. Um it was a mix of leaders in research really pushing the field forward on cutting edge diagnostics and um an understanding of personalized medicine. It was leaders in technology um you know some of the top funders. And when you bring these people together and you're talking about you know really what the frontiers of the space are was it was a truly amazing conversation. I think um you know some of the themes that came up were obviously what um what Jordan and John mentioned about uh will AI replace doctors? What is the role of AI? What is the role of doctors as >> what was the answer? I mean what what was the who won the debate I guess? Well, you know, it was it was a great debate because not only did you have humans, you had Reed Hoffman um and uh and and Neil Periq on one side and then you had Anita Kanan and Mike Kger of Enthropic and Instagram on the other side. And then along with the humans, you also had two um AIs that were trained on uh the the transcripts and and coming up with their own perspective. And ultimately um AI kind of won. >> AI won. Okay. But um well AI both won the uh won the debate but also um it's really about time scales. I think it's not a question of you know like if it will happen there there is there is super intelligence coming that will take some time to get here but it might be decades right so a lot of the conversation was around it's not just um it's it's not about AI or humans it's not AI or doctors it's actually about how these things come together what does it look like in the interim obviously in places where there are no doctors AI trumps it you have access for people millions billions of people who otherwise may not have access to great And that's uh an amazing you know breakthrough for humanity. Um and then you also have the ability for AI to supercharge and and really um help doctors become better professionals. And you know there's a lot of research that was discussed um about how uh recently there were studies around doctors uh you know comparing AI AI plus doctors and doctors and in many cases AI standalone actually won. But you know when you break into the nuance of what's actually happening in some of this research is that these doctors don't yet know how to use AI and that there is you know a a middle ground of training people really well of understanding how to prompt of understanding how to get things out of AI which >> was there any conversation I'm curious you mentioned how to train doctors on it was there any conversation about how medical education needs to change or how it's changing already to teach them how to use these tools >> you know there was a little bit of that that came up obviously a lot of doctors and clinicians were in attendance and I think there's just a wide ranging feeling that there has to be a shift in education, there has to be a shift in competency development around how to use AI. Um I don't know that there was a clear answer of how that's happening yet. But um you know it's it's obvious that uh doctors everywhere from you know people who are just entering the field to experienced doctors are currently using all sorts of AI whether that's open evidence or chat GPT or very specific clinical um examples. Uh and so I think people are rapidly reskilling in the middle of this platform shift. >> Right. Tell us about the business that you're building at Vibrant. >> Of course. So Vibrant is an AI native operating system built for personalized medicine practices. Now what does that mean? We have this intersection happening as you mentioned between the traditional medical system and then the new emerging kind of datarich more personalized shadow system that's happening you know with this explosion of consumerbased data of diagnostics of all of this stuff that's happening outside of the realm of billable care and you have patients who are trying to kind of self-manage between the two and now a rising group of clinicians who are trying to self-manage between the two. really we're starting with a mix of functional integrative longevity doctors but you know we see these doctors as shaping the future of what modern medical practice will look like especially in the primary care and primary care adjacent settings. So we've built an AI native um intelligence system that includes the EHR as the system of record but also layers of intelligence on top of that that you know imagine if you were to design one of these things in 2025 which is you know when we've gotten the benefit of building things you were to integrate you know the the documentation flows that are AI native the clinical decision support that's AI native um all of this into a smooth flow so that as a doctor you really feel like technology is being wrapped around you rather than you trying to fight with it to get your job done. >> We had Christina Far, who I know is a good friend of yours on the show LA last week, maybe two weeks ago. Uh, one of the things that she mentioned is this idea, a scenario really, where a patient comes to a doctor and they've got these gadgets they're using to help them guide their own uh treatments, their own uh, you know, therapies that they're taking. And then you also have all of these uh, you know, drugs that you can get over the counter. Now, sometime I'm, you know, not necessarily drugs, but I'm talking uh peptides and and different types of concoctions and stuff like that. And the doctor doesn't actually know what the patient is taking anymore because the patient, you know, obviously uh they they can do whatever they want. Is your startup helping to allow the doctor to take advantage of that data, the data that sometimes is on their finger now? >> Exactly. That's exactly it. So now what if you had this whole stream not only of wearables but you know you have information coming from your phone and and other so many other digital biomarkers that we're we're creating these days as patients. What if it was really easy to just connect all of that into one place and have that system of record include this total perspective of who you are as a patient um and and have your doctor be able to see that. So, you know, that's really what we're building is this is is a way to create a perfect context engine on a patient and so the doctor can have that as a means to understand, you know, what's going on with this patient. And then I think the other piece that we're really unlocking is not just being tied to billable care but also cashbased care, hybrid care in many senses because so many of these interesting therapies um you know a lot of this was talked about at doc but there's so much on the frontier that has so much promise and and you know the evidence is building but it's not quite there yet. But, you know, that should kind of be up to a patient in terms of how they think about their risk tolerance of wanting to try these things, of wanting to be able to access some of what we know is likely to work, but is still taking time. And then, you know, the real promise here is can we get better data faster instead of taking years to get to answers of what isn't working. If we have a better system that's connecting up all these data points and understanding what's working for whom, I think we can fast track that cycle of understanding, you know, which treatments are and aren't worth really um pushing more broadly. >> Great. Well, Senita, thank you so much for coming on the show. That is Senita Mahanti, the co-founder and CEO of Vibrant here on TITV. Well, that does it for today's show. A reminder that we are on this stream Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. I want to thank Amazon Web Services who was our presenting sponsor for this production. And I want to thank you for tuning in. We really do appreciate your viewership. I'm already excited for our next show tomorrow. Have a great rest of your Monday. Bye-bye for now.