Latest Interviews

Policy Derby: Rates for the Roses

Mark Cabana, Ralph Axel, Katie, Mark Capleton, Yamada, Ivan, Ronald Man

Recent central bank communications from the Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of Canada, and Bank of England have shifted global rate expectations toward potential increases or prolonged tightening driven by persistent inflation and oil prices. BofA strategists analyze these diverging stances to forecast bear flattening or steepening curves, while warning that fiscal risks and liquidity dynamics in the US Treasury market may further impact asset valuations. Ultimately, the analysis suggests a complex interplay where hawkish signals from the Fed and BoC contrast with dovish adjustments in the UK, creating volatility for sovereign yields and foreign exchange interventions.

Payroll call

Ralf Preusser, Aditya Bhave, Mark Cabana, Alex Cohen, Shruti Mishra, Aditya Parve

The April 8, 2024, U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls report revealed a resilient labor market with back-to-back job gains that narrowed the divergence between establishment and household surveys. In response to these findings and persistent inflation data, Bank of America strategists have revised their Federal Reserve policy forecast to eliminate 2024 rate cuts and shift expectations to mid-2025. Consequently, global fixed-income strategists have adjusted their front-end yield curve positioning to anticipate a higher-for-longer interest rate environment while monitoring upcoming CPI and retail sales data for further confirmation.

Inflation markets

Ralf Preusser, Mark Capleton, Meghan Swiber

Analysts examine the $4 trillion inflation-linked bond market to highlight how fiscal constraints in the UK and Eurozone have created supply scarcity while instrument mechanics drive persistent basis disparities between swaps and cash markets. Despite theoretical stagflation models predicting lower real yields, current data shows a market anomaly where US real yields have risen alongside compressed long-term inflation expectations. Consequently, investors are advised to fade the recent spike in short-term real yields, as this pricing disconnect challenges the Federal Reserve's dual mandate without indicating an immediate risk of unanchored inflation expectations.

Is Defense the Next Trillion-Dollar Category? | a16z American Dynamism Summit

Erin Price-Wright, Michael Duffey, Dino Mavrookas

Saronix is reshaping maritime defense by pivoting to software-driven autonomy that slashes labor requirements from millions to mere fractions while deploying an "IKEA" manufacturing model at its new Louisiana Port Alpha facility. This industrial strategy integrates commercial vessel production to ensure economic sustainability and rapid scaling, directly addressing Pentagon constraints on manufacturing capacity through private capital investment and streamlined acquisition policies. By fostering a robust public-private partnership, the initiative aims to establish a century-long national industrial base capable of supporting both defense needs and global energy dominance.

How Founders Can Build for Law Enforcement and First Responders | The a16z Show

David Ulevitch, Col. Jeffrey Glover, Rahul Sidhu, Colonel Glover

Law enforcement agencies are rapidly transitioning from traditional physical confrontation to AI-driven investigative frameworks that utilize autonomous drones, sensor fusion, and behavioral analytics to prevent crime and optimize resource allocation. This shift is evident in successful interventions where technology de-escalated potential threats and in the adoption of data-driven well-being programs that have reversed historical union resistance to body-worn cameras. Looking ahead, international intelligence sharing and advanced fraud detection are becoming central to a new policing model that prioritizes technical analysis over brute force, requiring developers to deeply understand operational contexts to effectively deploy these inevitable advancements.

Innovation and Inflation: Twin Forces Reshaping Portfolios

Christian Mueller-Glissmann, Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, Alison Nathan

Recorded on May 7, 2026, this market analysis addresses the 2026 stagflationary dynamic where traditional 60/40 portfolios fail to buffer against rising rates while the S&P 500 rallies on heavy technology concentration. Experts identify tactical opportunities in infrastructure and commodity carry strategies to mitigate momentum risks, though they warn that a potential labor market feedback loop or 30-year yield breakout could impose severe constraints on equity valuations. The discussion concludes by evaluating the low-probability risk of an AI positioning unwind alongside structural shifts in private credit leverage.

AI That Designs Its Own Chips: Ricursive's Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini

Anna Goldie, Azalia Mirhoseini

Founded by former leaders from Google Brain, Anthropic, and DeepMind, Recursive Intelligence has deployed its AlphaChip technology to optimize billions of transistors for Google's TPU and Axion lines while adopting by MediaTek. The company currently accelerates chip design by running static timing analysis 1,000 times faster than commercial tools, enabling AI agents to generate curved, organic layouts that reduce wire lengths and cut annual design cycles from months to days. Looking ahead, Recursive plans to democratize custom silicon through a platform model that delivers fabrication-ready layouts without in-house teams, ultimately aiming to vertically integrate design and fabrication into a self-reinforcing loop for frontier AI systems.

Inside the Rise of Autonomous AI Hackers: XBOW's Oege de Moor

Oege de Moor

The presentation argues that the cybersecurity arms race has shifted to autonomous AI attacks, exemplified by an AI agent named XBO that recently achieved global dominance on HackerOne by discovering critical Microsoft Bing vulnerabilities through black-box testing. Because current defensive tools often fail to verify exploitability in live environments, the speaker urges organizations to immediately integrate autonomous AI into their workflows to counter negative exploit velocity before open-weight models close the capability gap within six to nine months. Ultimately, the event posits that future security success depends entirely on adopting AI-driven offensive and defensive systems rather than relying on traditional human-only methods.

Why the Brain Computes 1,000,000x More Efficiently Than A GPU: Unconventional AI's Naveen Rao

Naveen Rao

Unconventional AI CEO Navin Rao is deploying a prototype that replaces traditional von Neumann architectures with nonlinear dynamical systems to overcome the impending energy saturation of current AI infrastructure. By leveraging Kuramoto synchronization models, the startup achieved functional generative capabilities in six months while demonstrating energy efficiency comparable to biological neural networks. This physics-based approach aims to bypass the thermodynamic limits of digital lithography, offering a viable pathway to artificial general intelligence within strict global power constraints.

Starcloud's Philip Johnston: Why the Cheapest Compute Will Be in Space

Philip Johnston

StarCloud CEO Philip Johnston validated the technical feasibility of space-based high-performance computing through the successful "StarCloud 1" mission, which demonstrated thermal management and radiation tolerance while executing AI inference tasks. The company has filed an FCC application for an 88,000-satellite constellation capable of delivering 20 gigawatts of compute power with sub-50-millisecond latency, targeting a $100 billion capital expenditure that becomes economically viable once launch costs drop below $500 per kilogram. While current operations focus on inference workloads, the roadmap envisions future large-scale training structures that could catalyze a transition toward a Kardashev Type 2 civilization within decades.

Why Data Is the Real AI Bottleneck: Flapping Airplanes' Ben and Asher Spector

Ben, Asher Spector

Launched three months ago, Flapping Airplanes is an AI lab founded by Ben, Asher, and Thiel Fellow Aidan Smith that targets data-scarce domains like robotics and scientific discovery. The company differentiates itself through a system-level approach that builds custom hardware-abstraction layers to achieve theoretical 1,000x data efficiency, bypassing the limitations of standard frameworks like PyTorch. This strategy aims to democratize access to advanced AI by overcoming the escalating costs of data acquisition, prioritizing the recruitment of unconventional minds to drive paradigm shifts in system co-design.

How high could the oil price go? | The Economist

Zanny Minton Beddoes, Edward Carr, Mathieu, Henry

Global oil markets face a structural crisis where a 14 million barrel-per-day supply deficit has eroded the "sanguine" expectation of a quick peace deal, creating a price disconnect that literature estimates would require $167 to $460 per barrel to correct. With production gains from non-conflicted regions proving negligible, the market is currently absorbing this shortfall through record-fast inventory drawdowns of 8 to 10 million barrels daily, driven by pre-war shipments and sanctions-induced cargo displacement. As critical buffers for jet fuel and diesel approach minimum levels and logistical constraints lengthen trade routes, the only remaining adjustment mechanisms involve further depletion of commercial stocks or active demand destruction in major consuming regions like Asia.

What America and Iran want from negotiations | The Economist

Amidst a severe trust deficit, US demands for Iran to surrender approximately 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium clash with Tehran's strategic pivot toward leveraging the Strait of Hormuz as a maritime toll mechanism. While pragmatic Iranian officials seek sanctions relief for their damaged petrochemical infrastructure, they remain resistant to ceding missile and drone capabilities that serve as critical regional deterrents. Consequently, the conflict has evolved beyond a narrow nuclear dispute into a broader contest over US-recognized leverage and the potential for a permanent toll system that could alienate American Gulf allies.

Time to Heal: Bring the Hostages Home Now, A Conversation with Noa Argamani | Global Conference 2025

Noa Argamani, Richard Sandler

At the Milken Institute Global Conference, rescued hostage Noam Gamani detailed the lethal conditions and ongoing execution of captives held in Gaza, specifically highlighting the unresolved status of her partner Avi Natan. Gamani, recognized as a 2025 *Time* 100 inductee, urged global leaders to maintain relentless public pressure through visible advocacy to secure a comprehensive negotiation deal for the 59 remaining hostages. She emphasized that the crisis remains an active war zone where daily casualties occur unless immediate diplomatic action addresses the imminent threat of death for those still imprisoned.

A Conversation with Fernando Haddad, Minister of Finance of Brazil | Global Conference 2025

Fernando Haddad, Laura Deal Lacey

President Lula's administration projects a sustainable 3% annual economic growth trajectory through structural tax reforms, a new carbon market, and a Vice Presidential-led reindustrialization plan targeting hundreds of billions in private investment. This domestic strategy is reinforced by a dedicated National Data Center Policy promoting green digital infrastructure and solidified international partnerships under the G20 and BRICS frameworks to drive climate governance and the upcoming COP30 summit. With advanced infrastructure concessions and commitments such as a $34 billion corporate investment package, Brazil positions itself as a secure hub for sustainable capital seeking alignment with its 90% clean energy matrix.