Steeve Morin

Founder & CEO, ZML · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveengineer@steeve ↗LinkedIn ↗zml.ai ↗

Steeve Morin is the founder and CEO of ZML, an open-source AI inference engine. He previously served as VP of Engineering at Zenly and created boot2docker.

57statements → 32claims → 15claims resolved → 40%fully supported → 3.72/5average certainty → 2.84/5average debate potential → 4.1/5argument clarity · the sources →

6 supported 4 partly supported 5 contradicted 4 not yet assessed 13 not checkable as stated how the 32 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

12 predictions · 20 assertions · 12 opinions · 12 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 32 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 15 are resolved, 4 are not yet assessed, and 13 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Steeve argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Morin: Nvidia Blackwell chip shipments are delayed and orders are canceled
“Blackwell is late and orders are getting canceled.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 23:08 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Morin: GPUs cannot deliver latent space AI reasoning at scale
“Fundamentally, GPUs cannot deliver, deliver this, plain and simple at scale.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 31:24 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
50% certainty 4
0% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.1 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4 · precision 3.8 · compression 3.5

answered every one of 45 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

251 words/min while actually speaking · 33.8 um and uh per 1k words · 19.8 false starts per 1k · 28.5% of pauses land inside a clause

English is their second language (first language: French). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 11,324 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Steeve Morin said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Morin: Nvidia is far from the most efficient AI hardware platform
“But it's by far not the most efficient platform. And arguably, even in terms of software, it's not the best software platform.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 6:08 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Morin: The market bubble around Nvidia H100 GPUs will burst
“There's going to be a need for inference. Very hard to say whether it will be worth, you know, everybody's money to do it on H 100. That is a bubble that I think will blow some time.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 6:44 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Morin: GPUs are a clever workaround, not natively built for AI
“GPUs are, you know, are a good trick for AI, but they're not built for AI.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 11:13 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2025
Morin: AI chip oversupply will lead to GPUs selling at 30% value
“I very much worry there will be an oversupply of these chips. The problem is, is that, you know, remember, the chips are the collateral. So, you know, somewhere, you know, in the US or whatever, there's going to be a data center with like a thousand GPUs that …”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 24:31 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Contradicted
Morin: GPUs cannot deliver latent space AI reasoning at scale
“Fundamentally, GPUs cannot deliver, deliver this, plain and simple at scale.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 31:24 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Morin: Nvidia may lose market dominance in AI inference and training
“I think that there's a shot that they don't.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 35:25 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Morin: Google TPUs have more mature software and compute than Nvidia
“But AMD can do training, but it's also, but in terms of maturity, the, by far the most mature software and compute is TPUs, and then it's Nvidia.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 44:10 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Morin: Stargate data center is inefficient vertical scaling for AI
“It is a vertical scaling. And as you know, my days are spent on efficiency. So I look at these things as being like, all right, this is a bigger, you know, this is an American car of AI. It's big. It consumes a lot of gas, but ultimately, you know, it's not a …”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 1:12:11 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2030
Morin predicts AI compute will be 95% inference within five years
“In five years, I would say 95% inference, five percent training.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 0:15 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Morin: Google is the sleeping giant of the AI race
“Google has, like, you know, Android, Google Docs, Whatever, they have everything, they can sprinkle everywhere. This is the sleeping giant in my mind.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 0:24 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Morin: Running standalone AI model weights will eventually become obsolete
“Models in the sense of, you know, getting, you know, weights and running them is something that is ultimately going away because you know, in favor of like full blown backends, right? You feel like you're talking to a model, but ultimately you're talking to an…”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 2:41 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Contradicted
Morin: Switching from Nvidia to AMD offers 4x spend efficiency
“A simple example is if you know, switch from Nvidia to AMD on a seven TB model, you can get four times better efficiency, right? In terms of spend.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 3:44 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
Morin: Nvidia H100 costs 5x A100 price for 2x inference speed
“H 100 comes along and inference is it's worth five times the price. And it may be runs twice in terms of performance on inference. That is on training. It's a lot better, but on inference, it's like maybe twice as fast when it actually, when it came out, it ra…”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 7:20 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Morin: AI agents and reasoning will disrupt Nvidia's chip dominance
“Ultimately, the two things that could really, very much shake the industry, the chip industry, in my opinion, is our agents and reasoning.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 8:23 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
Morin: Nvidia Blackwell chips suffered surface bending causing cooling issues
“For Blackwell, they assembled two chips. But the surface was so big that the chip started to, you know , wave, like, I don't know the English word, but like, you know, started to bend a bit, which further perpetuated the problem because it then didn't make con…”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 10:32 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Morin: Nvidia won AI training via Mellanox interconnects, not raw compute
“The reason probably Nvidia won, at least in the training space, is because of Mellanox, right? Not because of the raw compute.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 13:17 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
Morin details profit margins across TSMC, Nvidia, and cloud providers
“Nvidia, like a TSMC sells you at 60% margin. Nvidia sells you at, you know, 90% margin. And on top of that, there's Amazon that takes, let's say a 30% margin.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 15:30 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morin: Google TPUs lack commercial success outside of Google
“They are very much successful inside of Google, but not much outside of Google, let's say, right?”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 16:21 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Morin: Cloud compute hoarding creates fake AI GPU scarcity
“So in, in the case of, you know, Amazon or Google, that would be buying reserved compute, which you're not going to use because if you buy it on demand, you will get tremendously ripped off. So that creates this like face scarcity of compute because that peopl…”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 22:35 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Morin: Nvidia Blackwell chip shipments are delayed and orders are canceled
“Blackwell is late and orders are getting canceled.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 23:08 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Morin: Nvidia will remain dominant in AI inference due to availability
“The thing is these chips are on the market. They're here. I can, you know, out tab on Chrome and get one. That is something that, you know, I don't take lightly. Availability that is right. So I think Nvidia is used to stay at least if not for the H-one hundre…”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 25:33 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morin: Microsoft's AMD chip deployments made OpenAI inference profitable
“Microsoft comes along and buys it all, makes, by the way, OpenAI, or at least on the inference side, puts OpenAI in the green because of the efficiency gains.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 39:44 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Morin: Being 7x better on cost won't get customers off Nvidia
“I know for a fact that being seven times better and whatever, take whatever metric you want. Whether it's spend, whether it's whatever. It's not enough to get people to switch. People will choose nothing over something.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 40:59 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Contradicted
Morin: Doubling GPUs in AI inference yields only 10% performance gain
“If you go from one GPU to two, you don't get twice the performance. Maybe you get 10% better performance. Yeah, that's the dirty secret nobody talks about. I'm talking inference, right? So, so you go from, let's say, a hundred to a 110 by doubling the amount o…”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 45:22 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Show 24statements(33 left)

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with H Feb 24, 2025 57m
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