Episode 38: Larry Hilsheimer

Episode 40: Chris Bergey

In this episode of the Titanium Economy Podcast, Chris Bergey, EVP of the Edge AI Business Unit at Arm, talks to Akshay Sethi, President & Head of Commercial Excellence at Ayna. Chris breaks down how Arm became foundational to modern computing, from smartphones to hyperscale AI infrastructure, and shares insights on Arm's AI strategy, the rise of inference workloads, the transition to Arm v9, and why ecosystem scale remains its biggest competitive advantage. The conversation also covers edge AI, cloud computing, industrial automation, and semiconductors' next wave of innovation. A must-watch for anyone following AI, semiconductors, and the future of computing. Chris Bergey is leading the Edge AI business unit at Arm Holdings, a semiconductor IP company whose architecture powers 99% of smartphones a compute platform that touches 100% of the global population. With over 30 years of industry experience, he has held senior leadership roles at AMD, Western Digital, SanDisk, and Broadcom, as well as across multiple divisions within Arm, including infrastructure, client computing, and now Edge AI. A regular keynote presence at Mobile World Congress, CES, Embedded World, and Computex, Bergey is widely regarded as a leading voice on edge inference, AI silicon strategy, and heterogeneous computing. Discussion Points * Arm's Business Model, Growth Architecture, and the V9 Revolution Arm's three-decade IP licensing model has compounded into dominant semiconductor infrastructure spanning smartphones, data centers, and automotive. The V9 architecture, nearly a decade in development, has restructured royalty economics while embedding AI acceleration at the silicon level. * Inference Over Training: Where AI Value Is Monetized at Scale Chris Bergey argues that inference workloads represent a far larger commercial opportunity than model training. The rise of agentic AI, with parallel inference chains running simultaneously, further accelerates the primacy of edge and distributed compute over centralized training clusters. * Arm's Competitive Positioning: Enabling and Competing Across the AI Stack Arm navigates a nuanced co-opetition dynamic, powering Nvidia Blackwell GPUs while architecting platforms that reduce dependence on x86 incumbents. Arm's value accrues regardless of which application layer wins, as it provides the foundational compute substrate across competing paradigms. * Leadership Philosophy: Intellectual Honesty, Domain Transitions, and the Cloud Bet Bergey's career across AMD, Western Digital, Broadcom, and Arm reflects a framework centered on truth-seeking, customer discipline, and asymmetric bets — including Arm's all-in commitment to cloud-native Neoverse infrastructure over legacy OEM relationships. * Edge AI in Industrial Markets and the Future of Physical Actuation Arm's approach to fragmented industrial markets prioritizes composable building blocks over unit-volume scale, enabling AI-driven orchestration where standards bodies previously failed. Bergey's forward thesis centers on physical actuation — robotic systems with high degrees of freedom — as the next major inflection point for semiconductor demand. * For More Information Chris Bergey [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbergey/] Arm Website [https://www.arm.com/] Titanium Economy [https://www.titaniumeconomy.com/podcast] Ayna Website [https://ayna.ai/]

Episode 38: Larry Hilsheimer

In this episode of the Titanium Economy podcast, Gaurav Batra, CEO of Ayna, sits down with Greif CFO Larry Hilsheimer to unpack how a 150-year-old industrial packaging company has reinvented itself through disciplined capital allocation, portfolio transformation, and customer-centric strategy. Larry shares how Greif improved margins by prioritizing value over volume, exited non-core businesses, and built a high-performing culture grounded in customer intimacy. They also explore AI adoption, ERP transformation, and how industrial companies can thrive through prolonged economic cycles. This conversation is a must-watch for leaders interested in resilient growth, operational excellence, and long-term value creation. Larry Hilsheimer is Executive Vice President and CFO of Greif, Inc., a global industrial packaging leader with approximately $4.5 billion in annual revenue across 40 countries. He brings nearly three decades of experience from Deloitte, spanning tax advisory, corporate transactions, and senior executive roles, before serving as CFO of Nationwide Mutual Insurance during the 2008 financial crisis and taking on financial leadership at Scotts Miracle-Gro. At Greif, he has been the financial architect of a transformational decade defined by $2.5 billion in strategic acquisitions, approximately $3.5 billion in dispositions, and a deliberate shift toward less-cyclical end markets. Discussion Points * (00:00) Greif's Industrial Legacy, Market Position & Community Philosophy Nearing its 150th year, Greif manufactures industrial containers underpinning global supply chains for chemicals, food, and consumer goods. Its service-profit-chain philosophy treats colleague engagement, customer excellence, and community vitality as interdependent operational pillars. * (04:59) Industrial Packaging Investment Thesis & Strategic Portfolio Transformation Greif's evolution from wooden cooperage to a $4.5 billion global packaging leader reflects relentless capital reallocation toward defensible market leadership across 35 countries. Deliberate divestitures — including the containerboard exit to PCA — reduced cyclicality while unlocking capital for higher-margin repositioning. * (09:34) Capital Structure Optimization, Margin Discipline & Customer Intimacy Divestitures have driven leverage to 1.2x, enabling organic growth and tuck-in acquisitions aligned to Greif's end-market thesis. Closing 100+ underperforming plants and enforcing value-over-volume discipline elevated Net Promoter Scores from below the 30th percentile to the world-class mid-70s. * (15:17) ERP Consolidation, Data Harmonization & AI Integration Consolidating 100+ legacy systems into a single ERP built the data infrastructure required for AI deployment at scale. AI is already driving productivity gains across finance, legal, HR, and supply chain, with agentic capabilities displacing manual processes such as global statutory reporting. * (22:36) Macroeconomic Outlook, Industrial Sector Valuation & the Evolving CFO A multi-year industrial recession — tied to home resales at 1983 lows and weakening global auto production — continues suppressing packaging demand. Simultaneously, the CFO role has evolved into a strategic mandate requiring intellectual curiosity, operational fluency, and adaptability in an AI-accelerated environment. For More Information Greif [https://www.greif.com/] The Titanium Economy [https://www.titaniumeconomy.com/] Ayna Website [https://ayna.ai/]

Episode 37: Prith Banerjee

Digital twins can already predict the failure of a million-dollar industrial asset with 99% accuracy — so why are engineers on the ground still resisting adopting them, and who has to move first to break that deadlock? In this episode of the Titanium Economy podcast, host Vineet Gupta sits down with Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Synopsys, to explore the convergent forces reshaping semiconductor and systems engineering. Prith details how the $35 billion ANSYS acquisition and $2 billion Nvidia partnership position Synopsys to command the emerging chip-to-system design market. He explains how agentic AI is compressing design cycles for trillion-transistor chips, how physics-based digital twins achieve 99% predictive accuracy in industrial deployments, and why passionate pursuit of one's "true north" defines enduring innovation across academia, entrepreneurship, and global enterprise. Prith Banerjee is Senior Vice President of Innovation at Synopsys, leading the company's technology strategy across EDA, simulation, and IP. With an extraordinary career bridging elite academia, serial entrepreneurship, and Fortune 500 leadership, he has served as CTO at Ansys, EVP and CTO at Schneider Electric, EVP and CTO at ABB, and SVP of Research at HP Labs. A professor turned founder, he established AccelChip (acquired by Xilinx) and BINACHIP, authored over 350 technical papers, and supervised 37 PhD students. A Fellow of IEEE, ACM, and AAAS, Banerjee holds degrees from IIT Kharagpur and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Discussion Points * Synopsys: The Invisible Backbone of Chip Design Synopsys powers chip design globally through EDA tools and IP. The ANSYS acquisition extends its reach from silicon into full-system engineering. * Forty Years of EDA Evolution and the ANSYS Acquisition Four decades of semiconductor advancement drove exponential growth in chip complexity. Acquiring ANSYS unified multiphysics simulation with chip design for intelligent systems. * The Nvidia Partnership and AI-Driven Design Automation A two-billion-dollar Nvidia partnership accelerates GPU-enabled industrial simulation capabilities enterprise-wide. Agentic AI systems now autonomously re-engineer complex, trillion-transistor chip design workflows. * Digital Twins and the Future of Industrial Applications Physics-informed digital twins elevate predictive accuracy to ninety-nine percent for critical assets. Integrated electronic and mechanical twins validate entire complex products before physical manufacturing begins. * Innovation Philosophy, Entrepreneurship, and Enduring Legacy A career spanning academia, startups, and global corporations reflects relentless, principled innovation. Banerjee urges young engineers to pursue their "true north" with unwavering passionate conviction. For More Information https://www.linkedin.com/in/prith-banerjee/ Prith Banerjee LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/prith-banerjee/] Synopsys.com [http://synopsys.com] Ansys.com [http://ansys.com] (acquired by Synopsys; tools including Fluent, HFSS, Mechanical, Red Hawk, LSDyna, Twin Builder, SIM AI, OptiSLang) Ayna Website [https://ayna.ai/]

Episode 36: Luca Savi

In this episode of the Titanium Economy Podcast, host Vineet Gupta speaks with Luca Savi, President and CEO of ITT. Luca shares how ITT wins through execution, innovation, and deep customer intimacy and how the company is deliberately shifting its portfolio away from cyclical markets through disciplined M&A focused on value creation. The conversation covers leadership, culture, and what it takes to build urgency, agility, and accountability across a global organization. Luca closes with the key bets ITT is making toward its 2030 vision. Luca Savi is President and CEO of ITT Inc. He joined ITT in 2011 as President of Motion Technologies, after senior roles at Comau (Fiat Group) and Honeywell International across Italy, China, and the US. He holds a Chemical Engineering degree from Politecnico di Milano, an MBA from London Business School, and serves on the board of MSA Safety Inc. Show Notes * ITT Overview: Designs and manufactures highly engineered components for harsh environments across energy, industrial, automotive, aerospace, and rail. * Market Performance: ITT's brake pad business outperformed the market by 800 basis points annually over a decade, driven by 99.9% on-time delivery and parts-per-billion quality standards. * Portfolio Rebalancing: Automotive's share of EBIT dropped from 60%+ to ~33%, with capital redeployed into higher-margin flow and connector businesses. The SPX Flow acquisition accelerates the 2030 target of 20% automotive exposure. * Culture & Leadership: ITT's model demands deep operational knowledge at every level — from CEO to frontline — with shop-floor engagement as a universal principle across all geographies. * 2030 Vision: M&A focused on fragmented flow markets and aerospace/defense connectors, supported by a transformed board that provides expert coaching and constructive challenge. For More Information ITT [https://www.itt.com/] Luca Savi LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/luca-savi-714663/] Ayna Website [https://ayna.ai/]

Episode 35: Anand Sanghi

In this episode of the Titanium Economy Podcast, Akshay Sethi, President and Head of Commercial Excellence at Ayna, talks with Anand Sanghi, President, Americas at Vertiv about how AI is driving changes in infrastructure, innovation, and business growth. They discuss Vertiv’s approach to scaling global operations, staying close to customers, and using R&D to stay ahead in a fast-changing tech landscape. They also discuss how the company navigates AI demand, develops reliable solutions, and plans for the future of critical infrastructure.   Anand Sanghi is the Head of Americas at Vertiv, a global leader in critical digital infrastructure solutions encompassing power, cooling, and lifecycle services for data centers, telecommunications networks, and industrial environments. He was previously president for Vertiv Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea and India (ASI). Sanghi holds an engineering degree from IIT and an MBA from IIM.    Discussion Points * Introduction & Vertiv's Business: End-to-end power and cooling for critical digital infrastructure — data centers, semiconductor plants, hospitals, and mission-critical environments globally. * AI-Driven Growth & Transformation: Generative AI has pushed rack power density from single-digit to 150+ kilowatts. Vertiv has repositioned as a technology-industrial hybrid at the intersection of advanced manufacturing and digital infrastructure. * Strategy & AI Ecosystem: Vertiv anticipates silicon roadmaps two chip generations ahead. Customer intimacy and power-thermal convergence underpin its integrated data center and AI factory portfolio. * Capital Allocation & R&D: Disciplined organic growth with selective M&A. R&D spend grows ~20% annually, compressing product cycles to 12 months. * Market Metrics & Demand: Key forward indicators: qualified pipeline, silicon deployment volumes, and capacity ramp flexibility. * Leadership Philosophy: Purpose-driven, humble leadership shaped by three decades of global cycles and early-career values. For More Information Vertiv [https://www.vertiv.com/en-us/] Anand Sanghi LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/anand-sanghi-a269814/] Ayna Website [https://ayna.ai/]