Tantra's Mantra with Prakash Sangam

Hosted by Prakash Sangam

Technology Business Management

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Jul 2026

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The podcast that goes behind and beyond the technology news headlines to explore the unheard and unseen. The topics include 5G, AI, IoT, Smartphones, Networking, Intellectual Property and others.

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July 13, 202629 min

Ep. 71: Apple vs. Open AI – Case Analysis

On Jul 10th 2026, Apple sued OpenAI alleging theft of confidential information. The court filing claims that two OpenAI employees were stealing and encouraging Apple employees who are pursuing employment at OpenAI to steal Apple trade secrets. These individuals, both non-profit and for-profit entities of OpenAI, as well as IO Products, the company founded by legendary designer Jony Ive, acquired by OpenAI, are named as defendants in the case. In this episode, Christie Theone, Principal at CTG Advisory, and Ex. VP of Qualcomm Policy and Legal comms and I discuss the specifics of Apple’s allegations, OpenAI’s statement, and likely response, as well as possible next steps. We also delve into how this will affect OpenAI’s plan to introduce highly anticipated personal AI devices, who has better leverage, the remedies Apple is requesting, and what some considerations might be for settlement.Index:00:00 - Intro01:43 - Guest intro (Christie Thoene Theone, Principal, CTG Advisory)02:28 - Apple's complaint: Two employees of OpenAI + OpenAI (pro & non-profit) + IO Products (Founded by #JonyIve)04:05 - Apple's attempt to set a narrative - All OpenAI innovations are tainted by the theft of Apple's trade secrets, even what IO Products might be working on05:05 - Although complaints are centered around two employees (only one is a top-level executive), liability will be borne by the company07:56 - Apple's complaints are well structured, presented "as a matter of fact," without inflammatory language, making the case very obvious and appearing to be "open and shut."10:33 - Jony Ive's name never appears in the complaint. Probably out of respect, and not to tarnish his name12:06 - OpenAI's statement is pretty standard PR response14:42 - Next steps - Likely request for an extension to file the reply. The question is whether they just reply to Apple's allegation, or countersue to get some leverage 17:02 - Discovery is going to be interesting, with many trade secrets at play. Details will come out if there are conflicts between the companies. Can it be motivation for settlement?21:05 - As things stand today, OpenAI is at a weaker place, as this case affects its product plans and IPO plans, and time is on Apple's side22:45 - Apple's remedy requests are not very clear, not sure what "enjoining" in this case means. Injunctions are very hard to come by25:15 - OpenAI can keep working on whatever they are doing till there is an order from the judge (e.g. 25:33 - The first target for Apple is to seek an early decision to stop OpenAI from whatever they are working on, and the target for OpenAI is to seek early dismissal of the case. Both are hard to come by29:12 - Closing

July 7, 202647 min

Ep. 70: State of Enterprise AI - Discussion with Lenovo & TCS

This is a special episode produced by the collaboration between TiE San Diego and Tantra's Mantra.In this episode, I speak to Mark Budgen of Lenovo and Rajnikant Gupta of TCS on the current status of AI adoption in enterprises. We start by discussing which segments and which functions within organizations have seen deeper adoption of AI, whether AI projects have moved from PoC and trials to production, what the major challenges are in that transition, how the thinking and approach of enterprises toward AI have changed over the short period, the need for “Human in the loop,” and the necessity of Hybrid AI. We discuss key takeaways from Lenovo’s “CIO Playbook 2026” report and how enterprises are now more focused on improving and accelerating business outcomes rather than simply improving productivity.Finally, we delve into what to expect in the near and far future, moving from Generative and Agentic AI to Physical and Embodied AI.Index:00:00 - Intro01:05 - Guest intro (Mark Budgen, CTO, Global Technology Partners at Lenovo, & Rajnikant Gupta, Global Head - Partner Ecosystems and Alliances, TCS)02:28 - Current status of AI adoption in Enterprises, how AI can improve business, not just efficiency, risk considerations06:30 - Difference in level of AI adoption between various functional groups within Enterprises - IT, Coding, Security, Supply Chain, Sales & Marketing13:30 - Evolution of Human involvement in AI processes. Humans in the Agentic AI loop will be required for a long time, because of the risk of failure and its costs16:56 - Key takeaways from Lenovo's "CIO Playbook 2026" report: AI is not the entire toolbox, but one of the tools; focus is on how to use AI to improve and accelerate business and finally the outcomes; mapping IT KPIs to Business KPIs22:16 - Current status of AI projects, in "Production" vs. "PoC" or "Trials" stage. The majority still in the process of moving to Production. Execs now better understand their business value; Focus on platforms to scale rather than simple point solutions28:13 - Challenges in implementing AI: Employee fear of replacement, lack of domain experts with AI knowledge,31:56 - Hybrid AI: How to decide where to run AI: Cloud or Edge? Dependencies: Sovereignty, access to data, power, and cooling; Token use optimization38:27 - What to expect to see in the near and far future: Physical AI, Embodied AI, AI becoming ubiquitous and41:20 - Closing

June 19, 202641 min

Ep. 69: Lenovo VP on QIRA – Cross Device/Platform/OS Personal AI Agent

At CES 2026, Lenovo showcased an exciting new AI innovation called QIRA, redefining what personalized technology can offer. This powerful, system-level feature works seamlessly across devices and platforms, enhancing user experience like never before, and it’s now being rolled out on select Lenovo devices.In this episode, I had the privilege of speaking with Jeff Snow, the Head of Product and AI Ecosystem at Lenovo. We explored the inspiring vision behind QIRA, its capabilities, and how Lenovo is uniquely positioned to offer such an experience. Join us as we dive into how QIRA gathers insights, develops its extensive knowledge base, maintains synchronization across devices, and implements robust measures to protect user privacy and security.Index:00:00 - Intro02:00 - Guest intro (Jeff Snow, VP & Head of Product & AI Ecosystem)02:50 - What is QIRA - Cross-device, local-first personal intelligence03:42 - The vision of QIRA - Uniform "Lenovo AI Experience" across devices05:13 - Organizationally, one team is working on QIRA, implemented on all Lenovo devices06:12 - Examples of what it can do today: Catch me up - Summarize what happened across devices, Pay attention - Summarize meetings, and make it part of the knowledge base across devices, more08:17 - QIRA learns from experiences - Implicitly and explicitly (with user permission), gathers and personal knowledge & insights09:59 - It is more than an OTT app - App interface, but tightly integrated into the machine, even connecting with the OS, utilizes local AI models, and can be surfaced in any other apps12:29 - The inputs to QIRA - Multimodal, text, images, voice, additional context (emails, chats, etc.), system health and telemetry, cross-device artifacts (e.g. notifications)14:00 - Explicit user permission is required before saving any inputs, and it can be revoked at any time. "Humans are always in the loop"15:06 - ALL the data generated by the device is stored locally on that specific device, the vectorized and encrypted data is shared across devices to keep all the devices in sync18:16 - The "learning" happens and is stored in the individual device, and synced across devices20:10 - Hybrid and agile model selection: mix of local, cloud, own, and third-party, with always a local-first approach21:56 - User option "Local-only" or "Hybrid." Even in local-only mode, sync across devices can be enabled23:56 - Most QIRA actions are user-initiated or part of an experience or workflow.23:27 - It can surface suggestions, but not directly take action without direct user intervention28:49 - QIRA can be the primary AI assistant interface on your Lenovo device32:20 - Lenovo is exploiting its unique position, with pocket-to-cloud offerings, to provide a more personalized and well-rounded AI experience to its users32:49 - Key challenges Lenovo faced in bringing QIRA to market: changing the mindset of the team to be software-focused, and moving quickly34:99 - Defenses against accessing QIRA-related data when the device is stolen36:17 - Ability to migrate personal knowledge base from old to new device37:20 - No QIRA knowledge base vector data cloud back-up38:30 - Different peer product in China, QIRA is for the rest of the world39:33 - Evolution of QIRA: More devices, third-party devices, even richer knowledge base & orchestration, enterprise solution39:48 - Portability of QIRA vector database41:20 - Closing

December 3, 202432 min

Ep. 49: Cadence on EDA Tools, Super Computing 24 announcement, Collaboration with Nvidia and beyond

Electronic Data Automation (EDA) Tools and their providers, like Cadence, are not widely known but play a critical role in the semiconductor industry. In the episode, I talk to Rob Knoth, Group Director of Strategy and New Ventures at Cadence, about the EDA Tools ecosystem, the company's announcements at the Supercomputing 2024 event, its symbiotic relationship with AI powerhouse Nvidia, application of EDA tools beyond semiconductors and more.

February 13, 202328 min

Ep. 25: Test & Measurement Industry and the year ahead - Lite Point CEO's views

In this episode, I talk to Brad Robbins, CEO of Lite Point, a leading test and measurement (T&M) vendor that offers mass market Wi-Fi and 5G solutions. Brad and I discuss the role of T&M in the technology/product life cycle, Lite Point's business strategy, differentiation, its Wi-Fi 7 and 6G journey, challenges in the year ahead, and more.

April 29, 202419 min

Ep. 36: Adobe Summit - 2024: Expert Analysis & Key Takeaways

"2023 was the year of experimentation and 2024 is the year of implementation, for Gen AI" was the clear message from the Adobe 2024 Summit. In this episode Bob O'Donnell of TEChnalysis and I delve into key takeaways from the summit and analyze how Adobe's firefly is improving the efficiency of "Digital Content Supply Chain" helping enterprises traverse their Digital Transformation journey. We also talk about Adobe's customer focus and its surprise strategic collaboration with Microsoft. Reference Articles: https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/iot-ai-compute/ https://www.technalysisresearch.com/blogs/2024%20Blogs/march_26_2024_blog.html

April 3, 202529 min

Ep. 54: Honeywell is Redefining the Barcode Scanner for the Industrial Age

Industrial technology giant Honeywell is redefining the noble barcode scanner for the industrial age. In this episode, I speak to Theodore Newman, Senior Manager of Global Application Engineering, and Steph Hobley-Lloyd, Global Offering Manager, about Honeywell's Swift Decoder SDK. We discuss the needs of barcode scanners for industrial and enterprise use cases, focusing on rapid, high-accuracy batch scanning, integrating the functionality into various types of devices and machines, and how Swift Decoder's flexibility and multi-OS support address these needs. Additionally, we explore how the upcoming support for AI will significantly expand its utility and applications.

February 7, 202427 min

Ep. 33: Enterprise XR market - Lenovo's View and Impact of Vision Pro

Apple's Vision Pro has the potential to change the XR landscape entirely because of its high-end feature set, pricing point, and ecosystem. Its impact on the consumer market is very profound. But not yet clear on the Enterprise market. In this episode, I talk to Vishal Shah, GM of XR and Metaverse business for Lenovo, about the needs of the enterprise market, the impact of Vision Pro, and how Lenovo differentiates its XR offerings.

June 9, 2022Episode 2137 min

Ep. 21: Chip supply shortage reasons & solutions - Accenture & Qualcomm views

The tech industry is reeling under one of the worst supply shortages, This is affecting almost every industry, but some such as Automotve, are affected much more severely than others. In this episode I discuss with Qualcomm's Falan Yinug and Accenture's Timothy Chu, how the global pandemic, geopolitical issues, Ukrane war, and inflation have created a perfect storm. And the reasons behind this disparity in the effects as well as possible solutions. This discussion is based on a comprehensive report on the semiconductor value chain publsihed by Accenure, commissioned by Qualcomm. Here is a link to the full report: Harnessing the power of the semiconductor value chain

March 8, 202426 min

Ep. 34: Intel Foundry Event - Analysis and Key Takeaways

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) marked a significant milestone on Feb 21, 2024, with its highly anticipated debut event, where the company unveiled its comprehensive strategy and roadmap. The occasion was also highlighted by the enthusiastic backing from its key customers and partners. In this episode, Bob O'Donnell, President and Chief Analyst at TECHnalysis Research, and I analyze IFS's present status. We explore the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for them, shedding light on the dynamic landscape of their business. Additionally, we examine CEO Patrick Gelsinger's pivotal role in orchestrating the IFS's transformative journey.