Who’s Winning The AI Race? + Software’s Future — With Sridhar Ramaswamy

Sridhar Ramaswamy is the CEO of Snowflake. Ramaswamy joins Big Technology Podcast to break down the competitive dynamics in the AI race today, drawing from his experience working at Google and competing with it. We also cover the future of software, looking at whether AI will turn established software companies into "dumb backends." In the second half, we discuss “shadow AI” driving enterprise adoption from the bottom up, the risk of becoming a feature in someone else's platform, and why Chinese open-source models might actually be a net positive for the US. Hit play for a sharp, deeply informed conversation about where AI competition, enterprise software, and the future of work are heading. Chapters 0:00 - Introduction 1:41 - The state of the AI race 8:57 - Inside Google's crisis DNA 12:42 - Snowflake's OpenAI partnership and enterprise AI 19:48 - Is agentic AI real or just hype? 25:40 - What easy-to-build software means for moats 30:54 - Why the market is punishing software stocks 39:19 - Shadow AI and the open-source agent moment 48:48 - Big tech's grip on AI models loosening 53:49 - The US-China AI gap and open source --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscri...