Latest Interviews
Showing 1–15 of 3,131 interview transcripts.
- The Economist7 min
Why China and America see AI differently | The Economist
While over 80% of the Chinese public maintains an optimistic view of AI driven by decades of technological progress, significant structural anxieties persist among tech workers facing age discrimination and mass layoffs. In response, authorities have launched a five-year monitoring strategy utilizing real-time data on power usage and payment flows to detect early signs of workforce disruption and preemptively stabilize the labor market. Despite these proactive government interventions aimed at balancing innovation with social stability, experts remain skeptical about whether retraining programs can match the rapid scale of AI-driven economic shifts without triggering explosive instability.
- a16z24 min
AI Is Learning to Hack. Faster Than We Expected.
Joel De La Garza, Dylan Ayrey, Feross Aboukhadijeh
Frontier AI models are actively executing sophisticated supply chain attacks by exploiting under-resourced package registries like NPM and leveraging leaked credentials to self-propagate malware. This shift, driven by explicit training on cybersecurity challenges, has accelerated the attack lifecycle to outpace traditional patching, prompting industry responses such as NPM's mandate for human-interactive authentication by 2027. Despite these defensive measures, a critical consensus remains that the industry must address the moral obligations of model labs and the unsustainable reliance on volunteer maintainers to prevent 2026 from becoming the defining year of automated software compromise.
- Y Combinator56 min
How To Design In The Agent Era
Led by Stephen Haney, Paper is an AI-native design platform currently ranking as the third most-used tool behind Figma and Sketch, utilizing a native HTML and CSS rendering engine to facilitate precise agent collaboration. The application distinguishes itself by treating code as the single source of truth, offering features like direct React component handoff and an MCP server that allows autonomous agents to manipulate local repositories and design canvases. While the team prioritizes human curation to maintain design quality against common AI aesthetic pitfalls, the platform is rapidly evolving into a visual coordination layer for the broader agent ecosystem by integrating tools like Paper Shaders and multi-model image generation.
- Goldman Sachs8 min
Why US Stocks May ‘Grind Higher’
Ashok Varadhan, Mike Washington
Goldman Sachs co-head Ashok Baradhan forecasts equities will continue to "grind higher" despite recent volatility driven by war tensions, Fed rate concerns, and AI leverage unwinding, predicting a V-shaped tech recovery and S&P 500 new highs. Baradhan diverges from current market pricing by asserting interest rates will remain on hold through year-end as inflation recedes, while maintaining a constructive outlook on credit spreads and dismissing short-term currency interventions. The firm recommends investors stay fully invested with a target energy price below $70 per barrel to support U.S. yields and productivity gains, pending validation from upcoming jobs and inflation data.
- Goldman Sachs32 min
Steven Tananbaum: The Evolution of Credit Investing and AI Opportunities
Steven Tananbaum, John Waldron, Steve Tenenbaum
GoldenTree Asset Management founder Steve Tenenbaum outlines current credit market risks driven by AI adoption, noting widened spreads for entities like SpaceX alongside his firm's evolution from post-2008 distress turnaround strategies to targeted 3.0 platform acquisitions. He details the firm's disciplined investment process, which prioritizes specific catalysts and strict asset coverage ratios to navigate complex environments like the 2020 oil services and European bank sectors where the firm generated billions in returns. Looking forward, Tenenbaum identifies dispersion caused by AI disruption as a key driver for new opportunities in private credit, software, and 30-year TIPS while emphasizing the necessity of rigorous process discipline over complex narratives.
- a16z46 min
How Open Source Became AI's Backbone | Inferact with a16z
Elena Burger, Matt Bornstein, Simon Mo
VLLM serves as a critical inference engine for over half a million GPUs, bridging the gap between research and production by collaborating with hardware vendors and model labs to ensure day-zero compatibility for over 1,000 architectures. The platform addresses the industry's shift toward open-weight models by providing granular control over performance tiers, data retention, and guardrails that proprietary APIs often restrict. Looking forward, VLLM advocates for an ecosystem where open and frontier models become indistinguishable in capability, with infrastructure innovation focusing on optimization speed and algorithmic efficiency rather than mere data sourcing.
- The Economist6 min
Who’s really running Iran? | The Economist
David Rennie, Dr Sanam Vakil, Sir Simon Gass
Following a decapitation campaign by U.S. and Israeli forces that eliminated Iran's supreme leader and three layers of military command, the regime is navigating an existential survival war under the succession of the ailing Mojtaba Khamenei. Despite the loss of key figures like Ali Larijani, a consensus-based vote by 12 of 13 Supreme National Security Council members in June confirmed a unified commitment to signing a new MOU driven by rational forward defense rather than irrational hatred. Although the IRGC currently holds increased influence, the system faces critical uncertainty regarding Mojtaba's ability to replicate his predecessor's patronage network while managing severe health issues and a shifting political balance.
- Goldman Sachs16 min
Energy Disruptions Are Here to Stay
Amid escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and Russia, the oil market has stabilized around $80–$85 for Q3 as investors focus on fundamental product deficits rather than headline volatility. While crude supply shocks have been partially mitigated by Russian export growth and strategic stockpiles, severe tightness in diesel and heating oil inventories threatens to sustain elevated prices through winter. Market analysts project a potential price dip to the $70s in Q4 if diplomatic progress occurs, though a significant supply response is unlikely before 2027 due to the long timeline required to rebuild global inventories.
- The Diary Of A CEO1h 40m
Man Who Owns 4% Of All Bitcoin: His Final WARNING To Everyone Who Doesn't Own It | Michael Saylor
The speaker leveraged artificial intelligence to engineer a novel financial instrument that secured $15 billion in capital, enabling their company to acquire 847,000 Bitcoin while navigating saturated traditional equity markets. By framing Bitcoin as a sovereign asset immune to government seizure and contrasting its 33% annual appreciation against the historical depreciation of fiat currency, the presentation advocates for a shift toward scarce digital resources in an era where AI and robotics promise abundance in utilitarian goods. Strategic guidance emphasizes investing in technologies on the steep growth phase of the S-curve, utilizing AI to solve unique problems, and prioritizing applied statistics and history to build long-term resilience against economic volatility.
- Goldman Sachs23 min
Demond Martin on Purpose, Community, and Giving What You Have
Damon Martin, co-founder of the inclusive capitalism venture Well With All, launched the company to address health disparities after a personal crisis revealed how lack of resources could have led to tragedy for his younger self. Drawing on his 21-year investment career and deep mentorship under Erskine Bowles, Martin now argues that "friends of the good" form the essential foundation for overcoming the epidemic of loneliness described in his new book. He advocates for rejecting the "self-made" myth in favor of building vulnerable, value-driven communities to drive both personal success and societal healing.
- Goldman Sachs26 min
How AI Debt Is Reshaping Credit Markets
Amanda Lynam, Zach Ablon, Allison Nathan
Global credit markets have shifted as AI-driven debt issuance from hyperscalers and the broader ecosystem now dominates supply, reaching nearly $500 billion year-to-date in 2026 alone. This unprecedented concentration is reshaping the Investment Grade landscape by skewing duration weight toward tech giants like Amazon and Google, while simultaneously testing market absorption limits and driving spread widening among insurance investors. As traditional US IG capacity approaches a $510 billion ceiling, the financing void is forcing a structural pivot toward private capital, non-USD jurisdictions, and alternative vehicles like project finance to sustain the multi-trillion-dollar AI investment cycle.
- Y Combinator36 min
The Case For Data Centers In Space
Philip Johnston, Mark Mandelmann
Founded by Philip Johnston in 2024 and backed by a $170 million Series A from Benchmark, StarCloud has emerged as YC's fastest-growing unicorn by pioneering orbital data centers to bypass terrestrial energy constraints. The company successfully launched its first satellite in November 2025, deploying custom-modified GPU hardware and thermal management systems to run AI models like Gemini while utilizing automotive-grade components to mitigate radiation risks. With plans to scale to 88,000 satellites by 2028 and deploy high-bandwidth compute for government and hyperscale customers, StarCloud aims to eventually generate terawatts of processing capacity through partnerships with SpaceX and NVIDIA.
- a16z10 min
The Ocean Company - Ulysses | a16z American Dynamism
Will O'Brien, Akhil Voorakkara, Jamie Wedderburn
Ulysses has pivoted from a demand-constrained startup to a supply-limited entity capitalizing on the global E-AI super cycle to build a 24/7 autonomous robot network comparable to satellite constellations. The company leverages its modular vehicle architecture and in-house manufacturing to deliver cost-effective solutions for critical sectors including offshore restoration, defense mine countermeasures, and undersea infrastructure security. With a strategic vision to dominate the ocean domain within 15 years, Ulysses directly addresses the inadequacy of traditional military investments by deploying asymmetric, autonomous systems against threats ranging from naval mines to cable sabotage.
- a16z9 min
The Future is Metal - Mariana Minerals | a16z American Dynamism
Founded by former Tesla executive Turner Caldwell, Mariana Minerals is deploying a vertically integrated, software-first strategy to reclaim Western control over critical mineral supply chains dominated by Chinese refineries. The company recently entered the Utah copper market by acquiring the struggling Copper One asset, where it rapidly implemented autonomous haul trucks and replaced legacy manual processes with its proprietary Mariana OS to validate operational efficiency in just 150 days. This approach aims to revitalize San Juan County while establishing a scalable model for future resource extraction on Earth, the Moon, and beyond.
- Sequoia Capital47 min
Chai Discovery's Bitter Lesson: Drug Design Is Another Scaling Problem
Josh Meier, Matt McPartlon, Pat Grady, Sonali Singh
Chai Discovery is industrializing drug discovery by deploying a simplified, AI-driven infrastructure that replaces traditional trial-and-error with scalable molecule design, partnering with major pharmaceutical firms like Eli Lilly and Pfizer rather than managing a full internal pipeline. The company's second-generation model has achieved a 15% binding success rate through diffusion-based generation and a continuous feedback loop from wet-lab experiments, effectively targeting historically undruggable biological structures. By shifting the industry toward computational "last in class" solutions, Chai aims to accelerate development timelines from months to days while ensuring extreme safety and manufacturability at the molecular generation stage.