Latest Interviews
Showing 931–945 of 1,932 interview transcripts.
Clear all filters- a16z30 min
Fireside Chat with Sean Duffy
Amada Health, rebranding as Raising Health, recently celebrated reaching one million patients by leveraging a proprietary dataset of 25 million messages to deploy AI that augments care teams while addressing the limitations of GLP-1 medications through a dedicated lifestyle track. Co-founder Sean Duffy highlights how the company evolved from skepticism about "provider without clinics" into a foundational digital infrastructure that utilizes artificial empathy to mitigate provider shortages and lower long-term healthcare costs. By pivoting from pure software replication to a hybrid tech-life sciences model, the organization now positions itself as an essential "between-visit" partner capable of offloading longitudinal management from overwhelmed primary care clinicians.
- The Economist21 min
How AI is generating a revolution in entertainment
Alfie, Ankit, Tobias, Harry Yeff, Marcus Hutton, Tom Wainwright
The event details how artificial intelligence is reshaping the music, film, and entertainment industries through data-driven discovery, generative creation tools, and predictive analytics like Cinelytic. While these technologies promise trillions in economic growth and lower barriers for under-resourced creators, they simultaneously spark significant labor disputes over job displacement and intense legal battles regarding copyright and consent. Stakeholders remain divided on whether these advancements will ultimately enrich human creativity or lead to a market flooded with derivative content.
- Goldman Sachs35 min
Uncharted territory: Navigating a ‘geopolitical recession’
Jared Cohen, Ian Bremmer, Allison Nathan
Former State Department official Jared Cohen and political analyst Ian Bremmer describe a global "geopolitical recession" where domestic political pressures in the US and China have eroded traditional governance, creating a credibility deficit that forces all sectors into the crossfire of great power rivalry. While the Middle East conflict has isolated Washington and empowered Iran, strategic stabilization has emerged in US-China relations driven by Beijing's economic fragility, leaving a leadership void that can only be partially filled by climate cooperation. The speakers advise businesses to abandon pure efficiency for "intellectual efficiency," targeting geopolitical swing states like India and the Gulf nations to navigate an era defined by fragmented trade blocs and supply chain weaponization.
- a16z39 min
Safety in Numbers: Keeping AI Open
DeepMind and Meta researchers established foundational scaling laws proving that balancing compute between model parameters and dataset size optimizes performance more effectively than simply increasing model scale. Building on these insights, Mistral AI leveraged Sparse Mixture of Experts architectures to deliver open-source models like Mixtral that match the performance of proprietary giants while reducing inference costs by six times. Founder Arthur Mensch advocates for application-level regulation rather than model restrictions, arguing that open-source collaboration accelerates safety and drives the industry toward specialized, efficient AI ecosystems.
- a16z23 min
Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Capitalized on a significant mapping gap where seabed resolution lags far behind celestial charts, the maritime sector is undergoing a digital and hardware revolution driven by urgent regulatory and geopolitical needs. Companies are adapting space-age engineering to replace analog workflows with autonomous vessels and synchronized seafloor topography, addressing critical vulnerabilities exposed by recent supply chain disruptions. This shift creates a multi-billion dollar opportunity for entrepreneurs to layer software onto hardware platforms, transforming an industry that handles over 55% of global GDP while overcoming decades of operational friction.
- a16z22 min
Big Ideas 2024: AI Interpretability: From Black Box to Clear Box with Anjney Midha
In 2024, a16z partners led by General Partner Anjane Mita prioritize mechanistic interpretability to shift the AI industry from observing model outputs to understanding the specific features and "head chefs" driving decision-making. This strategic pivot aims to transform AI explainability into an engineering discipline that enables precise model controllability and reliable deployment in critical sectors like healthcare and finance. By addressing scaling challenges through advanced autoencoders and combinatorial reasoning, the industry seeks to replace fear-based regulation with empirical evidence of model behavior.
- Goldman Sachs33 min
Asset allocation outlook: The case for greater portfolio diversification in 2024
Christian Mueller-Glissmann, Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, Alison Nathan
Goldman Sachs Research and Asset Management teams project a 2024 landscape defined by a strategic rotation out of underweight cash holdings toward a rebalanced 60-40 equity-bond mix to capitalize on normalizing inflation and renewed diversification benefits. While the U.S. economy is identified as late-cycle with a 30% recession probability, the firms recommend extending fixed income duration, utilizing equity put options for downside protection, and increasing exposure to private markets and real assets to navigate persistent structural inflation and AI-driven productivity divergence. This comprehensive strategy aims to achieve a soft landing by hedging against rising credit delinquencies and supply pressures while actively capturing alpha in a higher-rate environment where zero-interest rates are not expected to return.
- Goldman Sachs28 min
Focus on financials: Why banks and asset managers are constructive about the economy in 2024
Richard Ramsden, Alex Blostein, Alison Nathan
Financial institutions now anticipate a soft landing with reduced recession risks, driven by stable deposit flows and a shift toward a higher-for-longer interest rate environment. While commercial lending stagnates due to tightened underwriting and regulatory capital requirements, the private credit sector is expanding rapidly as non-bank lenders absorb displaced loan demand. Concurrently, banks are fortifying reserves against commercial office real estate exposure and navigating a contentious regulatory framework that could further compress traditional intermediation while accelerating industry consolidation.
- a16z24 min
2024 Big Ideas: AI-First Games That Never End with Jonathan Lai
A16Z partner Jonathan Lai forecasts a 2024 shift toward "AI-native" games that utilize Large Language Models to create dynamic, non-repeating narratives and lifelike companions rather than merely accelerating development. While current studios leverage AI for efficiency, new entrants are poised to disrupt the $200 billion market by pioneering subscription-based models designed to manage the variable costs of real-time generative processing. This evolution promises to reinvent core mechanics across genres, transforming static experiences into emergent worlds where players interact with adaptive agents.
- Goldman Sachs26 min
Middle East risks
Edward P. Djerejian, Emile Hokayem, Alison Nathan
Former U.S. Ambassador Edward Jerijian and IIS Senior Fellow Emile Hokeyem analyze how the October 7th attacks successfully recentered the Palestinian cause while triggering a broader regional conflict involving Iran-aligned groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Experts warn that although Hamas has achieved its goal of ending the marginalization of Palestine, Israel remains committed to its military destruction while facing significant risks of miscalculation due to Hezbollah's involvement and disruptions to global oil flows. The prevailing consensus identifies a two-state solution as the only viable long-term resolution, yet current Israeli political constraints and the absence of credible Palestinian leadership render such a framework impossible in the immediate future.
- a16z35 min
Launching a New Category with Modern Treasury's Dimitri Dadiomov
Dimitri Dadiomov, Seema Amble, Dmitry Dadimov
Launched in 2018 by Dmitry Dadimov, Sam Aaron, and Matt Marcus, Modern Treasury addresses complex payment reconciliation challenges by providing a unified platform that bridges developer APIs with financial dashboards. The company initially targeted early-stage startups with a "three-legged stool" architecture combining bank integrations and manual oversight tools before securing its first client through personal networks. By coining the "Payment Operations" category and prioritizing deep product mastery over competitive tracking, the founders established a defensible market position that evolved from manual reconciliation into a standardized infrastructure solution.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
M&A in 2024: Navigating opportunities and challenges
Stephan Feldgoise, Mark Sorrell, Allison Nathan
Following a 2023 period defined by valuation misalignments and high interest rates, the M&A market is experiencing a surge in dialogue and specific sector activity driven by resilient natural resources, healthcare, and stable industrial performance. While private equity deal volume has contracted due to financing costs, corporate buyers have maintained robust activity and public-to-private transactions have reached record levels to address pressure on portfolio monetization. Looking ahead to 2024, experts anticipate a normalization of interest rates and reduced inflation will catalyze a rebound in technology deals and strategic spinoffs, with international activity expected to trail the US market by several months.
- a16z25 min
Big Ideas in 2024: Programming Medicine’s Final Frontier with Jorge Conde
Jorge Conde of a16z Bio + Health proposes "programming medicine" as a paradigm shift that reuses delivery platforms like SpaceX rockets to accelerate the development of genetic therapies beyond traditional bespoke drug cycles. This approach, validated by the recent FDA approval of a CRISPR-based sickle cell treatment achieved in just over a decade, aims to transform biological manufacturing through regulatory adaptability and engineering precision. Despite current hurdles regarding permanent safety, complex logistics, and multi-million dollar costs, the strategy seeks to apply exponential scaling to reduce treatment prices from millions to thousands of dollars for broader patient access.
- Bank of America23 min
Lessons in Leadership: Holly O’Neill & Former Bank of America Vice Chair Anne Finucane
Former Bank of America Vice Chair Anne Finucane, who retired in late 2021 after pioneering the bank's sustainable finance strategies, now serves as Chair of Rubicon Carbon to advance rigorous carbon offset solutions alongside former EPA head Gina McCarthy. Her leadership journey, which spans local government, broadcasting, and global banking, emphasizes distilling complex issues and combining capitalism with scientific rigor to fund clean energy in emerging markets. Finucane applies this experience to advocate for social justice and climate action in 2024, leveraging her network to drive private capital toward global challenges while promoting humble, listening-based leadership.
- a16z24 min
Big Ideas in 2024: Democratizing “Miracle Drugs” with Julie Yoo
Andreessen Horowitz partners project that democratizing miracle drugs like GLP-1s and cell therapies will define 2024, driven by a massive eligible U.S. population and the urgent need to prevent healthcare system insolvency. While these programmable medicines offer curative potential, their current exorbitant costs and complex logistics create severe friction in financing, manufacturing, and clinical operations. The industry is responding with 2024-focused innovations in industrialized biomanufacturing, fintech risk-spreading instruments, and real-world data infrastructure, all while awaiting necessary regulatory adaptations from the FDA and CMS.