Arya Bolurfrushan is the Founder and CEO of Applied AI, 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.Before founding Applied AI, Arya developed his conviction during a Covid quarantine in the UAE, where time alone led him to conclude that AI would be the most significant shift in...
Arya Bolurfrushan is the Founder and CEO of Applied AI, 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.
Before founding Applied AI, Arya developed his conviction during a Covid quarantine in the UAE, where time alone led him to conclude that AI would be the most significant shift in human productivity since hydrocarbons.
He 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
04:04 - Raising Before ChatGPT Was Cool
05:46 - The COVID Quarantine Epiphany
10:30 - From Oil to Electricity: Why Applied AI is Like General Electric
15:29 - Opus: Building the Machine That Builds Machines
22:17 - Hiring Less Than 1% of Applicants & Building an AI-Native Team
25:15 - Business Process Re-Engineering: Adding Humans to AI-Native Workflows
30:41 - The Large Work Model: Mapping 2.7 Million Business Processes
33:27 - Sharing Productivity Gains with Labour: Lessons from Das Kapital
39:51 - The $2 Trillion Investor Who Believes Humans Will Have No Work
44:57 - Building for His Son's Future in a World Where AI is Always Smartest
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