Latest Interviews
Showing 61–75 of 892 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Milken Institute28 min
Future of Storytelling: A Conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs & Darren Walker | Global Conference
Laurene Powell Jobs, Darren Walker, Davis Guggenheim
Former Ford Foundation president Darren Walker has assumed the role of CEO at Anonymous Content, a strategic move intended to restore the studio's institutional stability following the grief-stricken vacancy left by founder Steve Golan. Walker and board member Lorraine Twohill position the leadership transition as a response to an evolving media landscape characterized by evaporating legacy revenue and a critical distribution bottleneck, leveraging the studio's independence from private equity to fund long-term, high-risk storytelling. Together, the new leadership emphasizes a renewed focus on human-centric narratives that bridge physical and digital divides, aiming to reset industry confidence through projects that prioritize universal resonance over activist didacticism.
Tom Mueller: SpaceX's #1 Employee Built the Merlin Engine. Now He's Building Impulse Space
Former SpaceX founding employee Tom Mueller founded Impulse Space to revolutionize intra-orbital transport with its fleet of advanced spacecraft, including the orbital transfer vehicle Mira and the heavy-lift Helios. The company leverages proprietary Nova Light alloy and additive manufacturing to produce the Deneb hydrocarbon engine and lightweight composite tanks, achieving performance metrics that could significantly boost payload delivery to the Moon and Mars. Currently advancing lunar infrastructure efforts through successful rendezvous tests and an active lander contract bid, Impulse Space combines in-house manufacturing with AI-driven design to support a future lunar economy.
- All-In Podcast30 min
Bill Ackman: Here's What the Market is MISSING
Bill Ackman, Chamath, Jason, David
Howard Ackman outlines a strategic evolution at Pershing Square toward concentrated long-term holdings in high-quality businesses, leveraging deep board involvement to counteract market short-termism and capitalize on undervalued legacy tech giants amidst AI-driven disruption. His approach extends to late-stage founder-led ventures like SpaceX and XAI, which he values through a venture capital lens of people and opportunity, while simultaneously repurposing the Howard Hughes Corporation into a "Berkshire 2.0" model that utilizes real estate cash flows to fund an insurance float for tax-efficient capital compounding. Ackman further explains how social media dynamics now enable persistent narratives to influence valuations, supporting a three-vehicle investment structure that includes a royalty-based management company, a public discount vehicle, and a transformed real estate holding to deliver sustained growth over decades.
- All-In Podcast32 min
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar: IPO, AI Rivalries, New Device, and Spending $100B+ on Compute
OpenAI's CFO Sarah Fryer announced a historic $122 billion fundraising round and detailed a strategic pivot toward a 50-50 split between consumer and enterprise revenue while managing a global compute deficit through a $1 billion Michigan data center and diversified cloud partnerships. With ChatGPT serving over 900 million weekly users and a new "agentic" hardware interface set for release, the company aims to leverage vast user data to build a potent advertising model that prioritizes user intent and memory without compromising output neutrality. Looking ahead to 2030, OpenAI projects that rising infrastructure costs will be offset by improved model efficiency, maintaining its position as a single foundational AI utility across multiple global markets.
- Goldman Sachs26 min
The AI Investment Boom: When Will It Pay Off?
Jim Covello, Alison Nathan, George Lee
In a Goldman Sachs Exchanges episode recorded on May 26, 2026, Jim Cabello and George Lee analyze the divergence between surging AI technology and unproven economic returns. Cabello admits previous misjudgments regarding consumer adoption and hyperscaler spending patterns while warning that the current exclusive profitability of semiconductor firms creates an unsustainable market dynamic. The dialogue concludes that without evidence of enterprise-scale profitability within the next two years, the industry faces a potential correction where hyperscaler stocks are poised to outperform if capital expenditure moderates or profit distribution shifts upstream.
- Bank of America22 min
Inflation and the inflation markets
Mark Capleton, Stephen Juneau, Alessandro Infelise-Zhou, Meghan Swiber
Strategists attribute the current surge in US inflation to Iran-related energy shocks, supply chain pressures, and AI-driven capital expenditure, while noting weaker fiscal stimulus compared to the pandemic era has kept demand-side inflation subdued. Although the Federal Reserve is likely to hold rates until labor market signals improve, forecasts now suggest a first 50-basis-point cut will not occur until the second half of 2026, whereas the Euro Area and UK anticipate earlier ECB rate hikes in mid-2025 followed by a slower cut cycle starting in 2027. Market positioning has shifted to short duration and long risk assets despite underpriced tail risks from prolonged conflict, as five-year inflation expectations remain anchored and European real rates continue to support a bullish bond stance.
- a16z33 min
The New Rule for Picking AI Winners | The a16z Show
Frontier AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI are currently outpacing the combined revenue growth of major tech giants, with a projected collective run rate of $200 billion driving valuations toward $100 billion by September. While current enterprise adoption remains largely efficiency-focused, supply chain constraints are expected to persist until late 2028, preventing an oversupply bubble despite the rapid scaling of $5 trillion in data center capital expenditures. As venture strategies pivot to securing market leaders in a shrinking startup half-life, the industry is poised for a structural shift where dominant AI entities redefine public market dynamics and consumer engagement over the next decade.
- Y Combinator24 min
Why Two IIT Engineers Turned Down $550K Jobs To Build A Startup
GigaML, a Y Combinator-backed startup founded by IIT Kharagpur alumnus Varun and his Stanford-educated co-founder, has pivoted from EdTech to developing AI agents that achieve 60% to 70% support deflection rates for major clients like DoDash and DoorDash. The company addresses the enterprise bottleneck of manual configuration by launching "AI forward deployed engineers" that automatically iterate policies to improve business metrics, a strategy enabled by their "0.1% talent" recruitment philosophy and heavy reliance on human-coded expertise rather than sales teams. By leveraging the YC trust network to secure early contracts with eight-person operations, GigaML aims to unlock broader enterprise AI adoption through a generic automation layer that eliminates the need for extensive human engineering resources.
- Goldman Sachs34 min
‘Complexity is Our Friend’: James Brocklebank on Advent's Private Equity Strategy
James Brocklebank, Alison Mass
James Brockelbank details Advent's $100 billion strategy of navigating complex regulatory environments in Europe and expanding into Asia-Pacific through a focus on transformational carve-outs and pure private equity specialization. Facing slowed exit realizations, the firm has integrated proprietary AI tools like "Advent GPT" into its investment committees while shifting toward strategic buyers to manage capital returns. Brockelbank emphasizes that despite these technological advancements, deep human relationship-building and a culture of "healthy paranoia" remain the critical differentiators for identifying high-quality opportunities in volatile markets.
- Milken Institute28 min
Building a Brand in Midlife: A Conversation with Daphne Oz and Molly Sims | Global Conference 2026
Daphne Oz, Molly Sims, Loretta Lynch, Tara Hernandez O, Weronna Choi, Dorina Arellano Gonzalez Van Cleveen
At the 2026 Milken Global Conference, Molly Sims detailed her strategic expansion of WISE Beauty, a skincare brand securing $15 million in Series A funding to address the unmet needs of women aged 35 and older through a hero-focused product philosophy. Complementing the brand's growth with a rigorous "hire slowly, fire fast" culture and advanced AI integration for operational efficiency, Sims also launched her podcast *Lipstick on the Rim* to provide transparent industry insights outside traditional gatekeeping channels. Simultaneously, Daphne Oz introduced her *The Mothership* podcast to counter negative narratives about female misery, collectively positioning both entrepreneurs as key drivers in redefining the economic and emotional landscape for midlife women.
- Milken Institute31 min
Conversation with Eldridge Ind. CEO Todd Boehly & MassMutual CEO Roger Crandall | Global Conference
Todd Boehly, Roger Crandall, Dani Burger
Industry leaders from MassMutual and Eldridge contrast their long-duration, policyholder-aligned ownership models against traditional banking systems to demonstrate the strategic advantages of private capital in financing U.S. infrastructure and mitigating maturity mismatches. While both firms address risks related to credit cycles and AI disruption through rigorous capital structure controls and multi-model technology partnerships, they emphasize their capacity to withstand liquidity shocks that threaten short-term financial vehicles. These perspectives highlight a shifting landscape where insurers act as the primary stabilizing capital source for the economy while adapting antiquated legacy systems to meet modern digital consumer expectations.
- Milken Institute26 min
Investing in Hollywood’s Connective Cultural Power: Eva Longoria & Kevin Yorn | Global Conference
Eva Longoria, Kevin Yorn, Rebecca Keegan
Eva Longoria and Kevin Glickman discuss a shifted investment landscape where successful ventures require rigorous operational execution rather than celebrity names alone. Longoria highlights her high-ROI successes with Siete Foods and John Wick, while Glickman emphasizes the critical need for protecting intellectual property and leveraging enterprise relationships in AI and cross-industry deals. Together, they outline a future where "hyphenate" talent must pair storytelling with proven business discipline, relying on specialized operators to ensure financial viability and authentic market conversion.
- Jane Street30 min
Jane Street on GPUs, Trading, and Hiring: A Conversation with Dwarkesh
Jane Street, Dwarkesh Patel, Ron Minsky, Dan Pontecorvo
Jane Street executes a multi-tiered trading strategy that balances nanosecond-scale FPGA execution with long-horizon AI models while transitioning to a disaggregated global network featuring a $6 billion compute partnership with CoreWeave. The firm prioritizes model architecture diversity and custom hardware, including ARM and NVIDIA infrastructures, to navigate high-noise financial data without relying on single foundation models. This approach is supported by a hiring strategy focused on scarcity-driven talent acquisition and a human-in-the-loop philosophy that maintains critical judgment during complex market anomalies.
- Milken Institute39 min
International Security: Innovation, Investment, and Partnerships | Global Conference 2026
David Trulio, Christopher Coons, Eric Schmidt, Adam Smith, Chris Coons
Panelists including Eric Schmidt, Senator Chris Coons, and Representative Adam Smith argue that the war in Ukraine has exposed the critical need for the U.S. to replace expensive, traditional military assets with autonomous drones and AI-driven systems to secure a cost-effective deterrence against adversaries. To overcome entrenched bureaucratic inertia and fiscal constraints, the group advocates for bipartisan legislation like the SPEED Act, expanded co-production with international allies, and a workforce shift toward technical innovation over four-year degrees. These strategic adjustments aim to leverage the agility of private sector competitors against legacy defense primes while ensuring American technological leadership in an era of algorithmic warfare.
- Y Combinator29 min
Zepto: How Two 17-Year-Olds Built India's Largest Seller Of Fruits and Vegetables
Aadit Palicha, Jared Friedman, Keval
Founded in 2020 by college dropouts Adit Ayyal and Keval Karia, Zepto revolutionized India's grocery sector by pivoting from a WhatsApp-based service to a proprietary 10-minute dark store delivery model. Operating as a massive logistics and supply chain network, the company now manages over 200,000 jobs and delivers tens of millions of monthly orders while leveraging AI to optimize forecasting and advertising revenue. With current expansion plans targeting India's top 50 cities, Zepto aims to replicate the scale of major global retailers like Walmart and cultivate a domestic consumer goods ecosystem.