AI Foundry lab · Studio 45, San Francisco · Friday 16 October 2026

AI Foundry lab, 16 October 2026: who came, and what we did

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Seven visitors joined Roman and Tanya at the lab on Friday afternoon: a tour of the ET-SoC-1 cards, a teardown at the bench and a look inside the flasher box. By evening a thermal camera was streaming the back of aifoundry2's card to a public page.

●Live thermal streamNew to the lab? Start here

7
visitors
with our hosts, Roman and Tanya
6½ h
at the lab
noon to 6:30 in the evening
41–47 °C
back of aifoundry2's card
on the camera, live that evening
25 fps
thermal video
public: anyone with the link
Roman holds a card while Tanya, Howie and Laura look on, beside the lab's shelves of hardware
The tour: Roman (right) shows a card to Tanya, Howie and Laura.

Seven visitors and two hosts

In the order they arrived, after our hosts. Each card says who they are, how we met, and what they did on Friday.

  1. Roman Shaposhnik

    Co-founder of Ainekko · runs the lab

    Background
    Ainekko bought Esperanto's chip IP in 2025 and is opening it up as AI Foundry. Before: Sun, Yahoo, Cloudera and Pivotal; founder of Apache Bigtop; founding CTO of ZEDEDA.
    How we met
    I messaged Roman here on Discord in mid-September and visited the lab the next day. I've been working on the cards ever since.
    Friday
    Gave the tour. The next step for the camera's card, in Roman's words: firmware experiments.

  2. Tanya Dadasheva

    Co-founder and CEO of Ainekko

    Background
    Before Ainekko, an investor at Almaz Capital, which backed Esperanto.
    How we met
    Over lunch at the lab in September, on my first visit.
    Friday
    Opened the flasher box: the hand-held programmers that can reflash a card's firmware.

  3. Howie

    Analyst at SemiAnalysis

    Background
    Covers fab hardware and chip manufacturing at SemiAnalysis.
    How we met
    Dylan Patel introduced us in early October. Friday was our first meeting in person.
    Friday
    Opened an OCP server sled on the tour, then took a phone apart at the bench on the lab's hot plate. Talked through how a working card could be opened so a camera sees the die itself.

  4. Laura Bocek

    Founder of Station House

    Background
    Station House does open, collaborative AI research. Before: Cerberus Ventures and Toyota Research Institute.
    How we met
    At South Park Commons' new-member orientation in October. Laura joined my Monday energy-efficient training group the same day, and Laura's entries to my MNIST speedrun have been merged since.
    Friday
    First runs on a card, aifoundry3 card 0: the MNIST challenge. Next: timing shires that talk to each other near and far apart.

    Discord: likelytobelaura

  5. Eric Frank

    Vinci · ex-Uber AI Labs

    Background
    Vinci builds physics foundation models for hardware simulation. At Uber AI Labs, a co-author of CoordConv and PPLM.
    How we met
    We go back to the Uber AI Labs circle. The first group visit to this lab, on 2 October, was Eric's idea.
    Friday
    Talked through thermal-model runs on the cards: a model of how the die heats, fitted to the chip's own sensors and used to schedule work. Next come frequency experiments, with guardrails so a card can't overheat.

    Discord: mysterefrank

  6. Preston

    Came with Eric

    Background
    A student, new to the cards. On the lab's Tailscale since Saturday.
    How we met
    Through Eric, on Friday.
    Friday
    A tour, and a first experiment to try: Kaleidoscope matrices from Chris Ré's lab, which write the FFT as a product of sparse matrices, run on the ET-SoC-1 against a GPU.

  7. Mitchell Nahmias

    Co-founder and CTO of Sphere Semi

    Background
    Sphere Semi designs analog, RF and mixed-signal chips with AI. Before: co-founder of Luminous Computing (silicon photonics for AI); a Princeton PhD on photonic neurons.
    How we met
    I reached out in April, and Mitchell has been a regular at my Monday group at South Park Commons since. Mitchell pointed me to the on-die temperature sensors we now read.
    Friday
    Ideas for modelling the chip's performance: a ladder of models, from a toy grid up to one tuned to the ET-SoC-1.

    Discord: mitchsbrew

  8. Daanish Shabbir

    Founder of Equivariant Systems

    Background
    Equivariant Systems builds physics simulation for hardware, heat first. Before: Stanford, then NVIDIA.
    How we met
    At South Park Commons in January 2025, at the Deep Learning for Science forum Daanish started there. Among the first to join my Monday group this year.
    Friday
    Held an ET-SoC-1 card, met Eric and Howie at the bench, and talked about modelling heat and reliability on real chips.

  9. Misha Makarov

    Building Spacesheep

    Background
    Spacesheep hosts this page and the camera's live stream.
    How we met
    A close friend.
    Friday
    Came by in the evening to photograph the camera install.

From the tour to a live thermal camera

The afternoon in nine steps, in San Francisco time (yours beside it if you are elsewhere).

  1. The tour, and an OCP server opened

    Roman walked everyone through the cards and the machines. Howie, the first to arrive, opened up an OCP server sled.

    Howie pulls a board out of an OCP server sled while Roman holds another module
    Howie and Roman with the OCP sled.

  2. Laura's first runs on a card

    Laura took aifoundry3 card 0 for the MNIST challenge and released it at . Next on Laura's list: timing shires that talk to each other near and far apart.

  3. A teardown at the bench

    Howie borrowed the lab's hot plate to take a phone apart.

    Howie at the electronics bench unscrewing a phone's frame next to a hot plate and an oscilloscope
    Howie at the bench: hot plate on the left, the phone's frame on the mat.

  4. Eric and Mitchell on modelling the chip

    Eric walked Mitchell through his thermal model of the die. Mitchell sketched a ladder of performance models, from a toy grid up to one tuned to the ET-SoC-1.

  5. Daanish arrives, and holds a card

    Daanish met Eric and Howie at the bench, then Roman and Tanya.

    Daanish looks closely at a bare ET-SoC-1 card held in both hands
    An ET-SoC-1 card, out of its machine.
    Daanish and Roman talking by the lab's glass doors
    Daanish and Roman.

  6. Inside the flasher box

    Tanya showed the hand-held programmers that can reflash a card's firmware. The community lab's cards have none attached; their firmware updates over the air.

    A blue SEGGER Flasher Pro held above the box of programmers and cables
    A SEGGER Flasher Pro from the box.
    Tanya holds a card with a programming cable attached
    Tanya with a card and its programming cable.

  7. Laptops out in the main room

    The lab's main room with people at laptops around a long wooden table, Yaroslav in front
    Mid-afternoon at the big table, with me in front.

  8. The camera goes up behind aifoundry2's card

    A Thermal Master P3 on helping hands, aimed at the back of the card, with a measure laid across for scale. The phone beside it shows the live image.

    The thermal camera on helping hands behind the card, with a phone showing a thermal image of the card's back
    The install, and the phone's live view.
    The same install from the side, a measure laid across the machine
    A measure laid across for scale.

  9. Live: the card's back at 41–47 °C

    I posted the stream in #community-lab. Anyone with the link can watch it, read temperatures off it and record them.

    The public stream page on a phone: a thermal image of the card's back, probe at 46.4 °C, range 41 to 47 °C
    The public page, live.

Next: firmware experiments on the camera's card