Latest Interviews
Showing 751–765 of 3,496 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Milken Institute56 min
Rising Strong: Los Angeles' Path to Recovery | Global Conference 2025
Michelle Stevenson, Elex Michaelson, Karen Bass, Lindsey Horvath, Cinny Kennard, Evan Spiegel
Hosted by the Milken Institute on January 12, a panel of Los Angeles officials and philanthropists assessed recovery efforts following the January 7, 2024 wildfires that destroyed over 16,000 structures. While Mayor Karen Bass and County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath highlighted rapid debris removal and AI-driven permit processing as key successes, the discussion also addressed systemic hurdles including insurance underwriting bottlenecks and infrastructure fragmentation across the region's 88 cities. With Governor Newsom requesting $39 billion in federal aid and philanthropists like Evan Spiegel pledging long-term support, the event emphasized balancing accelerated rebuilding timelines with rigorous safety standards and regional consolidation strategies.
- a16z46 min
Building AI Systems You Can Trust
Following a fifteen-year career optimizing traditional machine learning and leading AI divisions at Intel, the speaker identified that enterprise adoption of generative AI is hindered by a critical trust gap rather than a lack of raw performance. This insight drove the founding of Distributional, a platform that replaces marginal optimization with distributional testing and holistic monitoring to detect behavioral shifts in non-deterministic, agentic systems. By shifting focus from atomic metrics to continuous validation of complex workflows, the company enables organizations to centralize operations, mitigate operational risks like hallucination, and scale reliable AI applications.
How Whop Is Making $1.2+ Billion For Creators
A lean engineering team of 15 to 20 staff has scaled WAP to a $1.2 billion GMV run rate and $108 million in monthly creator transactions by leveraging AI agents and a "rebuild over refactor" philosophy. Backed by high-profile investors including Peter Thiel and a16z, the platform is transitioning from a sneaker bot marketplace into a full-stack creator economy with a "Content Rewards" program driving over 5 billion views across emerging markets. The company now targets a $10 billion GMV valuation by expanding its developer ecosystem and global payment infrastructure while rejecting traditional junior engineering roles in favor of autonomous, senior-level technical leadership.
- 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
A diverse panel of financial experts from institutions including Ellevest and the Transamerica Institute examines the distinct economic headwinds facing Gen Z and Millennials, highlighting a severe wealth gap where Baby Boomers control 65% of assets against 13% for younger generations. The discussion details how structural shifts in the economy, rampant student loan defaults, and AI-driven job transformations are eroding intergenerational mobility and forcing many young adults into precarious financial positions due to caregiving duties. Panelists recommend immediate industry interventions such as employer-integrated debt-to-wealth platforms and personalized financial education to mitigate the risk of long-term wealth stagnation as the Great Wealth Transfer progresses.
Rippling vs. Deel Lawsuit: WTF Happens Now? The Future of the Late Stage Private Market
Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
The Chime S1 filing reveals an expected IPO valuation of $10 billion to $12 billion, a significant drop from its $25 billion private peak driven by regulatory reliance on the Durbin Amendment and potential investor ratchet protections. This event reflects broader venture market shifts where financial services firms prioritize public listings for scalable capital while AI adoption threatens traditional SaaS moats by commoditizing core applications. Concurrently, corporate strategies are pivoting toward aggressive settlements in legal disputes and structural transitions like OpenAI's move to a Public Benefit Corporation to navigate governance and profitability challenges.
- Milken Institute59 min
The Roadmap to Longevity | Global Conference 2025
Gadi Schwartz, Dan Buettner, Laura Deming, Richard Isaacson, Eric Verdin, Vonda Wright
Panels including Dan Buettner, Laura Deming, and Dr. Eric Verdin emphasized a paradigm shift from extending mere life span to maximizing health and brain span through lifestyle interventions that determine 93% of longevity outcomes. While no single "hack" exists, experts project that combining optimized nutrition, walkable urban design, and emerging precision medicine could push healthy life expectancy to 90–95 years, with the first FDA-approved longevity drug anticipated within the next five years. Despite this potential for breakthrough therapies, the consensus highlights a critical funding crisis threatening US biomedical research and calls for systemic reforms to democratize access to preventive care rather than reactive sick care.
How Altimeter's $10B AUM Fund Is Investing In Aerospace, Defense, & Hardtech
Erik Kriessmann, Molly O'Shea, Eric Chrisman
Altimeter Partner Eric Chrisman, formerly of Index Ventures, leverages his background in venture human capital to execute a concentrated investment strategy that targets "fewer, better" ideas in defense, aerospace, and automation. The firm recently backed high-conviction portfolio companies like Anduril, K2 Space, and Base by capitalizing on large early-stage checks to build significant ownership stakes in sectors driven by talent density and mission-oriented leadership. By rejecting traditional diversification in favor of massive toehold investments, Altimeter aims to secure outlier returns while navigating a capital market environment that increasingly favors private longevity over immediate IPOs.
- All-In Podcast1h 2m
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Sundar Pichai, David Friedberg
Google CEO Sundar Pichai outlined a strategy rejecting the Innovator's Dilemma in favor of expanding information access, citing AI Overviews now serving 1.5 billion users with query lengths doubling as ad revenue achieves parity with traditional search. He detailed a $75 billion capital expenditure plan for 2025 that prioritizes TPU-driven efficiency and addresses critical constraints in global energy generation and workforce availability. Looking toward future paradigms, Pichai forecasts a shift to ambient computing within 15 years while reinforcing Alphabet's structural focus on foundational R&D across DeepMind, Waymo, and quantum initiatives.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
Trust, Truth, and Democracy | Global Conference 2025
Sewell Chan, Max Boot, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Oliver Darcy, Kevin Merida, Jessica Yellin
In a panel featuring journalists such as Max Boot and Kevin Merida, experts analyzed the dual pressures of the Trump administration's legal warfare against the media and billionaire owners' conflicting business interests that threaten editorial independence. The discussion highlighted how algorithmic polarization and the decline of local news have eroded public trust to just 10%, forcing the industry to pivot from mass-reach reporting to collaborative, niche-focused strategies. To navigate this fragmented landscape, the group concluded that future solutions require non-profit structural support, rigorous journalism literacy education, and a strategic emphasis on tangible policy impacts rather than political spectacle.
- 80,000 Hours1h 12m
Don’t Believe OpenAI’s 'Nonprofit' Spin | Tyler Whitmer
On May 5th, OpenAI's leadership announced a proposed conversion from a Delaware LLC to a Public Benefit Corporation, a move critics argue will legally diminish the non-profit's ability to immediately halt unsafe AI releases. The restructuring shifts fiduciary duties to balance shareholder profits with public benefit and removes direct oversight by state Attorneys General, potentially exposing the entity to investor litigation that prioritizes financial gain over safety mandates. To preserve the organization's original mission, experts are urging the integration of the non-profit's Charter into the corporate Certificate of Incorporation and the retention of direct hiring and firing authority over the for-profit board.
OpenAI, SBF & Perplexity: What VCs Know That You Don’t
SBF, Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
Venture capital dynamics have shifted toward extreme concentration and speed, with firms like Sequoia and Tiger Global prioritizing massive stakes in high-conviction AI winners such as OpenAI and Scale AI to offset broader portfolio losses. Simultaneously, corporate strategies are evolving from hyperbolic job replacement rhetoric to gradual operational integration, as companies like Microsoft and Klarna balance aggressive automation goals with the reality of retaining human oversight for complex tasks. This environment is characterized by a contraction in early-stage funding that demands hard traction, while retail access expands through new vehicles despite lingering risks regarding valuation bubbles and liquidity constraints.
- Milken Institute59 min
A New Policy Environment for China | Global Conference 2025
Robin Hu, Fred Hu, Kevin Lu, Robert Rubin, Lu Zhang
Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin joined a diverse panel to critique U.S. reliance on tariffs and structural decoupling while highlighting China's critical need to pivot from investment-led growth to domestic consumption. Discussing the high costs of current trade wars, the group identified inflation and supply chain disruptions as likely drivers for eventual negotiations, even as private equity leaders reorient strategies toward domestic markets and green technology. Ultimately, the dialogue concluded that sustainable resolution requires abandoning containment postures in favor of constructive engagement on shared challenges like AI governance and climate transition.
20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund
After closing a $26 million institutional fund with a 60/40 split of Fund of Funds and entrepreneur limited partners, Harry expanded his portfolio strategy to target 60 diverse companies while integrating Yash Doshi as a full-time operating partner. Drawing on over 350 prior angel investments and lessons from successes like TrueBill and the regret of rejecting Scale AI, Harry advocates for a "decahorn" hunting approach that prioritizes serial founders and accepts high valuations to preserve optionality. Looking forward, the fund is shifting allocations toward hard tech and AI while positioning Mercury for a $2.5 trillion integrated banking market, with plans to scale the portfolio to 150 companies and potentially lead seed rounds.
- 80,000 Hours1h 0m
The cases for and against AGI by 2030 (article by Benjamin Todd)
Benjamin Todd, Dominic Armstrong, Ben Cordell
Major AI leaders including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis have drastically compressed their projected timelines for Artificial General Intelligence to the 2026–2030 window, driven by breakthroughs in reinforcement learning, test-time compute, and agent scaffolding that outpace historical hardware growth. While scaling trajectories suggest GPT-6 size capabilities are affordable by 2028, the race faces critical bottlenecks in energy infrastructure, research talent, and funding that could stall progress before 2030 or trigger explosive economic acceleration if overcome. Experts now estimate a 50% probability of transformative AI emerging within a decade, making the next five years a decisive period for career adaptation and strategic planning.
- 80,000 Hours1h 4m
Did OpenAI truly give up on going for-profit – or is this a trap? (with Rose Chan Loui)
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman announced a structural reversal where the non-profit foundation will retain oversight of the company's for-profit operations by restructuring into a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation. This decision follows intervention by the Attorneys General of Delaware and California, who rejected a prior plan that would have stripped the non-profit of legal control over AI safety development. While the deal eliminates the previous 100x profit cap to satisfy investor demands for standard returns, it leaves unresolved the specific governance mechanisms, such as super voting rights, required to legally enforce the foundation's veto power over cutting-edge AGI initiatives.