RK

Rakesh Kumar

Things Rakesh Says on Podcasts

Where to Find Them

Rakesh Kumar has been a guest on Newt's World .

Recently: “Episode 1053: The Chip Age — How Semiconductors Became the World’s Most Powerful Resource” on Newt's World (October 2026).

What They Said

“At this point, because AI has become so good at programming, I don't think that CUDA is necessarily their moat or it's not a moat that will stand. At this point, I think their biggest moat is the amount of cash that they have.” — Rakesh Kumar, Newt's World

Newt Gingrich asked why Nvidia has built such a lead. Kumar traces it from being first to see that gaming chips suit AI, to its CUDA software lock-in, to today's war chest. He adds that Nvidia's decade-plus head start on its supply chain will be hard to copy.

Newt's World · 2026-10-18 Permalink → Listen →
Newt's World Around 40:41 into the episode
Rakesh Kumar

…concentrated in Asia. Semiconductors Became of all these different reasons, we find ourselves in a situation where the same chip, its different parts of the supply chain are dominated by different regions of the world, and they all have to come together in order to build this finished product.

Newt Gingrich

What is NVIDIA's Why have they built such a huge advantage?

Rakesh Kumar

…for your chips. And at some point, there is just so much software that has been written for your chips that nobody wants to move or port that software to someone else's chips. So their second biggest moat was the software. So they have this thing called CUDA, which essentially is a way to write programs for the chips, and that became their moat. So CUDA was their moat for next several years. At this point, Because AI has become so good at programming, I don't think that CUDA is necessarily their moat or it's not a moat that will stand. At this point, I think their biggest moat is the amount of cash that they have. Because they have so much money at hand, they can move faster and quicker than their competitors. They can invest in new technologies. They can move up the stack, focus not only on chips, but entire systems. And they have been doing it very successfully. And finally... We just talked about how complicated the supply chain is. They now have a decade or two head start over all their competitors in…

Newt Gingrich

Coming up, Rakesh discusses the chip rivalry between the United States and China. how Beijing has tried to catch up, and whether America's strategy of cutting China off is working. As you watch China approach this whole area, and you watched our various efforts, what's your sense of the…

Rakesh Kumar

So let's... take this as two separate questions. One is, what would be the new normal? Would we see more competitors than US and China? And second, we can talk about what US and Chip Age doing correctly, in my opinion, and where they need to do things differently. So I do agree with you that…

Newt Gingrich

You are right in the middle of one of the most amazing and most important stories in the history of the human race. The scale of change that has been brought about since, say, 1960 is unbelievable. And I think accelerating. When you look back on all this with The chip age, as you describe it, as…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode
“I don't mind bubbles. I know bubbles have a negative connotation, but bubbles are not a bad thing as long as there is clear physical build-out that happens accompanying bubbles that helps the society. … Today, more than half of UK's railway network is still from those days of railway mania.” — Rakesh Kumar, Newt's World

Asked whether AI is a break point, the author of a book on the history of chips points to the 1840s railway mania and the fiber laid during the dot-com boom. What worries him is the debt financing AI, if it turns out to have exposure to public banks.

Newt's World · 2026-10-18 Permalink → Listen →
Newt's World Around 45:05 into the episode
Rakesh Kumar

…ships? We will see how this plays out, but this is a highly consequential competition here because some of the most strategic technologies of the world AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, renewable energy, who wins these races will depend critically on who owns the world's most advanced ships.

Newt Gingrich

…And I think accelerating. When you look back on all this with The chip age, as you describe it, as your book is entitled. Do you think we're at a break point where artificial intelligence is a dramatic difference, or do you think this is just an acceleration of a momentum that was already underway?

Rakesh Kumar

…large quantum jumps in the society's productivity. And one of the reasons is that those who are really good with using these technologies get benefits disproportionately and those who get left out really get left out. So when you average it over the entire society, the benefits aren't as large. So we will see what is the impact that this has on society. society's productivity. The way I see it, I don't mind bubbles. I know bubbles have a negative connotation, but bubbles are not a bad thing as long as there is clear physical build-out that happens accompanying bubbles that helps the society. To give you an example, one of the well-known bubbles was in 1840s. It was called Railway Mania. This was in the UK where railways were relatively new back then and its boosters were started talking about how wonderful this new thing is. And then people, even retail investors, started putting their money into railway shares. And at some point, there was so much speculation that happened around…

Newt Gingrich

Amazing. Listen, you have a remarkable knowledge about one of the most important areas of our generation. So, Rakesh, I want to thank you for joining me. Your new book, The Chip Age, How Semiconductors Became the World’s Most Powerful Resource, is available wherever books are sold starting October…

Rakesh Kumar

Thank you for inviting me. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Newt Gingrich

Thank you to my guest, Rakesh Kumar. Newt's World is produced by Gingrich360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying Newt's World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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