20VC: Nebius Co-Founder on AI Infrastructure Bubbles | The Real Impact of Open Source on OpenAI & Anthropic | How Price Elastic is Demand for Compute | Could Nebius Sell 10x More Compute If They Had It & more with Roman Chernin

AI infrastructure is currently in a phase of rapid expansion rather than a bubble, driven by the early stages of enterprise AI adoption and the continuous need for more complex, specialized models. Nebius operates across four strategic layers—physical capacity, managed cloud infrastructure, managed inference, and agentic workflows—to support this growth. While hyperscalers dominate the market, there is significant demand for diversified infrastructure providers that offer optimized, reliable, and cost-effective solutions for companies transitioning from frontier models to specialized, open-source alternatives. Success in this capital-intensive industry requires balancing physical data center expansion with software-driven efficiencies, such as inference optimization, to lower the barrier for developers. As AI-native companies and enterprises scale, the ability to provide flexible, high-performance compute and managed inference platforms becomes critical to sustaining long-term growth and avoiding the risks of market consolidation.