Battery Insiders Reflection - The Emergence of On-Device AI Applications and Impact on Battery Life

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights and the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. And we're back, everybody. Hope everybody had a lovely holiday season. I'm back with Simon. We're here to talk about batteries. The New York weather continues to be very cloudy. I haven't seen the sun in over a week. And so I think for the sake of this show and our precedent of always discussing how we're doing wherever we are in the world, Simon, where are you right now? Currently in Germany and it's also gloomy, but it was really sunny and lovely the last past few days. So there's soap, Bhavya. There's soap. Wow. So Northern Europe got more sun than New York did. I think we're expecting a sunny weekend, but I know what we're also expecting is hopefully some more ongoing battery discussions. But I'd love to talk about the one that we just had a couple of weeks ago with Raj Taluri over.

1:08He's founder and CEO over at Novix. And I think he had some really interesting insights that he shared with us on battery and AI and how the two are working together or in some cases not working together. Batteries need to keep up. And I just wanted to see, I figured we could start off with what did you think? Totally. Yeah. And I think it's, yeah, I think it was very timely and interesting angle, right? So I think often we talk more for perspective of technology, you know, like battery technologies or applications. And here when we had this conversation, right, with Dr. Raj Taluri, he was kind of pitching his idea of, you know, what is about this development in AI, right? And of course, he comes from a, you know, history of chips and chip making and design, et cetera. So he has sort of insights there. And from a consumer electronics angle as well, which I think is interesting. We often talk about grid, energy storage, mobility, which of course, two of the biggest demands for batteries.

2:07But still, you know, all of our lives are touched by the consumer electronics. And having, you know, this trend or this development, he's kind of anticipating to have more on-device like AI, like edge device on the edge, right? Like so emergence of on-device AI applications, then also kind of thinking about what does it mean for your battery and battery life, but also performance and of these topics. And I think, yeah, it was a fascinating session. What do you think? What was your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, you know, AI is such a hot topic right now. Everybody's talking about it. And it seems like it was quite the highlight at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas that Raj attended as well, where he literally saw a device that you can speak into and it automatically translates your conversation to like 10 different languages. And so we're talking, we're seeing this amazing progress. I mean, faster than we can even really process what technology is now able to do.

3:06And as a battery person, I had not really been thinking hard about what the impact of all of this development would be on the battery. And so initially, to be honest, when I thought we were going into the discussion, I thought we were going to, we were talking about like AI and how it can be used to analyze like battery performance data and, you know, some other use cases. But I was very pleasantly surprised to get his perspective on consumer products because that is one area I actually don't know that much about. And so I found this session very valuable in that regard. I think what his company is doing is very interesting. They, you know, typically we have batteries, we talk, you know, we call it like in the jelly roll form. And he talks about how they're slicing them and that they're, you know, material agnostic, but that they've learned that instead of using graphite anodes, there's value in using silicon anodes, which I think would be, you know, really interesting for some of the folks who do happen to know that niche, niche battery knowledge in our audience.

4:11Specifically because that silicon, when it, you know, gets, when it, it seems like it can almost increase in size and therefore like cause issues if it's like in something as tiny as relatively tiny as our phones. And so those were just some interesting takeaways that I had from our discussion. I guess one thing that also stuck out to me is what's going to continue to drive this change. I mean, he, and drive change and development for these batteries. He mentioned that, you know, people are, there are companies out there that are looking for this more premium technology and willing to pay the premium. But, you know, always the question that I have with new technologies is what's it going to take to scale? Do you think, what do you think? Do you think it's going to, that these types of new, that these batteries in different forms will now become more of a thing? Is that where we have to go so that we can increase the energy density in products so that they can kind of keep up with these new innovations in AI and gosh knows what else is to come?

5:14Yeah. Maybe before I go that also quickly, right. So I think, cause you mentioned this word of scale and I think that really important term here for our listeners as well as to, you know, term of a learning curve, right. And I think if you were just want to Google a bit or look around on your favorite search engine, you can look at like some learning curves from PV, right. And we have seen, you know, how essentially what it tells you, right. It's like, if you double the capacity, like what's the cost reduction, right. And we know that's super important. I mean, battery costs us reduce quite dramatic, you know, for the last three decades or so, we have seen reduction in 90% or so price reduction. So quite exciting. But yeah, I mean, of course it's, it's easier essentially from a learning curve in the early days because doubling capacity is maybe a bit easier than later on. But we have seen, for example, right, there's the rights law here that the for solar, right, that the solar panels, the client was 20% cost with each doubling of global cumulative capacity, right.

6:09And you can also look at learning curves for batteries and there's all kinds of different numbers really depends a lot on, are you talking at residential, are you looking at, you know, electric cars, et cetera. But looking even let's say like a 10% virus can be observed for some of these, et cetera, or 15% or whatever it might be, but it is quite still, if you think about. That's like, you know, when you have to double your capacity and on the other hand, we have more slow, right, with the chips, which is more than also kind of connected to time, right. Like when we see our, there's such like, you know, how many more true systems we can put in over, you know, fixed period of time. So essentially a bit of a race, right, and I think that's what he also was kind of talking about is how the innovation in his perspective and batteries is slower compared to like, you know, AI chips and these kinds of things.

6:58And of course, I think we can go into the weeds of it and BatteryMBA, you know, we had some real in-depth discussion on that. But I think it was just really fascinating. And of course, that's kind of a limiting factor. And I think last thing you mentioned on the technologies, implementing it, like, you know, his approach with silicon, definitely interesting one, right. There's lots of other approaches on lithium metal and whatever it might be. But yeah, of course, companies are now trying to increase the capacity. And I think it's understandable, right, because if you want to now bring more AI on a device or consume more electricity, which means then you have to essentially increase your battery size or make it more efficient or increase the capacity. And per volume. Absolutely. I think you raised some really interesting points. Lots of connections to our discussion. Lots of connections you just made between our previous discussions or, you know, more legacy, if you will, battery technologies like PV and this newer technology of AI and how batteries powering it.

8:00I think, you know, we can keep the conversation going. But I guess for the sake of our audience, just a little bit of curiosity, do you have any tips or any sense of what the next topic may be? I think it's interesting. I'm actually talking later today to a potential speaker. So yeah, definitely ramping up right now. And also for you, maybe for the audience, if any of you is interested to come on, let us know. We have quite a few of you who reach out, which is awesome. And right now we're planning actually a bit more ahead. So the next few months. So please get in touch if you want to come on and we'd love to talk to you. Great. And yeah, hope anybody listening, please send your ideas to us. We're super interested and we'd love to connect. This is just the start of 2024. I think we're going to have some really interesting and supercharged discussions. All right. And with that, we will see you all next time.

8:55Thanks, Simon. Thanks, Pavia.