Latest Interviews
Showing 436–450 of 1,991 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Milken Institute59 min
Energy Transition to Energy Addition | Global Conference 2025
Daniel Yergin, Mohammad Abunayyan, Mohamed Al Hammadi, Ana Cabral Gardner, Amos Hochstein, Vineet Mittal
A high-level panel of energy leaders and policymakers warns that global energy discourse has pivoted from "transition" to "addition" as AI-driven demand accelerates, exposing critical bottlenecks in grid infrastructure and supply chain resilience. Key figures from the US, Middle East, India, and mining sectors agree that meeting these surging needs requires a diversified portfolio combining nuclear baseload, natural gas, and renewables while avoiding a "race to the bottom" in critical mineral standards. Strategic outcomes emphasize immediate investment in grid modernization, off-grid data center solutions, and an "alliance network" to decouple from single-source dependencies without triggering geopolitical isolation.
- Y Combinator1h 1m
Alexandr Wang: Building Scale AI, Transforming Work With Agents & Competing With China
Meta has committed to investing over $14 billion in Scale AI, valuing the company at $29 billion while appointing Alexander Wang to lead its new AI superintelligence lab. Under Wang's direction, Scale is pivoting from its origins in data labeling to building agentic workflows for enterprise and government sectors, leveraging proprietary data and specialized fine-tuned models to differentiate in a fragmented market. The partnership aims to accelerate scientific breakthroughs and develop military applications like the Thunderforge system, positioning the company to manage a future economy where human operators oversee swarms of autonomous AI agents.
- a16z54 min
Former Microsoft Executive on Apple’s Hidden China Problem
Erik Torenberg, Steven Sinofsky
Tim Cook led Apple's strategic shift to Chinese manufacturing in the 1990s, creating a high-precision supply chain ecosystem that enabled the creation of premium devices like the iPhone while fostering advanced local capabilities now utilized by global competitors like BYD. Facing rising geopolitical risks and supply chain fragilities exposed by the pandemic, Apple is now diversifying production to India while maintaining a distinct AI strategy that prioritizes privacy and edge integration over first-mover speed. Experts warn that future hardware production may return to the U.S. through high-automation facilities, yet unresolved intellectual property tensions and regulatory fragmentation in AI remain critical challenges for global technological development.
- Milken Institute49 min
Author Talk: Kevin Kwan, "Lies and Weddings" | Global Conference 2025
Kevin Kwan, Curtis S. Chin, Chris Tucker, Tiana, John Panatti
Author Kevin Kwan returns to the Milken Institute Global Conference to discuss his latest novel, *Lies in Weddings*, which uses a family drama format to critique intergenerational wealth inequality and racial stereotypes. Kwan outlines the stalled progress of the *Crazy Rich Asians* film sequels while detailing the active development of an HBO Max series, a Broadway musical, and new film adaptations of his other works. He concludes by advocating for underrepresented creators to own production infrastructure to sustain diverse storytelling and shares insights on his upcoming film projects and new literary directions.
How Browserbase Raised $67.5M to Power AI Agents & Vibe Coders
Paul Klein IV, John, Bucky Moore, Turner Novak, Jeff Lawson, Patrick Collison, Guillermo Rauch, Molly
BrowserBase has secured a $40 million Series B funding round led by Notable Capital to expand its infrastructure platform that enables AI to control web browsers at scale. This investment, which brings the company's total capital to $67.5 million just 15 months after its founding, supports the launch of the "Director.ai" agent builder and a rapid team expansion from 25 to 50 employees. With a customer base now exceeding 1,000 entities and a product strategy focused on bridging the gap between legacy web systems and AI automation, the company aims to dominate the infrastructure layer for autonomous agents.
- Sequoia Capital49 min
The Breakthroughs Needed for AGI Have Already Been Made: OpenAI Former Research Head Bob McGrew
Bob McGrew, Stephanie Zhan, Sonya Huang
Bob McGrew defines 2025 as the "year of reasoning," a pivotal shift where immediate compute utilization and tool-augmented chain-of-thought capabilities drive rapid progress toward AGI while pre-training faces diminishing returns. This paradigm reframes post-training as a behavioral challenge and positions AI agents to democratize intelligence by pricing services at compute costs rather than professional market rates. Consequently, economic value accrues to application layers requiring proprietary enterprise context, while sectors ranging from robotics to software engineering transition to hybrid human-agent workflows that leverage these new efficiency gains.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
Strengthening Communities: Corporate Philanthropy, Social Capital, & Resilience | Global Conference
Melissa Stevens, Nicole Anderson, Lynette Bell, Mary Culler, C.D. Glin, Jean Oelwang
Representatives from PepsiCo, Truist, AT&T, Ford, and Virgin Unite convened at the Milken Institute's "Toward a Flourishing Future" conference to outline strategies for strengthening community resilience against a surge in global disasters and deepening social fractures. These leaders detailed a shift toward enterprise-wide mobilization that leverages corporate assets, data analytics, and long-term pre-competitive partnerships to address food insecurity, disaster recovery, and the digital divide. The panel emphasized that sustainable impact requires multi-year funding horizons, internal employee alignment, and the repositioning of trust as essential infrastructure for systemic change.
- Milken Institute1h 3m
In Service of a Healthier Tomorrow | Global Conference 2025
Esther Krofah, Gregory Case, Judy Faulkner, Robert Ford, Pablo Legorreta, Ellen Sigal, Greg Case
Leading industry figures including Epic's Judy Faulkner and Aon's Greg Case outline a strategic roadmap for the US healthcare ecosystem to reach 2035, aiming to resolve systemic tensions between biomedical innovation and workforce deficits through widespread AI automation and GLP-1 cost management. The panel identifies critical risks such as proposed 40% cuts to NIH funding, FDA staffing reductions, and regulatory bottlenecks that threaten to undermine US leadership in global life sciences despite breakthroughs like xenotransplantation. Concluding that hope is not a strategy, the consensus calls for immediate cross-sector collaboration to align incentives, secure foundational research funding, and modernize infrastructure to prevent China from seizing global health dominance.
- Milken Institute59 min
Countdown: Improving Military Readiness for the 21st Century| Global Conference 2025
Susan Eisenhower, Joe Dunford, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, Mara Karlin, Kevin Rudd, James Stavridis
Amidst a volatile global environment dominated by nuclear competition between the U.S., China, and Russia, American military leaders warn of critical readiness deficits stemming from budget stagnation, aging infrastructure, and a shrinking recruitment pool. While the U.S. retains a strategic advantage through its alliance network, the lack of direct crisis communication channels with Beijing and China's rapid modernization create urgent risks of miscalculation and escalation. Experts argue that restoring competitive advantage requires a substantive 3% to 5% real budget increase and a fundamental strategic shift from counter-terrorism to multi-domain great power conflict.
- a16z1h 30m
Adam Neumann: This is How You Build Iconic Companies
Adam Neumann, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg
Following WeWork's 2019 collapse, former founder Adam Neumann formed a strategic partnership with investors Ben Horowitz and Mark Pincus to launch Flow, a vertically integrated real estate platform designed to resolve modern housing isolation and workforce fragmentation. The venture employs an asset-heavy model centered on proprietary technology and a "citizen-centric" approach, evidenced by a successful $300 million Saudi Arabia pilot that achieved over 90% occupancy within 60 days. By aligning risk and rewards immediately between Neumann and his backers, Flow aims to scale its ecosystem of managed physical communities globally to serve as a holistic alternative to traditional remote work and fragmented housing markets.
Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board
Alfred Lin, Cameron McCord, Stephen Slattery, Steven, Molly
Nominal, a dual-use hardware engineering platform founded by ex-Anduril and SpaceX veterans Cameron McLaughlin and Steven Koon, has secured a $75 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners after a rapid 10-day diligence process. The company's "continuous hardware testing" strategy unifies R&D and operations through cloud-native tools like DeltaQual, addressing a critical market gap for agile iteration in sectors ranging from defense to advanced mobility. With total capital now exceeding $100 million, Nominal plans to expand its team beyond 100 employees and become the ubiquitous standard for hardware validation across top defense primes and commercial OEMs.
- Milken Institute1h 1m
Addressing the Financial Headwinds Faced by Gen Z and Millennials | Global Conference 2025
Cheryl Evans, Kahlil Byrd, Catherine Collinson, Alexis Crow, Dorothy Kelly, Sylvia Kwan, Dot Kelly
This event convenes financial experts to analyze the structural erosion of intergenerational mobility and the acute debt burdens facing Gen Z and Millennials amidst shifting macroeconomic headwinds. Speakers highlight the convergence of student loan defaults, AI-driven workforce disruptions, and a growing distrust of traditional financial institutions as primary drivers of contemporary wealth inequality. The discussion concludes by outlining adaptive strategies for wealth preservation, including policy interventions for loan forgiveness, values-based investing, and the urgent integration of financial literacy to mitigate long-term economic vulnerability.
- Milken Institute1h 2m
Unstoppable or Untenable? Unfolding India's Growth Outlook | Global Conference 2025
Maneet Ahuja, Anjula Acharia, Alok Agarwal, John Chambers, Vinod Giri, Atul Keshap
Driven by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of inclusive growth and the "Three Cs" framework, India targets becoming the world's third-largest economy by 2025 and the number one economy by 2047 through strategic expansions in manufacturing, semiconductors, and digital infrastructure. This transformative trajectory is bolstered by a $450 billion startup ecosystem, a surge in electronic exports under "Make in India" schemes, and a deepening U.S.-India partnership that prioritizes critical technology collaboration and a potential free trade agreement. While facing execution challenges across its 28 states and environmental risks, the nation's leadership anticipates scaling per capita income to $10,000 to sustain its ascent as a dominant global hub for AI, luxury branding, and innovation.
- Milken Institute57 min
Crypto's Wild Ride: The Great Debate | Global Conference 2025
Nicole Valentine, Sebastian Bea, Zoe Cruz, Dante Disparte, Mary-Catherine Lader, Caroline D. Pham, Ivan Soto-Wright
Industry leaders and regulators converge to redefine digital assets from speculative experiments into essential global infrastructure, with figures like Zoe Cruz and Dante Disparte highlighting stablecoins as the "digital dollar" for cross-border payments. Regulatory shifts led by CFTC Chair Caroline Pham establish a dual-track framework that separates fraudulent unbacked tokens from tokenized real-world assets to unlock a projected $2 to $5 trillion market by 2030. The consensus among panelists from Coinbase, MoonPay, and Uniswap foresees a 2025 pivot where automated financial protocols and Bitcoin as a strategic reserve become invisible yet ubiquitous utilities replacing legacy banking rails.
- Milken Institute1h 1m
Europe Reimagined: Investment, Innovation, & Competition for Future Markets | Global Conference 2025
Daniel Finkelstein, Matthieu Courtecuisse, Mathias Dopfner, Timo Haas, Martha Lane-Fox, Heiko Thoms
Over 30 pharmaceutical companies warned of a €100 billion capital flight unless the EU addresses regulatory uncertainty, prompting officials like Heiko Toms to propose "Omnibus" packages that prioritize competitiveness over the Green Deal. Panelists including Matthias Döpfner and Axel Springer CEO highlighted a critical 30% AI productivity gap driven by risk-averse culture and rigid labor markets, calling for a €500 billion infrastructure fund to unlock domestic capital and correct market fragmentation. Meanwhile, defense leaders outlined a strategy to triple German spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2029, framing dual-use technology integration as essential for both national sovereignty and civilian economic revival against global competitors.