Bob Safian
Bob Safian is the host of Masters of Scale: Rapid Response and editor-at-large at Masters of Scale. He is also the founder of The Flux Group and a former editor-in-chief of Fast Company, known for interviewing founders and executives on business, technology, innovation, and company-building in fast-changing markets.
The US and China Are Now Six Months Apart in AI
Eric Schmidt says the US and China are now about six months apart in AI, narrowing a gap he once put at one or two years. In a live Masters of Scale Summit interview, the former Google chief argues that China has made ground through cheaper models, abundant power and faster deployment, while the US retains advantages in frontier performance, talent and capital. His scorecard ties the two countries, but Schmidt says the contest need not be zero-sum—and warns that US restrictions on foreign researchers risk weakening its own position.
IBM Bets AI Value Will Come From Orchestration, Not Model Size
IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna argues that the next phase of enterprise AI will be defined less by ever-larger foundation models than by using the right model and infrastructure for each task. Speaking with Masters of Scale host Bob Safian, Krishna says model switching will become easier, AI compute costs are likely to rise, and companies should move from pilots to scaled use cases while questioning the economics of the broader AI buildout. He also frames IBM’s $10bn quantum push as a bid to get ahead of the next hard technology curve.