During a recent podcast hosted by Dwarkesh Patel, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reflected on his long-standing career at the company—a journey spanning over 34 years—and the deep-seated passion that has fuelled his commitment.
When asked what he would do if he ever had to leave Microsoft, Nadella’s initial instinct was a firm declaration: he would never leave.
“If you did ever leave Microsoft, what company would you start?” Patel inquired. Nadella responded with his characteristic blend of humour and pragmatism, “Company I would start…? Man, that’s where the company man in me says that I’ll never leave Microsoft,” before expanding on his broader vision.
However, just seconds into the conversation, he entertained an intriguing alternative. Nadella mused that if he were to depart from Microsoft, he would harness “tokens per watt per dollar”—a cutting-edge metric revolutionizing AI efficiency—to drive innovations in under-resourced fields such as healthcare, education, and public sector institutions.
“I would work with tokens per watt per dollar,” Nadella explained, outlining his vision for applying this emerging metric in sectors that remain critically underserved.
He elaborated that TPDW—where “tokens” denote the amount of work an AI model accomplishes, “dollar” represents the cost of running the model, and “watt” measures the energy consumed—captures the ideal balance between energy, compute power, and intelligence. According to Nadella, this “sweet spot” isn’t just a measure of AI efficiency; it is a game-changing formula that could drive GDP growth and redefine how we measure economic productivity.
Expanding on his point, Nadella noted, “To me, the driver of economic growth, which I think is the ultimate goal of any general-purpose technology, is to be able to bring together this nexus between computer and energy.”
He believes that by harnessing TPDW in areas such as healthcare, education, and public services, both nations and companies could transform technological advancements into real-world benefits—improving outcomes in education, healthcare, and beyond. This innovative approach, he added, might even enhance the global competitiveness of multinational companies.