Rebuilding the Internet in the age of AI: Mahdi Yahya on Supercomputers and GPU Clouds

Mahdi Yahya is the founder of Ori, the operating system for AI factories - building the invisible layer between artificial intelligence and the physical world.With over 20 years in data centres and internet infrastructure, Mahdi explains how the “content internet” is evolving into the AI internet, why we’re building GPU megaclusters on land and underwater, and how compute itself is becoming modular, sovereign, and global.He also shares the lessons learned from scaling Ori, the people decisions that defined the company, and why the best founders make time to think instead of rushing for growth. As always, if you enjoy this episode, make sure to like and subscribe 🔔Chapters:(00:00) Intro(01:20) What’s changing under the internet’s surface(02:25) From the “content internet” to the AI internet(03:17) Supercomputers at unprecedented scale(05:28) Power math: kW → MW → GW(06:39) Mahdi’s path: data centres → theatre → storytelling(08:35) Filmmakers, craft & learning to see(11:01) Founding Ori: the connective tissue between apps & compute(12:42) Edge computing, CDNs, and why “edge” stalled(15:34) Betting on AI: training vs. inference, why it stuck(17:31) Why GPUs (really): parallelism & accelerated compute(20:24) GPU clouds: CapEx vs. OpEx for AI(22:41) What buyers actually need beyond “just GPUs”(25:34) Rethinking cloud for AI engineers(27:21) Modular cloud & sovereignty (31:55) NVIDIA’s lead, diversification & what’s next(34:55) Where the compute lives today (US → global)(36:13) Privacy, on-prem, and protecting interaction data(39:40) The 10% decisions(42:03) People bets, healthy disagreement & vision custody(47:51) Slow down to think: resisting the growth trap(50:27) Deep tech realities(52:28) “What was it all for?” ⭐ Listener Suggestion – Software of the Week: https://claude.ai👍 Why subscribe? If you sketch product ideas on napkins, obsess over infrastructure choices, or dream of building humane, high-performance teams, this channel is for you.🔔 Tap the bell so YouTube tells you the moment new episodes drop 🔔#gpu #mahdiyaya #techpodcast