
Allyson Klein
Allyson Klein’s insatiable curiosity for what inspires innovation drove her to found her first podcast over a decade ago. She has reached over ten million listeners over one thousand interviews with the industry’s brightest stars.
Allyson created the TechArena to shine a light on leading edge innovation featuring inspirational stories from the industry and under-recognized voices. She leverages over two decades in the tech sector with executive roles at companies including Intel and Micron to her work. She holds an MBA from Portland State University where she is now a professor in the business school and a bachelors in marketing and management of the University of Oregon.
Allyson leads the TechArena from Portland, Oregon working with both tech titans and breakout stars.
Featured content
Data Insights at OCP: DataraAI on Edge Robotics
Durgesh Srivastava unpacks a data-loop approach that powers reliable edge inference, captures anomalies, and encodes technician know-how so robots weld, inspect, and recover like seasoned operators.
Cooling for the Gigawatt Era: JetCool’s Roadmap for AI Data Centers
As part of Flex, JetCool is scaling its microconvective cooling technology to help hyperscalers deploy next-gen systems faster, streamlining cooling deployments from server to rack in the AI era.
Cornelis Networks & AMD on Scaling AI Without the Chaos
From CPU orchestration to scaling efficiency in networks, leaders reveal how to assess your use case, leverage existing infrastructure, and productize AI instead of just experimenting.
From Laptops to Data Center Racks: Ventiva’s Thermal Play at OCP
Ventiva discusses how hard-won laptop cooling know-how can unlock inside-the-box gains for AI servers and racks—stabilizing hotspots, preserving acoustics, and boosting performance.
Cornelis and OCP Examine Why AI Infrastructure Must Evolve
From the OCP Global Summit, hear why 50% GPU utilization is a “civilization-level” problem, and why open standards are key to unlocking underutilized compute capacity.
WEKA: Make Tokens Flow with Memory-Like Storage
Storage architecture becomes the invisible force determining whether AI deployments, now rapidly moving beyond pilot projects, generate profit or burn cash on throttled tokens.
The Network Revolution: Cornelis Tackles AI’s Efficiency Crisis
While enterprises pour resources into more GPUs, up to 30% of that computing power sits idle waiting for data. The solution isn't more hardware; it's smarter network architecture.
Scality and Solidigm Reshape Storage Protection in the AI Era
Converging forces, including affordable SSDs, ransomware requiring fast restoration capabilities, and AI workloads needing assured data integrity, are redefining protection strategies at unprecedented scale.
From OCP 2025: Arm’s Chiplet Push and the AI Ecosystem Play
Allyson Klein and co-host Jeniece Wnorowski sit down with Arm’s Eddie Ramirez to unpack Arm Total Design’s growth, the FCSA chiplet spec contribution to OCP, a new board seat, and how storage fits AI’s surge.
Equinix and Solidigm Map AI’s Ripple Effects Across Tech
The AI surge is forcing a fundamental rethink of infrastructure strategy, from unexpected co-location demand to storage breakthroughs that challenge conventional wisdom.
Xinnor Reinvents RAID for the Era of AI-Driven Data Centers
Traditional data protection becomes the bottleneck when GPU idle time costs millions. Joint testing with Solidigm shows how next-generation solutions maintain full speed during drive failures.
CFD24: HPE Bets on a “Cool-Again” Private Cloud Strategy
From provisioning to observability to protection, HPE’s expanding cloud software suite targets the repatriation wave.
When AI is a Bad Actor's Best Friend: Fortinet at CFD24
LLMs have given attackers new angles. Fortinet showed, step by step, how AI-driven probes escalate—and how FortiGate, FortiWeb, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiSOAR close the door without slowing the business.
5 Ways To Keep GPUs Fed—Hard-Won Lessons From Our AI Factory Panel
From racks and liquid loops to data placement and standards pace, five takeaways from CoreWeave, Dell, NVIDIA, Solidigm, and VAST Data on building AI factories that keep accelerators busy and dollars well-spent.
CFD24: Oxide Delivers Couture Hyperscale Infra for the Enterprise
At Cloud Field Day 24, Oxide outlines a vertically integrated rack—custom hypervisor, integrated power/network, and open integrations—aimed at bringing hyperscale efficiency and faster deploys to enterprise DCs.
Pure Storage Offers Prompt-Based Control, Smooth Infra Management
Presenting at Cloud Field Day 24, Pure pitched fleet-level automation across mixed environments as the antidote to storage silos, promising one control plane for legacy systems and modern workloads.
How Axelera Scales Inference From Edge to Data Center
In the Arena: Allyson Klein with Axelera CMO Alexis Crowell on inference-first AI silicon, a customer-driven SDK, and what recent tapeouts reveal about the roadmap.
Immersion, Not Hype: Midas on Liquid Cooling at OCP
Midas Immersion Cooling CEO Scott Sickmiller joins a Data Insights episode at OCP 2025 to demystify single-phase immersion, natural vs. forced convection, and what it takes to do liquid cooling at AI scale.
Castrol on Liquid Cooling: Additives, Filters, Failure Modes
From hyperscale direct-to-chip to micron-level realities: Darren Burgess (Castrol) explains dielectric fluids, additive packs, particle risks, and how OCP standards keep large deployments on track.
Solidigm Breaks Down Siloed Thinking About AI Infrastructure
By rethinking how data flows between storage, memory, and compute, organizations unlock performance improvements impossible through isolated optimization.
Arm vs. RISC-V: Same DNA, Different Flight Paths
A 2025 field guide for architects: why Arm’s software gravity and hyperscaler adoption make it the low-friction path today, where RISC-V is gaining ground, and the curveballs that could reshape both.
Data Insights: AI in Healthcare with Dr. Rohith Vangalla
In this episode of Data Insights, host Allyson Klein and co-host Jeniece Wnorowski sit down with Dr. Rohith Vangalla of Optum to discuss the future of AI in healthcare.
How Equinix & Solidigm See Evolving Workloads Reshaping IT
Industry leaders reveal why data-centric, change-ready data center architectures will determine who thrives in the age of unpredictable AI advancements.
PEAK:AIO on Smarter Storage for AI—Data Insights @ OCP
From OCP San Jose, PEAK:AIO’s Roger Cummings explains how workload-aware file systems, richer memory tiers, and capturing intelligence at the edge reduce cost and complexity.
CelLink PowerPlane: Flat Power for AI Server Racks
Innovative power delivery unlocks a shift in data-center design. CelLink PowerPlane routes thousands of amps in a flat, flexible circuit—cutting cabling and accelerating AI factory builds.
From Box to Building—How Open Compute Is Rewiring the AI Factory
Helios puts “rack as product” in market, Intel’s rack-scale vision shows up on the floor, and vendors from Giga Computing to Rack Renew turn open specs into buyable racks, pods—and faster time-to-online.
Hybrid Quantum + HPC: CESQ’s Lesya Dymyd at OCP 2025
Recorded live at OCP in San Jose, Allyson Klein talks with CESQ’s Lesya Dymyd about hybrid quantum-classical computing, the new Maison du Quantique, and how real-world use cases may emerge over the next 5–7 years.
Ventiva Brings Innovative Solid-State Cooling to the AI Data Center
CEO Carl Schlachte joins TechArena at OCP Summit to share how Ventiva’s solid-state cooling—proven in dense laptops—scales to servers, cutting noise, complexity and power while speeding deployment.
OCP, Power Grids & Open Racks — with Dr. Andrew Chien
From OCP Summit San Jose, Allyson Klein and co-host Jeniece Wnorowski interview Dr. Andrew Chien (UChicago & Argonne) on grid interconnects, rack-scale standards, and how openness speeds innovation.
Metrum AI’s Steen Graham on Multi-Agent AI and Smarter Storage
From OCP Summit, Metrum AI CEO Steen Graham unpacks multi-agent infrastructure, SSD-accelerated RAG, and the memory-to-storage shift—plus a 2026 roadmap to boost GPU utilization, uptime, and time-to-value.
Flex at OCP: Chris Butler on Breaking the IT–Power Wall
From the OCP Global Summit in San Jose, Allyson Klein sits down with Chris Butler of Flex to unpack how the company is collapsing the gap between IT and power—literally and figuratively.
Kelley Mullick of Avayla on Rack-Scale Design & Hybrid Cooling
From OCP Summit 2025, Kelley Mullick joins Allyson Klein and co-host Jeniece Wnorowski for a Data Insights episode on rack-scale design, hybrid cooling (incl. immersion heat recapture), and open standards.
Momenthesis’ Matty Bakkeren: ‘We Need to Keep Open Open’
At OCP’s 2025 global summit, Momenthesis founder Matty Bakkeren joins Allyson Klein to explore why open standards and interoperability are vital to sustaining AI innovation at datacenter scale.
OCP 2025: Open is the Only Way We Scale the AI Data Center
Open collaboration just leveled up: OCP pushes shared specs from rack to data center—power, cooling, networking, and ops—so AI capacity can scale faster, with less friction and more choice.
AMI on Open Firmware for the AI-Native Data Center
AMI CEO Sanjoy Maity joins In the Arena to unpack the company's shift to open source firmware, OCP contributions, OpenBMC hardening, and the rack-scale future—cooling, power, telemetry, and RAS built for AI.
Arm Joins OCP Board, Contributes Chiplet Architecture Spec
Appointment to Open Compute Project Foundation board of directors, contribution of Foundation Chiplet System Architecture (FCSA) spec underscore Arm’s ascendency in hyperscale, AI data centers.
With Intel News, Graid Expands Quest to Deliver World-Class RAID
Graid Technology takes on Intel VROC licensing for data center and workstation customers, extending its RAID portfolio to offer both CPU-integrated and GPU-accelerated solutions.
MLPerf’s Breakout Year: Benchmarking Expands with AI
As AI spreads across industries, MLPerf is evolving from niche training benchmarks to a shared performance yardstick for storage, automotive, and beyond, capturing a pivotal 2025 moment.
Giving Storage Strategy a Reboot for Efficiency with Solidigm
As AI workloads push storage power consumption higher, the path to true storage efficiency demands systems-level thinking including hardware, software, and better metrics for picking the right drives.
Inside Iceotope’s Mission to Cool AI Sustainably
As AI workloads scale, cooling must evolve. Iceotope’s liquid cooling technology is a paradigm shift for datacenter and edge infrastructure deployment.
Cornelis Networks on Turning Constraints Into Strategic Advantage
Cornelis CEO Lisa Spelman joins Allyson Klein to explore how focus, agility, and culture can turn resource constraints into a strategic edge in the fast-moving AI infrastructure market.
Rewriting the Data Center Playbook for AI with Solidigm
With explosive data growth and power demands forcing transformation, the future belongs to those who plan for what’s “next-next.”
Solidigm Redefines Measuring Storage Efficiency for AI Workloads
As GPU racks hit 150kW, throughput per watt has become the efficiency metric that matters, and SSDs are proving their worth over legacy infrastructure with 77% power savings and 90% less rack space.
AMD Lands OpenAI Deal, Challenging NVIDIA’s AI Dominance
A landmark multi-year deal positions AMD as a core compute partner for OpenAI’s expanding AI infrastructure—diversifying its silicon base and reshaping GPU market dynamics.
Rafay Systems: Building the Foundations of AI Infrastructure
Rafay Systems is emerging as a key enabler of global AI infrastructure, helping enterprises and neoclouds operationalize large-scale deployments in the dawn of the AI era.
Daniel Wu on Scaling AI with Trust and Strategy
Daniel Wu joins TechArena and Solidigm on Data Insights to share his perspective on bridging academia and enterprise, scaling AI responsibly, and why trustworthy frameworks matter as AI adoption accelerates.
AI in Finance: Governance, Compliance, and Innovation
Anusha Nerella joins hosts Allyson Klein and Jeniece Wnorowski to explore responsible AI in financial services, emphasizing compliance, collaboration, and ROI-driven adoption strategies.
Arm’s AI Infrastructure Advantage: Efficiency Meets Innovation
AWS now ships 50% Arm-based compute, and other major cloud providers are following, as efficiency in the gigawatt era and software optimization drive a shift in data center architecture.
Cerebras Scales Real-Time AI with Wafer-Scale Innovation
At AI Infra Summit, CTO Sean Lie shares how Cerebras is delivering instant inference, scaling cloud and on-prem systems, and pushing reasoning models into the open-source community.
5 Fast Facts: Arm’s Role in Shaping AI Infrastructure
From data center to edge, Arm is enabling full-stack AI efficiency, powering ecosystems with performance-per-watt optimization, tailored silicon, and software portability across environments.
Cerebras Soars with $1.1 B of Pre-IPO Investment
Backed by top U.S. investors, Cerebras gains $1.1B pre-IPO funding, boosting its AI vision, market traction, and challenge to NVIDIA with silicon-to-services expansion.
AI, Flash, and Data Protection: Scality’s Vision with Paul Speciale
Scality CMO Paul Speciale joins Data Insights to discuss the future of storage—AI-driven resilience, the rise of all-flash deployments, and why object storage is becoming central to enterprise strategy.
Ventiva Reinvents Cooling with Silent Airflow Tech
Ventiva CEO Carl Schlachte joins Allyson Klein to share how the company’s Ionic Cooling Engine is transforming laptops, servers, and beyond with silent, modular airflow.
Valvoline Brings Liquid Cooling Power to AI Data Centers
From racing oils to data center immersion cooling, Valvoline is reimagining thermal management for AI-scale workloads. Learn how they’re driving density, efficiency, and sustainability forward.
Reinventing RAID for AI: Xinnor and Solidigm on Storage’s Future
This Data Insights episode unpacks how Xinnor’s software-defined RAID for NVMe and Solidigm’s QLC SSDs tackle AI infrastructure challenges—reducing rebuild times, improving reliability, and maximizing GPU efficiency.
AI Infra Summit 2025: Agents, Utilization, and Innovation
From cloud to edge, agentic workflows are moving from pilots to production—reshaping compute, storage, and networks while spotlighting CPU control planes, GPU utilization, and congestion-free fabrics.
Cooling the AI Heat: JetCool’s Strategy for Data Centers
Discover how JetCool’s proprietary liquid cooling is solving AI’s toughest heat challenges—keeping data centers efficient as workloads and power densities skyrocket.
WEKA on AI Data Centers: A New Infrastructure Playbook
In this episode, Allyson Klein, Scott Shadley, and Jeneice Wnorowski (Solidigm) talk with Val Bercovici (WEKA) about aligning hardware and software, scaling AI productivity, and building next-gen data centers.
Inside Yotta’s Innovate Arena: Standout Breakthroughs for AI
From manure-to-energy RNG to an aluminum-air system that generates electricity on demand, innovators tackled real AI bottlenecks—power-chain integration, rapid fiber turn-ups, AI-driven permitting, and plug-and-play capacity that speeds time-to-value.
Hybrid AI at Scale: Celestica’s Playbook
From AI Infra Summit, Celestica’s Matt Roman unpacks the shift to hybrid and on-prem AI, why sovereignty/security matter, and how silicon, power, cooling, and racks come together to deliver scalable AI infrastructure.
AI-Driven Chip Design with Synopsys
Allyson Klein talks with Synopsys’ Anand Thiruvengadam on how agentic AI is reshaping chip design to meet extreme performance, time-to-market, and workforce challenges.
MLCommons: Setting the Standard for AI Performance
From storage to automotive, MLPerf is evolving with industry needs. Hear David Kanter explain how community-driven benchmarking is enabling reliable and scalable AI deployment.
Solidigm on Building Future-Ready AI Storage
Solidigm’s Ace Stryker joins Allyson Klein and Jeniece Wnorowski on Data Insights to explore how partnerships and innovation are reshaping storage for the AI era.
Dell Highlights Four Shifts Powering the AI Storage Revolution
Dell outlines how flash-first design, unified namespaces, and validated architectures are reshaping storage into a strategic enabler of enterprise AI success.
Iceotope’s Sustainable Cooling Vision for the AI Era
With sustainability at the core, Iceotope is pioneering liquid cooling solutions that reduce environmental impact while meeting the demands of AI workloads at scale.
5 Fast Facts on Compute Efficiency with Flex’s Chris Butler
Exploring how Flex is rethinking data center power and cooling – from 97.5% efficient power shelves to liquid cooling and “grid to chip” solutions – with Chris Butler, President of Embedded & Critical Power.
AI Infra 2025: David Glick on Building Walmart’s Future with AI
In this episode of In the Arena, David Glick, SVP at Walmart, shares how one of the world’s largest enterprises is fostering rapid AI innovation and empowering engineers to transform retail.
Rafay’s Haseeb Budhani on Building the Future of AI Infrastructure
Haseeb Budhani, Co-Founder of Rafay, shares how his team is helping enterprises scale AI infrastructure across the globe, and why he believes we’re still in the early innings of adoption.
CoolIT: 5 Fast Facts on Compute Efficiency
In this 5 Fast Facts on Compute Efficiency Q&A, CoolIT’s Ben Sutton unpacks how direct liquid cooling (DLC) drives PUE toward ~1.02, unlocks higher rack density, and where it beats immersion on cost and deployment.
From AI Infra: AI Strategy, Security, & Human Impact with Daniel Wu
Direct from AI Infra 2025, AI Expert & Author Daniel Wu shares how organizations build trustworthy systems—bridging academia and industry with governance and security for lasting impact.
Carrier’s Arun Nandi on Early AI Adoption and the Infra Edge
Recorded at AI Infra Summit 2025 in Santa Clara: Carrier CDAO Arun Nandi on infra as AI’s backbone, how early adopters win on ROI and speed, and what changed in the last 12–24 months.
Inside Confidential Computing with Hushmesh & Invary
Allyson Klein hosts Manu Fontaine (Hushmesh) and Jason Rogers (Invary) to unpack TEEs, attestation, and how confidential computing is moving from pilots to real deployments across data center and edge.
Announcing TechArena’s 2025–2026 Voices of Innovation Fellows
Experts from across the compute industry provide their bold views and real-world expertise on AI era computing is driving business and societal opportunity.
Equinix & Solidigm on the Real Cost of AI Infrastructure Demands
Equinix’s Glenn Dekhayser and Solidigm’s Scott Shadley discuss how power, cooling, and cost considerations are causing enterprises to embrace co-location among their AI infrastructure strategies.
Inside Arm’s Drive to Advance AI’s Data Center Transformation
As AI fuels a $7 trillion-dollar infrastructure boom, Arm’s Mohamed Awad reveals how efficiency, custom silicon, and ecosystem-first design are reshaping hyperscalers and powering the gigawatt era.
Clearing AI’s Costly Bottlenecks with Cornelis Networks
CEO Lisa Spelman explains how tackling hidden inefficiencies in AI infrastructure can drive enterprise adoption, boost performance, and spark a new wave of innovation.
Cracking the Code on Storage Efficiency with Solidigm
Explore myths, metrics, and strategies shaping the future of energy-efficient data centers with Solidigm’s Scott Shadley, from smarter drives to sustainability-ready architectures.
Inside Data-Centric Strategy with Equinix and Solidigm
Equinix’s Glenn Dekhayser and Solidigm’s Scott Shadley join TechArena to unpack hybrid multicloud, AI-driven workloads, and what defines a resilient, data-centric data center strategy.
Powering AI: Solidigm’s Vision for the Future of Storage
Industry leader Scott Shadley reveals how Solidigm’s innovations in SSDs, partnerships, and architecture are reshaping data centers to meet the rising demands of AI, edge, and enterprise workloads.
Inside Entertainment’s Storage Revolution with Dell Technologies
From feeding data-hungry GPUs to enabling real-time on-set visual effects, flash storage has evolved from luxury to necessity in modern content creation pipelines.
Optum’s AI Health Care Vision: Privacy-First Innovation
From predicting sepsis before symptoms appear to enabling rural clinics to make specialist-level diagnoses, a privacy-first approach to AI in health care promises to transform lives.
HPE Discover: SSDs Are Rewriting Enterprise Storage
Surveying 250 IT pros, we found 29% already run SSDs beyond performance tiers, 81% would migrate when TCO wins, and storage innovation is a top lever to free power and space across the data center.
Dell’s AI Data Innovation: When Storage Takes Command
PowerScale delivers unmatched performance and scale for AI-driven transformation, while 122TB drives reshape enterprise infrastructure, proving storage is AI’s competitive edge in today’s data era.
Lightwave Logic’s Robert Blum on Polymer Optics for AI
Allyson Klein and Robert Blum of Lightwave Logic unpack how electro-optic polymers, paired with silicon photonics, lower power and boost density on the road to 400G-per-lane optics— with a 2027 volume ramp in sight.
Privacy-First AI in Healthcare: Optum’s Dr. Rohith Vangalla
From federated learning and zero-trust to confidential computing, Dr. Rohith Vangalla shares a practitioner’s playbook for explainable, scalable AI that moves healthcare from reactive to proactive.
TechArena’s ‘In the Arena’ Podcast Wins a Stevie® Award
Our flagship podcast earned a Stevie® in the International Business Awards® annual competition; judges called out the show’s high production quality, editorial clarity, and guest caliber.
Verizon Business’ Nikhil Tyagi on Edge AI Innovation
Nikhil Tyagi of Verizon Business discusses scaling AI at the edge, from small language models and multimodal experiences to infrastructure challenges and adaptive inference.
Google’s Vision for Data Center Storage with OCP L.O.C.K.
New open-source key management system could revolutionize data center sustainability by enabling safe reuse of storage drives while also improving data security for cloud service providers.
Storage Is the Catalyst Revolutionizing Enterprise AI
Learn how Solidigm SSDs are delivering 10x-20x performance gains and 40% cost savings for enterprise AI during Supermicro’s Open Storage Summit this August.
FMS 2025: Honoring Jim Pappas, Driving AI Innovation
FMS 2025 celebrated Jim Pappas’ lifetime of standards leadership while showcasing how AI is reshaping memory and storage with record-breaking innovation across the industry.
Dell on Storage Innovation in the AI-Driven Enterprise
Dell and Solidigm leaders explore how modern storage—flash, SSDs, and flexible architectures—enables AI, accelerates performance, and helps enterprises manage data across edge to cloud.
Insights with sayTEC on Sovereign IT Infrastructure Revolution
A unified security-first platform is eliminating decades of fragmented IT vulnerabilities while delivering military-grade protection at half the cost
Dell Leads the Entertainment Industry’s Storage Revolution
Dell and Solidigm explore how flash storage is transforming creative pipelines—from real-time rendering to AI-enhanced production—enabling faster workflows and better business outcomes.
Hypertec Shrinks the Data Center with Immersion-Born Servers
Hypertec’s immersion-born servers cut cooling power by 50% and shrink 10MW deployments from 100,000 sq ft to around 10,000—showing liquid cooling isn’t experimental anymore; it’s essential.
AI Chip Design Hits Crossroads in Agentic Era
As AI reshapes compute, memory, and networking, chipmakers are racing to rethink design workflows, embrace agentic AI, and overcome the next wave of data, power, and talent constraints.
Exploring AI and an Edge Computing Reality Check with OnLogic
OnLogic's Hunter Golden reveals how enterprises can deploy effective AI at the edge with right-sized hardware, lower costs, and even better performance than cloud alternatives.
Immersion Cooling: Revolutionizing AI & Edge Computing
Allyson Klein and Jeniece Wnorowski welcome Mohan Potheri of Hypertec to explore how immersion cooling slashes energy use, shrinks data-center footprints, and powers sustainable, high-density AI, HPC, and edge solutions on this Data Insights episode.
Agentic AI in Engineering: From Vision to Workforce Transformation
At the crossroads of Synopsys and Microsoft innovation , agentic AI is no longer a future vision – it’s a catalyst for technical acceleration and a redefinition of engineering roles.
Ansys + Rohde & Schwarz: Hardware Meets Virtual Cities
Through digital twin modeling and hardware testing, this Ansys and Rohde & Schwarz collaboration empowers developers to optimize RF systems in lab environments with real-world fidelity.
Stanford’s Daniel Wu on Trust, Agents & the Future of AI
From agentic and embodied AI to trust and human capacity, Stanford’s Daniel Wu shares how infrastructure and intentionality will shape the next era of AI transformation.


