Author: Rucha Gavaskar

Rucha Gavaskar

Short Bio

Rucha Gavaskar works in Treasury and Chief Investment Office engineering at JPMorgan, with a career rooted in both enterprise financial infrastructure and early-stage startup ecosystems across India and the United States. She is the co-host of Distilled, an invite-only artificial intelligence community based in New York City connecting founders, researchers, and technical operators. As an independent researcher and writer, Rucha publishes Second Draft, a Substack newsletter exploring the economic structures, market dynamics, consumer adoption, and infrastructure costs shaping modern artificial intelligence. In her article "Who's Really Paying for Your Cheap AI?" for the October 2026 issue of ENTECH Magazine, she breaks down the hidden unit economics, compute subsidies, and infrastructure trade-offs powering today's generative AI models.

Extended Bio

Rucha Gavaskar operates at the intersection of finance, technology, and artificial intelligence — a vantage point that gives her a unique perspective on the economics powering the AI revolution. By day, she works in Treasury and Chief Investment Office engineering at JPMorgan, where she builds and maintains the financial infrastructure that underpins one of the world's largest financial institutions. Her career spans both enterprise financial systems and early-stage startup ecosystems across India and the United States, giving her a rare combination of deep technical expertise and broad entrepreneurial perspective.Beyond her corporate role, Rucha is deeply engaged with the AI community. She is the co-host of Distilled, an invite-only artificial intelligence community based in New York City that brings together founders, researchers, and technical operators working at the cutting edge of AI. Through Distilled, she fosters conversations that connect the people building AI with those studying its implications — creating a space where technical depth meets strategic thinking.As an independent researcher and writer, Rucha publishes Second Draft, a Substack newsletter where she explores the economic structures, market dynamics, consumer adoption patterns, and infrastructure costs that are shaping modern artificial intelligence. Her writing is grounded in data and informed by her experience in financial systems — she doesn't just ask what AI can do; she asks what it costs, who pays for it, and whether the economics are sustainable.This lens is on full display in her article "Who's Really Paying for Your Cheap AI?" for the October 2026 issue of ENTECH Magazine, where she breaks down the hidden unit economics, compute subsidies, and infrastructure trade-offs that make today's generative AI models possible. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the real cost of the AI tools they use every day.As an author for ENTECH Magazine, Rucha writes for engineers and product managers building AI-powered products, for investors trying to understand the economics of AI infrastructure, for policymakers grappling with the implications of subsidized compute, and for anyone who believes that understanding the economics of technology is just as important as understanding the technology itself.

Primary Beats

• AI Economics - The Hidden Costs of Intelligence
• Market Dynamics & Consumer Adoption of AI 
• Enterprise Financial Infrastructure & Technology
• Startup Ecosystems & AI Communities