Latest Interviews
Showing 1–15 of 6,452 interview transcripts.
- All-In Podcast1h 33m
Midterm Blood Bath, $4T AI Sell Off, Data Center Freeze, What’s Next for Trump
Trump, Chamath, Rick Rubin, Jason, Friedberg
Hosted by Chamath, Saks, and JCal, the 2026 Midterm Election Post-Mortem analyzes the Democratic sweep of Congress driven by the Iran war, surging inflation, and a collapse in President Trump's approval ratings. The discussion outlines a potential redemption strategy focused on ending hostilities to lower costs and explores a looming crisis in AI infrastructure where regulatory moratoriums threaten to halt U.S. data center growth. Additionally, the event highlights OpenAI's theoretical breakthrough disproving the Exponential Time Hypothesis while assessing how federal and state agencies may soon reshape the AI landscape through a complex patchwork of safety mandates and zoning restrictions.
- The Economist7 min
Trump economist: tariffs are “a success” | The Economist
Trump, Pierre Yared, Henry Curr
Effective tariff rates averaging 9% to 10% have raised revenue similar to a consumption tax while spurring manufacturing value added and construction growth driven by AI data centers. Although employment in specific sectors like fabricated metals and chemicals has increased, recent data shows broader manufacturing job declines with real wages failing to keep pace with inflation. Future investment remains robust, fueled by the convergence of the "big beautiful bill" tax incentives, geopolitical supply chain diversification, and ongoing protectionist measures.
Inside WashU's Endowment Fund | SpaceX Made Up 20% of Out AUM | Scott Wilson
Scott Wilson, Harry Stebbings, Lee Fixel
Under Scott Wilson's leadership, the fund's portfolio grew from $8 billion to nearly $20 billion by divesting 37 hedge funds and pivoting to a concentrated strategy where direct and co-investments comprise over half of private assets. The team prioritizes smaller funds and high-conviction individual companies like SpaceX and Cerebras while rigorously avoiding valuation froth in the private market to maintain top-tier peer performance. This structural transformation emphasizes board-level governance for large positions and relies on deep industry partnerships rather than traditional manager introductions to drive returns.
- Y Combinator44 min
How Amjad Masad Saw Vibe Coding A Decade Early
Replit is redefining software development as the foundational platform for the "Self-Driving Company," where proprietary AI agents automate organizational workflows to replace traditional outsourcing and legacy programming. Founder Amjad Masad leverages the company's deep infrastructure history to solve the "loop to completion" problem, enabling non-technical users and enterprises to execute code autonomously while bypassing the hallucinations of earlier models. This strategic shift commoditizes software creation, transforming the industry from human-centric coding to a cloud-based ecosystem where AI agents manage complex tasks with unprecedented security and scalability.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
LSEG CEO David Schwimmer on Capital Shifting Beyond US Markets
David Schwimmer, FX de Mallmann, FX de Melman
LSEG CEO David Schwimmer, drawing on his background as a former Goldman Sachs executive, navigates the transition from "rational" to "irrational complacency" amidst high inflation and geopolitical instability, while capital flows show renewed interest in diversifying beyond the US market. The exchange capitalizes on a revitalized UK IPO pipeline and a strategic focus on data infrastructure to address critical structural gaps in domestic pension funds, leveraging the three-legged AI ecosystem of compute, models, and data. Looking toward the next decade, LSEG plans to simplify financial complexity through natural language interfaces, digitize settlement processes, and decouple capital raising from specific geographies to support a global regulatory framework.
- Goldman Sachs7 min
How the US Midterms May Reshape the Stock Market
Active investors are shifting toward defensive positioning by favoring the S&P 500 excluding AI and the healthcare sector, which combines historical uncorrelation with emerging AI-driven diagnostic growth. While the data center trade has suffered severe valuation compression following underperformance, the market anticipates a rebound as price corrections eliminate overvaluation headwinds. With traditional defensives like consumer staples deemed unattractive due to poor yield metrics relative to bonds, strategy focuses on quality free cash flow generation ahead of the December 9th FOMC decision.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
LSEG CEO David Schwimmer on Where Global Capital Is Moving
David Schwimmer, FX de Mallmann, FX de Melman
In 2018, David Schwimmer led London Stock Exchange Group from a regional operator into a global data and analytics powerhouse by navigating Brexit, corporate governance crises, and activist investor pressure. While current market conditions are marked by potential irrational complacency and capital reallocation away from U.S. equities due to concentration risks, Schwimmer notes that geopolitical instability has temporarily paused this shift. Looking ahead, LSEG aims to become the financial sector's default information service by leveraging AI to simplify market data, while simultaneously addressing structural weaknesses in UK pension markets and driving a robust IPO pipeline through 2027.
- Y Combinator47 min
Bringing Supersonic Flight To The People
Following the termination of a flawed engine partnership with Rolls-Royce, CEO Blake Scholl pivoted Boom to in-house development, assembling a specialized team to solve supersonic sonic boom challenges and unlock a 42-megawatt natural gas turbine for AI data centers. This strategic shift to commercial power generation provided the necessary high-margin revenue and manufacturing capability to secure funding, ending the company's financial instability while enabling rapid aircraft redesigns and a modernized industrial base. By leveraging this turbine venture alongside a complete reimagining of passenger experience and agile digital engineering, Boom now aims to achieve self-sustained supersonic travel while positioning its flexible production capacity for potential national defense applications.
- The Economist35 min
Midterms 2026: the end of the Trump era?
Trump, John Prideaux, Charlotte, James, Shashank
Democrats secured a decisive midterm victory by capturing both chambers of Congress and flipping traditionally Republican strongholds like Texas, driven largely by voter dissatisfaction with economic conditions, perceived corruption, and foreign policy failures. This sweeping defeat fractures Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party while establishing a new Democratic strategy focused on congressional oversight of the administration and corruption investigations rather than immediate major legislation. Looking ahead, the results set the stage for a fundamental reimagining of the Democratic electoral coalition for 2028 and signal a deep internal identity crisis for Republicans as they attempt to redefine the party beyond the MAGA era.
- a16z49 min
Inside Salesforce’s Acquisition Strategy for the AI Era
Salesforce leverages a disciplined M&A framework driven by customer feedback and rigorous security due diligence to acquire 29 companies from its 750 investment portfolio, aiming to fill strategic gaps while retaining talent and accelerating AI capabilities. This approach has transformed Service Cloud into a $11 billion headless platform and accelerated the adoption of outcome-based pricing models following the successful integration of Fin, which now resolves 65% of support tickets autonomously. Despite this growth, leadership warns of an impending market reckoning where overvalued startups lacking sustainable trajectories and robust financial controls face potential failure.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
How Aaru Uses Advanced AI Simulations to Predict Human Behavior
Cam Fink, Ned Koh, Marco Argenti
AARU, a startup founded by Ned and Cam, has achieved a $1 billion valuation by deploying a hybrid AI architecture that fuses large language models with statistical mathematics to predict human behavior across over 130 countries. The platform enables rapid product innovation for CPG and B2B clients by simulating niche demographics without processing personally identifiable information, effectively compressing development cycles from months to weeks. By grounding predictions in public and purchased datasets rather than proprietary client inputs, the company maintains SOC 2 compliance while dynamically updating its simulation engine to reflect evolving cultural and regulatory contexts.
- a16z50 min
How AI Is Turning Figma’s Finance Team Into Builders
Praveer Melwani, Seema Amble, Ivan Makarov, Yvonne
At Figma, Finance Leader Praveer Malwani is transforming the CFO function from operational oversight into a strategic business enabler by deploying generative AI to automate data reconciliation and accelerate decision cycles from weeks to hours. The organization prioritizes hiring intellectually curious "finance engineers" who maintain data integrity and critical thinking to build proprietary automation workflows for credit, corporate development, and investment analysis. While this "automation first" strategy promises to handle static complexity, the team balances rapid prototyping with rigorous data foundations to ensure outputs remain trustworthy as the role evolves toward broader business ownership.
Google Loses $500B in 12 Hours | DoorDash Buys Instacart for $17B | Kalshi Raises $1B
Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
Recent market corrections have shifted the AI narrative from euphoria to tempered expectations as OpenAI and broader sector valuations adjusted while pricing pressures intensified for Anthropic. Amidst these volatility shifts, major corporate maneuvers included DoorDash's consolidation of Instacart and Salesforce's aggressive acquisition strategy to modernize legacy stacks against rising agentic disruption risks. Simultaneously, investment committees like Andreessen Horowitz are recalibrating portfolios to favor high-revenue velocity over speculative valuations, signaling a pivot toward sustainable fundamentals in both software and emerging legal or robotics sectors.
Google Is Putting AI Data Centers in Space. Planet Labs CEO Explains Why
Planet Labs recently launched a pilot project with Google to test the "Suncatcher" concept, which processes satellite data in orbit using Google TPUs to leverage superior solar energy and reduced latency. This strategic shift toward sovereign satellite fleets and advanced in-space compute is driven by surging defense demand, evident in operations supporting Ukraine and monitoring South China Sea activities, while commercial sectors utilize the technology for agricultural optimization and financial intelligence. Beyond immediate military and economic applications, the company's fleet, including the high-resolution Pelican and hyperspectral Tanager satellites, also supports global sustainability efforts and contributes to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life.
- Sequoia Capital32 min
Bringing Continual Learning to Every Company: Trajectory’s Ronak Malde
Ronak Malde, Pat Grady, Lauren Reeder
Trajectory bridges the gap between generic foundation models and domain-specific expertise by enabling true continual learning through a single interface that consolidates training, evaluation, and deployment. The platform achieves this efficiency via novel algorithmic modifications, such as a "group size one" GRPO paradigm and metagrader reward modeling, which allow enterprise clients to optimize custom models from single rollout trajectories without complex simulations. Early deployments with Harvey and Rogo demonstrate the technology's impact, delivering custom legal and finance agents that are six times cheaper and significantly more accurate than open-source alternatives while reducing reliance on expensive frontier models.