Latest Interviews

The Evolution of Leadership

Heidi Toribio, Sharanjit Leyl, Marina Mahathir, Michael Owen, Igor Tulchinsky, John Wood

The Milken Women's Leadership Summit gathered industry leaders like John Wood, Marina Mahathir, and Michael Owen to redefine inclusion as active participation and highlight the fusion of data, artificial intelligence, and human resilience in modern governance. Participants addressed the critical need to democratize financial education through initiatives like WorldQuant University while navigating digital scrutiny and leveraging technology to bypass media restrictions in global advocacy. The session concluded with a consensus that future leaders must balance decisive action with long-term ecosystem building, prioritizing transparency and humility as the ultimate measures of character.

Deep Learning State of the Art (2019)

This 2019 lecture analyzes the transition from deep learning's initial breakthroughs to a new era of theoretical development, highlighting the 2018 NLP revolution led by the BERT model and architectural shifts toward Transformers. It details critical advancements in applied domains, including Tesla's neural network-driven Autopilot, NVIDIA's synthetic data strategies, and AlphaZero's success in complex games through self-play. The presentation concludes by evaluating the democratization of training efficiency via tools like FastAI and notes the impending need for fundamental optimization theories beyond standard backpropagation.

The Rise of Blockchain: How To Trust Strangers

Adam Burden, Cory Johnson, Tianmin Liu, Sopnendu Mohanty, Kaidi Ruusalepp

Moderated by Adam Burden, a panel featuring experts from Ripple, Iki Finn, Funderbeam, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore defined blockchain's shift from theoretical trust mechanisms to production use cases that cut settlement times from days to minutes. The discussion detailed specific implementations where Ripple streamlines cross-border payments, Iki Finn traces agricultural supply chains, and Singapore's Project Ubin tests tokenized currency, while highlighting that high-volume transaction integrity remains a technical hurdle. Experts concluded that while the technology offers significant efficiency gains for financial services, supply chains, and government, its widespread adoption depends on resolving regulatory friction and ensuring that governance structures can evolve alongside the code.

a16z Podcast | The Science and Business of Innovative Medicines

Jorge Conde, Vijay Pande, Sonal Chokshi, Vas Narasimhan

Novartis transformed its portfolio through a $50 billion restructuring that divested consumer healthcare to prioritize advanced therapies, data science, and proprietary platforms for cell and gene treatments. Under CEO Vas Narasimhan, the company enforces strict "standard of care" mandates for project approval, integrates market access early in development, and invested $15 billion to own specialized infrastructure while leveraging AI for financial forecasting and pathology analysis. This strategic pivot targets a 10% clinical success rate by shifting from bespoke drug development to modular platforms and dedicated digital innovation centers, positioning the firm to address undruggable targets and future modalities like xenotransplantation.

Cindy Mi and Qi Lu Share Advice for Entrepreneurs Building Global Companies

Cindy Mi, Qi Lu, Chi Lu

Zhangjiakou-native founder launched VIPKid in 2013 to bridge a massive educational supply gap by connecting over 60,000 North American teachers with Chinese students through a scalable, technology-enabled marketplace. The company rapidly achieved product-market fit by prioritizing rigorous efficacy metrics and a "global from day one" operational model that eventually expanded into a Global Classroom offering Mandarin instruction and AI-integrated personalized learning paths. Driven by a leadership philosophy centering on student and teacher success, the organization now envisions an future where artificial intelligence empowers educators to scale impact while cultivating global citizenship.

How China Is Transforming Southeast Asia

Kirk West, Paul Gruenwald, Robin Hu, Jonathan Woetzel, Francis Sock Ping Yeoh

Panelists analyzed the fragility of South China Sea stability, China's Belt and Road Initiative-driven manufacturing shifts, and severe environmental threats like overfishing and plastic pollution across Southeast Asia. While China projects dominance through massive infrastructure spending and trade expansion, experts highlighted significant friction points including lack of local employment, debt transparency concerns, and ongoing geopolitical posturing with the United States. The discussion concluded that sustainable regional growth requires deprioritizing conflict in favor of accelerated infrastructure development, stricter environmental standards, and renewed U.S. engagement through trade frameworks like the TPP.

A Conversation with Howard Marks: Mastering the Market Cycle

Howard Marks, Michael Milken

Investment strategist Howard Marks emphasizes that historical market cycles and human psychology consistently drive asset pricing, challenging the "this time is different" narrative while highlighting the critical importance of valuation over asset quality. His analysis of structural shifts, from the evolution of bond covenants to the rise of passive investing, underscores that risk is cyclically determined by investor sentiment and liquidity rather than economic fundamentals alone. Ultimately, Marks argues that successful capital allocation requires recognizing probabilistic outcomes and maintaining sufficient resources to exploit the extreme fear and pricing inefficiencies that arise during inevitable downturns.

Breaking the Bank: How Asian FinTechs Are Redefining Financial Services

Dan Murphy, Kevin Jacques, Donald Lacey, Akshay Naheta, Simon Paris

The event analyzes the rapid divergence between Asian FinTech markets and legacy systems, highlighting a strategic industry shift from consumer-focused models to B2B platformization and embedded finance. It details how insurance and banking sectors are transforming through IoT data, usage-based pricing, and regulatory consolidation, while capital flows increasingly favor late-stage firms with proven unit economics over early-stage valuations. Finally, the discussion outlines critical success factors for founders and incumbents, emphasizing that long-term partnership strategies and deep regulatory expertise are essential to navigate fragmented global landscapes and avoid commoditization.

Asia's Next Frontier: Building Capabilities for Translational Research

Tanisha Carino, Christiana Bardon, Carl Firth, Annalisa Jenkins, Baiju Shah, Chris Bardone

Faster Cures and Milken Institute convene Asian policymakers and industry leaders to address the critical "Valley of Death" separating basic science from clinical cures across the region's rapidly expanding R&D landscape. The discussion highlights Singapore's strategic shift toward translational funding and data infrastructure, China's accelerated regulatory reforms, and the Harrington Project's hybrid model designed to bridge skill and capital gaps for high-burden diseases. While genomic initiatives and reimbursement changes promise to modernize access, the session concludes that overcoming cultural barriers in patient advocacy and workforce specialization remains essential for translating scientific knowledge into effective patient treatments.

Deep Learning Basics: Introduction and Overview

The MIT course "Deep Learning for Self-Driving Cars" leverages the `deeplearning.mit.edu` platform and Google Colaboratory to guide students through fundamental architectures like CNNs and GANs while utilizing TensorFlow and PyTorch frameworks. It contextualizes the field's evolution from 1940s perceptrons to modern AlphaGo and BERT, emphasizing that current success relies on the synergy of massive datasets, specialized hardware like TPUs, and open-source tooling. Despite these advancements, the curriculum critically examines limitations in general intelligence and robustness, urging the integration of human oversight to navigate ethical challenges and transition the technology from the peak of inflated expectations to practical productivity.

Of Tweets and Trade: U.S. Outlook

Gerard Baker, Christine BN Chin, Carlos Gutierrez, Gilbert Kaplan, Frank Luntz, Gil Kaplan, Steve Oaken, Ralph Simon

A panel of economic experts and policymakers analyzed the Trump administration's shift from multilateral to bilateral trade negotiations, citing Section 301 investigations against China and the renegotiation of NAFTA as strategies to counter state-sponsored intellectual property theft. While polling data reveals that 81% of the audience believes these policies damage global growth, experts like Frank Luntz and Christine Chin warn that the prevailing anti-trade sentiment stems from automation-driven job displacement rather than trade deficits alone. The discussion concluded that future economic frameworks must integrate new social buffers and educational initiatives like the "Education Moonshot" to address the structural challenges of the 21st-century workforce in the Indo-Pacific region.

Artificial Intelligence, Real Impact

Ralph Simon, Ayesha Khanna, Virginie Maisonneuve, Humera Malik, Nadia Thalmann, Vikesh

A panel convened by McKinsey and industry leaders projects that artificial intelligence will inject $13 trillion into the global economy by 2030 while driving massive infrastructure expansion and transforming key sectors like healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. The discussion highlighted divergent regional trajectories where developed nations capture the bulk of value, yet emphasized urgent adoption strategies in China and emerging markets through specialized education mandates and IoT integration. Despite concerns regarding algorithmic bias and the current limitations of narrow AI, the consensus forecasts a near-term future where government subsidies and competitive pressure force the comprehensive operational integration of AI across all major organizations.

CryptoCurrently: How Virtual Currencies Went from Mania to Mainstream

Laura Deal Lacey, Andrew Peaple, Bill Barhydt, Ron Cao, Karen Chen, Sam Englebardt, Jeffrey Lin, Dorji Sun

Experts including Bill Barheit, Sam Engelbart, and Karen Chen project that the cryptocurrency market will mature from speculative retail activity into a $500 billion to $1 trillion asset class driven by institutional equity investment and regulated infrastructure over the next three to four years. The panel forecasts a strategic pivot toward utility-based applications, such as tokenized real-world assets and security tokens, while advocating for regulatory frameworks that focus on intermediaries rather than the underlying "ones and zeros." Success in this evolving landscape depends on the convergence of technological scaling via Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake protocols, the adoption of custodial standards by traditional banks, and a regional shift toward governance-heavy business models in both global and Asian markets.

Investing for the Long-Term

Ian Martin, Sophia Cheng, Azmil Zahruddin Raja Abdul Aziz, Michael Rolland, Tom Tull

Representatives from Texas ERS, OMERS, Kazana National Fund, and Cathay Financial convened to discuss capital management strategies for institutional pools exceeding $700 billion in combined assets. The panelists detailed shifts toward alternative asset allocation and direct private investments to counter demographic aging, low-interest rate environments, and rising market valuations. Key discussions highlighted the tension between strict ESG governance and financial performance, alongside the necessity of avoiding crowded markets through bilateral deal relationships and active risk management.

Hacking Health: The Future of Humankind

Jeannette Ickovics, Jeremy Cao, Julien de Salaberry, Christopher Hall, Joseph Wong, Lihan Zhou, Chris Hall, Lee Han, Julian DeSalveri, Ritesh Maishuri, Laura Entwistle, Mark Blythery, Dan Galpin

Industry leaders from organizations including Fitbit, BGI, and Meraxis convened to analyze the projected $18 trillion global health spending landscape, with a specific focus on Asia's unique demographic challenges and rapid digital health growth. The event highlighted how strategic innovations in genomics, AI-driven wearables, and early cancer detection are driving a critical shift from curative to preventative care models while navigating complex regulatory environments across diverse Asian markets. Participants emphasized that future success depends on integrating high-tech solutions with empathetic delivery, securing investment through intellectual property and execution speed, and addressing ethical gaps in genetic privacy and mental health.