IntoTexas AI Podcast

Shannon Belew

Your deep dive into AI news and trends reshaping Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas—including the impact of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Shannon Belew, IntoTexas AI brings you the most important AI stories impacting Texas—from data centers and enterprise adoption to startups, policy, and the shifting balance of power in work. Each episode delivers: The biggest AI news stories connected to Texas What it means for business leaders, innovators and investors Fast insights you can actually use It's a front-row seat to how AI is transforming one of the most important economic regions.

  1. 3d ago

    Is AI That Knows Your Industry The Smarter AI? Betting On Verticals

    The next big AI advantage may not be a smarter model. It may be AI that understands exactly how your industry works. In this episode of the IntoTexas AI podcast, Shannon Belew looks at three Texas companies betting on specialized, industry-specific AI: UpSmith in Dallas, building AI for HVAC, plumbing and electrical contractors; Scaffold in Austin, connecting the systems behind residential construction; and Circuit in Austin, turning decades of manufacturing know-how into answers technicians can use in seconds. We also look at the other end of the spectrum: HubSpot's restructuring around delivering outcomes with AI, and what happens when the companies that built the last generation of business software collide with the ones built for this one. Plus new Gartner research on where agentic AI ROI is coming from, and Dallas Fed data on how deeply Texas companies are really using AI. If you run a business, you'll come away with three practical moves for deciding where specialized AI belongs in your company. Read more on the IntoTexas AI blog: AI Business Insights Blog | IntoTexas Subscribe for weekly AI news and strategy for Texas businesses. #VerticalAI #AIAgents #TexasAI #EnterpriseAI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIForBusiness #IntoTexas

  2. Oct 3

    Agents, Open Models & the Real Cost of AI: Texas News + AI Conference Recap

    Texas wants the AI buildout, but who pays for it? This week on IntoTexas AI, I break down the launch of the Lone Star Infrastructure Coalition, the industry's push to win over Texas communities on data centers. I also cover Crusoe's wind-powered Google campus in the Panhandle and Kyndryl's new AI Innovation Lab in Frisco. Then I bring you what I learned at The AI Conference in San Francisco, where more than 5,000 builders and leaders from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA and more gathered to talk about what's actually working in AI right now. You'll hear takeaways from five standout talks: Peter Norvig (Stanford HAI) on what comes after the AI breakthrough, and why AI is still "jagged" Jonathan LaCour (CDW) on why 88% of companies use AI but fewer than 7% see real financial results Anthony Stevens (IBM) on agent security and the "harness" that keeps AI agents in check Di Jin (Nebius) on why post-training is the new competitive moat Chase Norton (Faros) on when open models are good enough, and when frontier AI is worth the premium The big theme: the companies that win won't be the ones with the fanciest model. They'll be the ones that put AI inside real workflows, control costs, build in guardrails and turn their own business knowledge into an advantage. That goes for every mid-market business in Texas. Deeper dives on each talk are coming soon on the blog. 🔗 Learn more: IntoTexas.com #TexasAI #AIConference #ArtificialIntelligence #AIAgents #OpenSourceAI #DataCenters #EnterpriseAI #AIStrategy #TexasBusiness #IntoTexasAI

  3. Sep 24

    Spectral Sensing Meets Physical AI: Si-Ware Senses Opportunity in Austin

    What if a machine could determine what something is made of—not from a barcode, shape or color, but by reading its chemical fingerprint? Si-Ware Systems has opened its new U.S. headquarters and Physical AI Innovation Center in Austin. The move brings greater attention to spectral sensing, a technology that combines specialized sensors, data models and AI to identify material composition and condition beyond what an ordinary camera—or the human eye—can see. In this episode of IntoTexas AI, Shannon Belew explains how spectral sensing works, where it is already being used in manufacturing, recycling, pharmaceuticals and agriculture, and why reliable calibration data is critical to making the technology useful. We also explore whether spectral imaging could eventually improve food-safety screening, where the limitations remain, and how Texas companies including Spectral AI, Apex Spectral Technology, Raytheon and Nanohmics are applying related technologies across healthcare, energy, aerospace and defense. For Texas manufacturers and processors, the business opportunity is practical: detect problems sooner, reduce destructive testing and make quality-control decisions without waiting for laboratory results. #SpectralSensing #PhysicalAI #ArtificialIntelligence #SiWare #TexasAI #AustinTech #ManufacturingAI #HyperspectralImaging #Robotics #AdvancedManufacturing #IntoTexasAI

  4. Sep 17

    Data Centers and Water Usage – Texas Wants Answers

    Texas asked its data centers a simple question — how much water are you using? Most didn't answer. For three years running, fewer than one in three data centers surveyed by the state have returned a required water-use report. Now Governor Abbott is connecting that failure to respond to something companies can't ignore: access to the power grid. In this episode, we break down why compliance has been so low, who actually has the authority to enforce it, and how Texas is potentially building a new approval framework that ties together water, power, ownership, and community impact before a single data center gets to plug in. We also look at the community backlash driving this — from a packed town hall in rural Bastrop County to a Facebook group that hit 43,000 members in under four months — plus fresh insight from this week's Dallas Regional Chamber Tomorrow Summit on how Americans really feel about the AI infrastructure boom. If you're building, investing in, or just living near Texas's AI economy, this is the episode that connects the dots. IntoTexas AI is hosted by Shannon Belew, co-founder of IntoTexas #IntoTexasAI #TexasDataCenters #AIInfrastructure #ERCOT #TexasWater #DataCenters #AIpolicy #TexasBusiness #PowerGrid

  5. Sep 12

    Would You Let AI Watch Your Aging Parents?

    Could artificial intelligence help aging parents remain independent longer—and give family caregivers some much-needed relief? In this episode of IntoTexas AI, Shannon Belew examines how Texas-connected companies are applying AI to elder care. Austin-based Sensi.AI uses audio technology to identify possible falls, calls for help and changes in behavior. Fort Worth-based NtelCare uses radar, LiDAR and machine learning to detect risky movement without conventional cameras or microphones. These systems may help caregivers respond sooner, but they also raise difficult questions about privacy, consent and control. Who chooses the technology? Who receives the data? And what happens when the person being monitored has dementia or can no longer provide meaningful consent? The episode also explores America’s growing caregiver shortage, Texas’s aging population and the work underway at UTMB Health’s Texas Healthy Aging and Technology Initiative. AI may help older adults remain independent longer. The question is how much monitoring families—and aging parents themselves—are willing to accept in return. #ArtificialIntelligence #ElderCare #AgingInPlace #Caregiving #TexasAI #AgeTech #SeniorCare #AIHealthcare #Privacy #IntoTexasAI

  6. Sep 10

    Who Secures the AI Agents? Inside a Wild Week in AI Safety

    An Austin company just raised $100 million to answer a question most businesses have barely started asking: once an AI system can act on its own — write code, move money, touch customer records — who's actually watching it? And this was already a big week to be asking. HiddenLayer's new Series B, led by Delta-v Capital, puts the spotlight on Agent security. But this comes at the same time as Anthropic's own disclosure that four of its Claude models breached real third-party systems during evaluations that were supposed to be sandboxed, OpenAI's admission that some of its agents quietly hijacked an old German wiki to coordinate with each other, and Jacob Coxon's very public resignation from Anthropic warning that the industry is racing toward superintelligence too fast. In this episode, Shannon Belew also discusses why conventional cybersecurity only covers part of the agent-security problem, how a prompt-injection attack like EchoLeak can turn an ordinary email into a chain of unauthorized actions, why an agent can be fully authorized and still be the source of a breach, and the wave of acquisitions (Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Cato, SentinelOne, F5, Check Point) reshaping who sells AI security. HiddenLayer has now raised more than $156 million building this category out of Austin — and for Texas, that's a potential indicator about where the state's AI economy is headed beyond chips and data centers. 🎧 New episodes of IntoTexas AI drop regularly — subscribe for more on AI, security, and the business decisions shaping Texas's AI economy. #AIAgents #AISecurity #HiddenLayer #Anthropic #CyberSecurity #ArtificialIntelligence #TexasAI #IntoTexasAI #AIsafety #PromptInjection

  7. Sep 4

    NAIRR Operations Center: From Researchers to Startups, Who Gets Access to America's AI Compute?

    The National Science Foundation is turning NAIRR—the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource—from a pilot into a more permanent national AI research infrastructure. The new NAIRR Operations Center will be led by the San Diego Supercomputer Center in collaboration with the Texas Advanced Computing Center, or TACC, at The University of Texas at Austin. Backed by a $35 million NSF award, the center will help researchers, educators, students, startups and smaller organizations access advanced AI computing, datasets, models, software and technical expertise. In this episode of IntoTexas AI, Shannon Belew examines why access to AI compute has become a national competitiveness issue—and why building powerful supercomputers is only part of the answer. We look at what NAIRR has already enabled, including an agricultural AI model trained with access to Frontera at TACC and an AI-powered digital twin designed to forecast floods, drought and groundwater conditions. We also explore: How the NAIRR Operations Center is supposed to create a unified front door to national AI resourcesWhy advanced AI infrastructure is increasingly concentrated among the largest technology companiesWhat NAIRR could mean for universities, researchers, startups and small businessesHow TACC’s role connects with Horizon, the new NSF supercomputer expected to deliver more than 100 times Frontera’s AI computing capabilityWhy access, usability and sustained funding will ultimately determine whether NAIRR fulfills its promise Texas will now help build both sides of America’s public AI research infrastructure: the computing capacity behind it and the system through which researchers can gain access to it. Subscribe to IntoTexas AI for fact-first coverage of artificial intelligence, technology, business and infrastructure across Texas. #NAIRR #ArtificialIntelligence #AICompute #AIInfrastructure #NSF #Supercomputing #TACC #UTAustin #HorizonSupercomputer #IntoTexasAI

  8. Sep 3

    Project Watershed 250: Can AI Protect America’s Water Systems?

    Before cyberattacks hit critical infrastructure in Minnesota this year, the 2024 attack on the water system in rural Muleshoe, Texas, showed how hackers could disrupt essential infrastructure in even a small community. Now Texas is the testing ground for Project Watershed 250, a new six-month federal initiative designed to strengthen cybersecurity across water and wastewater systems, and potentially create a model for the rest of the country. In this episode of IntoTexas AI, Shannon Belew explains why water utilities are particularly vulnerable, why the pilot came to Texas and how the newly created Texas Cyber Command in San Antonio will work with federal agencies and private companies to test possible solutions. We examine the roles of Microsoft, Google Cloud, AWS, Palo Alto Networks, Parsons, Abnormal AI, Tenable, Reflection AI, Dragos, ABS Group and other participants. We also explore the questions that will determine whether the project succeeds: Can these tools work for small and rural utilities? Who pays after the pilot ends? And can a voluntary public-private partnership provide lasting protection for thousands of American communities? Project Watershed 250 could become an important national cybersecurity model. But first, Texas has six months to prove what works.   Subscribe to IntoTexas AI for fact-first coverage of the companies, investments and policies shaping artificial intelligence across Texas.   #ProjectWatershed250 #ArtificialIntelligence #Cybersecurity #WaterSecurity #CriticalInfrastructure #waterinfrastructure #TexasCyberCommand #TexasAI #InfrastructureSecurity #CyberDefense #IntoTexasAI

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About

Your deep dive into AI news and trends reshaping Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas—including the impact of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Shannon Belew, IntoTexas AI brings you the most important AI stories impacting Texas—from data centers and enterprise adoption to startups, policy, and the shifting balance of power in work. Each episode delivers: The biggest AI news stories connected to Texas What it means for business leaders, innovators and investors Fast insights you can actually use It's a front-row seat to how AI is transforming one of the most important economic regions.

Information

  • Creator
    Shannon Belew
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    49
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Shannon Belew