Todd Smith

Co-Founder & CEO, TAHO · 1 appearance on the record.

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Todd Smith is the co-founder and CEO of TAHO, which develops high-performance computing infrastructure software to optimize hardware efficiency and reduce energy use for AI workloads. Previously, he spent two decades scaling infrastructure and engineering teams at Docker, Snap, and Facebook.

9statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.89/5average certainty → 2.44/5average debate potential →

0 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 assertions · 3 opinions · 4 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names 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 Todd argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Todd Smith on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said9 Episodes1

Everything Todd Smith said on Innovators & Investors that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Partly supported

Smith: Data center compute hardware sits idle roughly 40% of the time

“You find that that entire compute stack in that whole facility on average is really only being used approximately 54% of the time, meaning About 40% of the time, all of that hardware is sitting in an idle state.”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 10:49 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Opinion

Smith: Legacy orchestration layers bottleneck modern GPUs like Nvidia H100s

“Reality is whether you have an older stack or if you have even maybe the newest NVIDIA's newest H 100 in your environment, regardless of what they are, they're being choked out a little bit by these old world or these legacy orchestration and scheduling layers…”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 12:19 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Insight

Smith: Founders Should Demand Real-Time Feedback During the First Pitch

“It's important to hold them accountable to that time. We're both donating our time to this discussion, holding them accountable to provide you some real feedback, even in the moment if you can do it, it's, it, you're better off pushing yourself to do it and le…”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 31:56 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Insight

Todd Smith: Infrastructure engineers avoid new tech to protect vesting equity

“This product, right this product is very attractive, or more attractive, easier to sell from a top-down perspective today. It's new tech. It's brand new tech that so nobody is an expert leveraging this tech yet, and there's a lot of experts out there that are …”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 34:16 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Opinion

Smith: Hardware manufacturers cannot keep up with high-performance computing demands

“We see a lot of those hardware manufacturers of GPU and other data center hardware just blazing a trail today. we're really happy that they're building better solutions, but the reality is they can't keep up with high performance computing needs today.”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 1:19 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Smith: TAHO software unlocks existing hardware without requiring new data centers

“All of those high performance computing companies would be able to leverage this product, this Tahoe, the software infrastructure product, in order to really unleash the capabilities of their existing hardware without having to go get new hardware or even buil…”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 6:09 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Insight

Smith: Compute infrastructure unlocks top-line revenue whereas BI merely targets bottom-line costs

“The BI tool is a bottom line driver. Whereas when you provide more compute capabilities to a company, that's a that's a productivity and top line driver. It can be a bottom line driver because it can drive for efficiencies on the, on those infrastructure cost …”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 18:05 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Insight

Smith: Founders Need 50 to 75 Pitches Before Getting Good

“They shared, hey, look, you know, you're going to pitch anywhere between like a hundred, you know, a 150 times, like, and you're not going to get good at it until you're like halfway there. And I think that that's pretty accurate.”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 29:57 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Opinion

Todd Smith: Fearlessness Toward Failure Is Unique to US Founders

“Leverage that leverage that American fortitude that's really unique to American founders, to U S based founders. And that is Hey we don't fear failure. We just we just learn from it, move forward.”

Todd Smith Apr 29, 2025 ▶ 40:10 Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructure

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Harnessing High-Performance Computing: Todd Smith’s Vision for OpnBook’s TAHO Infrastructu	Apr 29, 2025	34m

Todd Smith

The record, in short

How they sound: not measured why? →

Appearances (1)

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