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🪏 Optionality or Bust: Why the Smartest Infra Teams Are Going Stack-Agnostic to Survive

Standardization is dead. Optionality is the new operating principle.

In AI infrastructure, where supply chains are strained and workloads diversify weekly, infra teams aren’t just deploying systems—they’re building for agility. The teams winning today aren’t the most resourced—they’re the most adaptable. That’s why “stack-agnostic” is quickly becoming the new gold standard.

Why Optionality Matters More Than Ever

GenAI has made infra more critical—and more fragmented—than ever. Each model brings new demands:

• Multimodal needs more memory.

• RAG craves low latency.

• Training eats power and cooling.

Meanwhile:

• GPUs are scarce.

• Cloud lock-in is risky.

• Energy caps are real.

And here’s the kicker: the landscape changes year over year.
Twelve months ago, everyone was talking about ChatGPT as an interface. Now it’s infrastructure—embedded into pipelines, agents, and business workflows. What worked last May might be irrelevant this October.

Teams that aren’t building for choice are building for fragility.
Stack-agnostic infrastructure—across silicon, cloud, and orchestration—is how you stay flexible when the future rewrites itself.

The Leaders Building for Flex

At our past AI INFRA SUMMIT, the blueprint was loud and clear:

• Inflection AI is running across Intel, AMD, and Nvidia chipsets without friction.

• Supermicro is pushing modular servers that swap accelerators fast.

• Microsoft + AMD are proving ROCm is production-ready for inference and training.

• Rapt.AI is routing workloads based on real-time availability—not fixed contracts.

This isn’t optionality for optics. It’s survival engineering.

What Stack-Agnostic Really Means

• Multi-chip orchestration across ROCm, CUDA, and beyond.

• Cloud-neutral pipelines that target whichever region or provider is viable.

• Smart DCIM tools balancing energy, latency, and throughput in real time.

• Infra GTM built to avoid lock-in and pre-sell modular flexibility.

This is the future: composable, dynamic, and ready to pivot. Infra’s no longer just about capacity. It’s about control.

The orgs shipping fast in 2025? They aren’t locked in. They’re locked on. Agility is now the real uptime metric. Stack-agnostic teams win because they never have to wait.

✅Your Next Moves

• Audit vendor lock-in. If a supply shift would stall you, fix it.

• Abstract your stack. Infra needs layers that shield your ops from volatility.

• Train for diversity. Your team needs fluency across ROCm, CUDA, Triton, and more.

• Rethink procurement. If your contracts block flexibility, your strategy’s already stale.

Optionality isn’t a buzzword. It’s your risk reducer, scale enabler, and competitive edge. In a world that won’t sit still, infra can’t either.

Go stack-agnostic—or get stuck.

// CXO Insights: AI for Retail, Atlanta

From Vision to Execution: How AI Is Transforming Retail Today

The CXO Roadshow in Atlanta brought together a powerhouse lineup of retail innovators and technology leaders to explore how AI is reshaping the industry from the inside out. With voices from Supermicro, NVIDIA, Walmart, Mondelez, Campbell Soup, eBay, and T-Mobile, the event spotlighted real-world strategies for deploying AI across merchandising, supply chain, personalization, and customer experience. The day kicked off with a deep dive into AI infrastructure from Supermicro and NVIDIA, showcasing how purpose-built systems—from GenAI agents to edge-optimized hardware—are turning retail’s biggest challenges into competitive advantages.

Fireside chats revealed how companies like Campbell’s are transforming 156 years of tradition through predictive AI, automating massive data ingestion pipelines, and delivering 400% ROI on rapid sprints. The panel with leaders from Walmart, Mondelez, and eBay emphasized the importance of human-centric adoption—equipping associates, merchants, and engineers with tools that amplify productivity and enable faster, smarter decisions. Whether it was Walmart’s GenAI-powered merchandising or eBay’s instant product listings from a photo, the message was clear: AI is not a futuristic add-on—it’s a business-critical capability unlocking new levels of agility, efficiency, and growth.

//WHAT’S NEXT

💵Bay Area Startups Collectively Secured $891M this week

$891 went to Bay Area startups this week, with just two megadeals - $230M to fintech (Addepar) and $120M to foodtech (Owner.com). Pureplay AI companies garnered just $14M, while vertical AI received the bulk of the fundings. At the halfway point, that brings the May-to-date total to $2.91B, well below the mid-point of the month in 2024.

IPO Watch: After the tariff announcements, several tech companies who were moving towards an IPO (e.g.,Chime) shied away. This week, Etoro (not an SV company but a datapoint nonetheless) moved forward with its IPO, pricing above its projected range and then rising nearly 30% in its first day of trading, a positive sign for the IPO market. Hinge Health and Omada Health have now filed for their IPOs, and Chime has returned to the table and is moving forward with theirs. 2025 may yet see a return of the IPO market as an exit option, for the first time since 2022.

If you're early in your startup journey, you'll want to tune into this month's episode of Legal Foundations, next Wednesday, May 21 at noon, with Bob Karr and Roger Royse. This is part 2 of 12 in our series that covers the legal essentials to building a startup. This month's episode covers capitalization, including issuance of shares, vesting, IP and early investment. Sign up here.

Follow us on LinkedIn to stay on top of what's happening in 2025 in startup fundings, M&A and IPOs, VC fundraising plus new executive hires & investor moves.

Early Stage:

• Samaya AI closed a $43.5M Series A, the expert AI platform for financial services, enabling customers to create personalized teams of AI agents that supercharge financial research, analysis and decision making.

• LTZ Therapeutics closed a $40M Series A, an immunotherapy-focused biotech company pursuing the development of novel therapies to improve clinical outcomes in patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases.

• Cognichip closed a $33M seed round, developing the world’s first Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®) to reimagine chip design.

• Korl closed a $5M seed round, an AI-powered platform that helps sales and customer success teams demonstrate their product’s value to every customer—at every stage of their journey.

• ThriveAI closed a $1.2M pre-seed round, building the world's first AI Junior Product Manager a purpose-built teammate trained to think and operate like a real PM.

Growth Stage:

• Addepar closed a $230M Series G, a global technology and data company that helps investment professionals provide the most informed, precise guidance for their clients.

• Owner.com closed a $120M Series C, makes online growth easy for restaurants and helps local restaurants compete — and win against — big national brands.

• Sprinter Health closed a $55M Series B, a mobile healthcare provider that combines technology and a full-stack medical practice to reimagine care at home.

• TurbineOne closed a $36M Series B, delivers AI for the frontlines through our Frontline Perception System (FPS) delivers real-time decision-making support to America’s warfighters.

• Arkestro closed a $36M Series B, Predictive Procurement Platform accelerates enterprise spend transformation to unlock trapped savings and reduce risk, enabling teams to influence significantly more spend.

Women x AI @ AI INFRA SUMMIT

By Reut Lazo, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Women x AI

AI INFRA SUMMIT started on a high note with the Women’s Breakfast by WEKA —an incredible way to kick things off! Huge thanks to Lauren Vaccarello, Jessica Audette, CSA, CSSM and Sonam Kanungo for making it such a memorable and empowering start.

The session focused on leveraging AI and data infrastructure to drive innovation, particularly in healthcare and climate change. The panel focused on optimizing AI model training, reducing costs, and achieving significant improvements in processing speed. They highlighted challenges such as balancing on-prem and cloud infrastructure, managing large data volumes, and navigating funding constraints. Emphasis was placed on benchmarking GPU usage, fostering collaboration between researchers and tech teams, and empowering women in tech by building confidence, speaking up, and strategically choosing opportunities.

The panel's Leadershipand career advice really resonated with me:

• Women in AI stressed the importance of being strategic about career choices, actively seeking leadership opportunities, and not relying solely on hard work to be noticed.

• Building confidence and clear communication were highlighted as essential skills, especially when navigating male-dominated fields.

• Encouraged women to embrace non-linear career paths and leverage unique problem-solving skills to establish their professional identity.

About Women X AI (WxAI) We are global platform dedicated to celebrating and empowering women in the dynamic world of Artificial Intelligence. Our mission is to build a vibrant community that fosters growth, collaboration, and innovation by providing resources, networking opportunities, and engaging programming. WxAI serves women from diverse backgrounds and levels of experience in AI, creating a supportive space for professional development and connection.

Join WxA on LinkedIn and our website to become part of this inspiring community. You can get involved by joining our LinkedIn groups, attending or speaking at our events, leading our Social Saturday sessions, signing up for our membership (it's free) or nominating yourself or other women for our AI Spotlight.

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Our mission is to provide an insider's view of Silicon Valley's undercurrents – insights often overlooked by mainstream sources. While many newsletters offer broad market overviews, we focus on delivering a unique, in-depth understanding of the local ecosystem. We share behind-the-scenes conversations, introduce key players we meet at events, and offer exclusive insights.

Your feedback is crucial in helping us refine our content and maintain the newsletter's value for you and your fellow readers. We welcome your suggestions on how we can improve our offering. [email protected] 

Logan Lemery
Head of Content // Team Ignite

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