A few days before this conversation was recorded, Himanshu Gupta announced that ClimateAi, the company he had spent eight years building, would close and return unused capital to its investors. ClimateAi helped food and agriculture companies make their supply chains more resilient to extreme weather. It worked with more than 70 of the world’s top 200 food, beverage and agriculture companies, reached over 10 million farmers, and was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2022.

In this episode of Made to DO, Florian Hoffmann sits down with Himanshu in San Francisco’s Presidio. Himanshu grew up in a small town in north India, was the first generation in his family to go to college, and saw a computer for the first time in 2006. Ten years later he was running an AI company. Along the way he became the youngest person to draft the renewable energy chapter of India’s National Five-Year Plan, and he worked with Al Gore and Lord Nicholas Stern on climate economics.

This isn’t a post-mortem. It’s a conversation about where resilience comes from, why Himanshu plans his life in ten-year blocks, what worries him about who benefits from the AI boom, and why he’s now learning by building, starting with a small robot to help his toddler son learn to speak. His conviction runs through all of it: people aren’t left behind by technology. They’re left behind by access to information, access to means, and values.

Key takeaways

1. Plan in ten-year blocks, not quarters. Himanshu spends the first three or four years of each block learning, the next two turning that learning into impact, and the last four compounding it. Short-term wins can happen, but they’re luck, and luck doesn’t repeat.
2. Failure is a necessity, not an outcome. Closing ClimateAi was a deliberate choice. The company had helped create a new category, he had spent his energy building it, and he wanted to give the next few years to his son.
3. Resilience is built early, through exposure and action. His unpopular opinion is that resilience is mostly formed before adulthood. His came from his grandfather, a street vendor who supported a family of 14, and from small tests like being sent to open a bank account alone at age 12.
4. AI’s gains need to reach more people. When value flows to fewer and fewer companies, it stops trickling down to small businesses like his grandfather’s. Himanshu argues for a serious conversation about where AI investment goes, and about the values young people are being rewarded for.
5. Learn by building. Become the mechanic before the engineer. Buy a cheap robot kit, use open-source models, and learn from every debugging session. Each failure compounds into understanding.

Video chapters

0:00 — Opening
1:08 — Meet Himanshu Gupta
2:33 — Intentional or Lucky?
3:43 — Growing Up in a Small Town in North India
6:41 — The Ten-Year Rule
7:58 — Why He Closed ClimateAi
10:59 — The Confidence to Start Again
12:41 — What Real Resilience Looks Like
17:43 — Raising a Resilient Child
19:41 — AI, Wealth and Who Gets Left Out
24:23 — From Changing the World to Becoming a Billionaire
26:24 — Who Can Shift the Incentives?
30:33 — Learning by Building
32:58 — How to Get Started
34:47 — The Next Ten Years
37:47 — What Should We Do More Of, and Less Of?
39:14 — Closing