The Rise of Sovereign AI and Global AI Innovation in a World of US Protectionism // MLOps Podcast #331 with Frank Meehan, Founder and CEO of Frontier One AI.

Join the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinIn

Get the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletter

// Abstract

“The awakening of every single country is that they have to control their AI intelligence and not outsource their data" - Jensen Huang. Sovereign AI is rapidly becoming a fundamental national utility, much like defense, energy or telecoms.

Nations worldwide recognize that AI sovereignty—having control over your AI infrastructure, data, and models—is essential for economic progress, security, and especially independence - especially when the US is pushing protectionism and trying to prevent global AI innovation. Of course this has the opposite effect - DeepSeek created by a Hedge Fund in China; India building the world's largest AI data centre (3 GW), and global software teams scaling, learning and building faster than ever before.

However most countries lack the talent, financing and experience to implement Sovereign AI for their requirements - and it is our belief at Frontier One, that one of the biggest markets for AI applications, cloud services and GPUs will be global governments. We see it already - with $10B of GPUs in 2024 bought directly by governments - and it's rapidly expanding. We will talk about what Sovereign AI is - both infrastructure and software details / why it is crucial for a nation / how to get involved as part of the MLOps community.

// Bio

Co-Founder of Frontier One - building Sovereign AI Factories and Cloud software for global markets.

Frank is a 2X CEO | 2X CMO (with 2X exits + 1 IPO NYSE), Board Director (Spotify, Siri) and Investor (SparkLabs Group) with 20+ years of experience in creating and growing leading brands, products and companies.

Chair of Improvability, automating due diligence and reporting for corporates, foundations and Governments with AI.

Co-founder and partner at SparkLabs Group - investors in OpenAI, Anthropic, 88 Rising, Discord, Animoca, Andela, Vectara, Kneron, Messari, Lifesum + 400 companies in our portfolio. Investment Committee and LP at SparkLabs Cultiv8 with 56 investments in consumer food and regenerative agriculture companies.

Co-founder and CMO - later CEO - of Equilibrium AI (Singapore), building it to one of the leading ESG and Carbon data management platforms globally. Equilibrium was acquired by FiscalNote in 2021, where he joined the senior leadership team, running the ESG business globally, and helping the company IPO in 2022 on the NYSE at $1.1B valuation.

Board director at Spotify (2009-2012); Siri (2009-2010 exited to Apple); Lifesum (leading AI health app with 50 million users), seed investor in 88 Rising (Asia’s leading independent music label); CEO/CMO and co-founder at INQ Mobile (mobile internet pioneer); and Global Director for devices and products at 3 Mobile.

Started as a software developer with Ericsson Mobile in Sweden, after graduating from KTH in Stockholm and the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, and Master of Science in Fluid Mechanics.

// Related Links

https://www.frontierone.ai/ and

https://www.sparklabsgroup.com

~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~

Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExplore

Join our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]

Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)]

Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]

MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]

Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkm

Connect with Frank on LinkedIn: /frankmeehan/

Thanks to MLflow for supporting this episode — the platform helping teams track, manage, and deploy ML and GenAI projects with ease. Try it free at mlflow.org.

What if AI could build and maintain your software—like a co-worker who never forgets state? In this episode, Jiquan Ngiam chats with Demetrios about agents that actually do the work: parsing emails, updating spreadsheets, and reshaping how we design software itself. Less hype, more hands-on AI—tune in for a glimpse at the future of truly personalized computing.

// Bio

Jiquan Ngiam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lutra AI, with deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning. He was previously at Google Brain, Coursera, and in the Stanford CS Ph.D. program advised by Andrew Ng. He helped develop the first online courses in Machine Learning, and is now building agentic AI systems that can complete tasks for us.

// Related Links

https://www.youtube.com/@LutraAI

#api #llm #lutra #costefficiency #latentspace ~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~

Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExplore

MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]

Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkm

Connect with Jiquan on LinkedIn: /jngiam/

Timestamps:

[00:00] Agents That Actually Do Work

[08:21] Building Tables With AI Help

[12:54] Guardrails for Smarter Code

[16:35 - 18:00] MLFlow Ad[18:30] What’s Next for MCP?

[23:23] AI as Your Data Conductor

[31:13] Rethinking AI + Data Stacks

[32:10] Sandbox Security, Real Risks

[40:48] Smarter Reviews, Powered by Use

[46:08] Cost vs. Quality in AI

[52:00] Podcast Editing Gets Creative

[56:27] Transparent UIs, Powered by AI

[01:00:28] Can AI Learn Good Taste?

[01:04:45] Peeking Into Wild AI Futures

Kai Wang joins the MLOps Community podcast LIVE to share how Uber built and scaled its ML platform, Michelangelo. From mission-critical models to tools for both beginners and experts, he walks us through Uber’s AI playbook—and teases plans to open-source parts of it.

// Bio

Kai Wang is the product lead of the AI platform team at Uber, overseeing Uber's internal end-to-end ML platform called Michelangelo that powers 100% Uber's business-critical ML use cases.

// Related Links

Uber GenAI: https://www.uber.com/blog/from-predictive-to-generative-ai/

#uber #podcast #ai #machinelearning

~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~

Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExplore

MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]

Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkm

Connect with Kai on LinkedIn: /kai-wang-67457318/

Timestamps:

[00:00] Rethinking AI Beyond ChatGPT

[04:01] How Devs Pick Their Tools

[08:25] Measuring Dev Speed Smartly

[10:14] Predictive Models at Uber

[13:11] When ML Strategy Shifts

[15:56] Smarter Uber Eats with AI

[19:29] Summarizing Feedback with ML

[23:27] GenAI That Users Notice

[27:19] Inference at Scale: Michelangelo

[32:26] Building Uber’s AI Studio

[33:50] Faster AI Agents, Less Pain

[39:21] Evaluating Models at Uber

[42:22] Why Uber Open-Sourced Machanjo

[44:32] What Fuels Uber’s AI Team