June 6, 2026
90% of AI's Power for 10% of the Cost. Is the AI Arms Race a Giant Waste of Money? With Bruce Yang of AgnesAI — Xyonix, AI Consulting & Custom Solutions
Listen
Show notes
Does AI only work for people who can already afford it?
In this episode of Your AI Injection, host Deep Dhillon sits down with Bruce Yang, founder and CEO of AgnesAI, to challenge one of the biggest assumptions in tech right now: that winning the AI race requires near-unlimited resources. Bruce argues that the real opportunity isn't in the markets everyone is fighting over, but in the billions of people being priced out of AI entirely. AgnesAI has earned a spot among the world's top 10 AI labs by delivering top-tier performance at a fraction of the cost of today's leading models.
The conversation explores whether the industry's obsession with scale is creating real value or simply winning benchmark battles, what unchecked AI adoption could mean for the workforce, and whether some of the most important breakthroughs in AI are happening far from Silicon Valley.
Check out some of our related content here:
1. Why Most Companies Are Failing at AI and How to Succeed with Tahnee Perry
2. Will AI Eliminate 90% of QA Jobs? The Future of Testing Automation with Kevin Surace of Appvance.ai
3. Exploring Artificial General Intelligence: Intent, Intellect, and Innovation with Lucas Hendrich of the Forte Group
About Bruce Yang
Co-Founder & CEO of Southeast Asia's Fastest Growing AI Platform, AgnesAI
17M+ Agnes AI users worldwide200K+ Daily active Agnes AI users90% at 10% Top-tier AI capability at a fraction of the costUC Berkeley Computer Science & Mathematics
Bruce Yang has spent his career building at the edge of major technology shifts, from the early social and platform era to today’s race to shape AI. Born in China, educated in Singapore and at UC Berkeley, and now leading one of Singapore’s leading homegrown AI companies, he brings a genuinely international perspective to a field too often framed around just a few power centres. That perspective now drives Agnes AI, the company he founded to make advanced AI more accessible, affordable, and usable far beyond the usual circles of technical insiders and heavily funded markets.
Bruce studied Computer Science and Mathematics at Berkeley and is now pursuing a PhD in AI at the National University of Singapore. Before founding Agnes, he built inside companies that defined an earlier era of tech growth, including Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Fitbit, and also founded startups of his own. Those experiences gave him a clear view of both what high-growth technology can do and who often gets left out of it.
That gap sits at the centre of his work today. Bruce talks about building “AI for the other 99.5%” — a vision that reflects both the scale and the practicality of what Agnes is trying to do.
