Latest Interviews

Global Companies and a New Era of Growth | Global Investors' Symposium Hong Kong 2025

Avril Hong, Hans Dekkers, Tony Fernandes, Éric Martel

Representatives from IBM, AirAsia, and Bombardier convened to outline a strategic framework prioritizing robust data infrastructure as a prerequisite for effective AI adoption in the aviation and aerospace sectors. The panel detailed specific outcomes such as AirAsia's projected 3–4% fuel savings and Bombardier's 93% on-time global parts delivery rate, achieved through predictive analytics and automated supply chain management. Additionally, the discussion emphasized navigating complex regulatory certification hurdles and managing workforce cultural shifts to balance human oversight with AI-driven efficiency.

The chat is out of the bag: a stunning leak

Jason Palmer, Ore Ogunbiyi, Andrew Palmer

On March 21, US officials led by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg faced a major security breach after discussing classified Yemen strike plans and derogatory remarks about European allies in an unsecured Signal group. Meanwhile, Nigerian Senator Natasha Akpoti-Udoha faces a six-month suspension for sexual harassment allegations against Senate President Godswill Akpabio, highlighting systemic barriers for women in Nigeria's male-dominated legislature. In a separate workplace analysis, experts note that idea theft remains a prevalent annoyance, with research suggesting that credit stealers often lack malicious intent yet ultimately suffer reputational damage while modest leaders gain perceived competence.

Medal of Honor Recipients share their stories of courage and leadership

Command Master Chief Britt Slabinski, Captain Florent Groberg, Matt Gibson, Britt Slabinski, Florent Groberg

Goldman Sachs hosted a special session featuring Medal of Honor recipients Britt Slabinski and Flo Groberg to discuss how military principles of courage, resilience, and teamwork apply to high-performing corporate environments. Drawing from their combat experiences in Afghanistan and subsequent careers, the speakers emphasized that exceptional leadership requires prioritizing team success over individual glory and maintaining human connection even as AI integrates into operations. Their insights provided a framework for organizational culture by advocating for leaders to operate with conviction and compassion, ensuring employees feel valued and aligned with a clear mission.

AI Exchanges: CIO Marco Argenti on the future of AI in the workplace

Marco Argenti, George Lee, Allison Nathan

A Goldman Sachs-led panel analyzes the rapid acceleration of AI reasoning models against the persistent "value gap" created by legacy systems and the behavioral friction of retraining human workflows. While "de novo" enterprises advance faster due to agile structures, the firm is actively cultivating "mindful disruptors" and embedding specific cultural judgment into agents to manage risks like hallucinations and data exfiltration. The dialogue concludes that future success relies on a hybrid workforce where AI agents provide elastic capacity and mechanical execution, leaving high-level creativity and professional oversight to human leaders.

From Software Engineers to AI Word Artisans: Filip Kozera of Wordware

Filip Kozera, Sonya Huang

Philip Kizera, co-founder of WordWare, positions his platform as a programmable document system that enables analytical creatives to encode human intent and structured logic into AI agents, treating English as the assembly language for Large Language Models. The company distinguishes its approach by moving beyond simple chat interfaces to offer deployment as an API, an AI-native workflow engine, and a collaborative ecosystem for sharing agent components, thereby targeting a user base of 500 million to 1 billion by democratizing complex AI deployment. By framing the future human role as setting strategic taste while AI executes operational details, WordWare aims to replace raw prompting with repeatable, structured workflows capable of handling massive document ingestion and deep reflection loops.

A Conversation with Todd Boehly | Global Investors' Symposium Hong Kong 2025

Todd Boehly, Richard Ditizio

Eldridge Industries recently restructured its private credit businesses into a unified asset management platform with $70 billion in assets under management to align incentives and compete with major firms like Blackstone and Apollo. The firm simultaneously acquired the Golden Globes to overhaul outdated governance and applied a rigorous finance-based valuation model to expand its portfolio in global baseball markets, real estate projects like the Aman Beverly Hills development, and alternative lending strategies. By prioritizing floating-rate assets over fixed-income bonds and focusing on standalone investment viability, Eldridge aims to capitalize on international growth while mitigating interest rate risks in a volatile economic environment.

Dame Sarah Storey on winning her 19th Paralympic gold medal

Dame Sarah Storey, Kunal Shah

Britain's most decorated Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey secured her 19th Paris 2024 gold medal, extending her career total to 30 golds while reflecting on her unique transition from swimming to cycling and the erosion of government funding since 2008. She advocates for increased sponsorship and infrastructure investment to support the "speculate to accumulate" reality of Paralympic cycling and emphasizes innovation in physiological management as she considers a potential 10th Paralympic appearance in 2028. Storey attributes her longevity to a multidisciplinary team approach and the aggregation of marginal gains, rejecting traditional sports hierarchies in favor of holistic strategies that accommodate perimenopausal needs and family motivations.

Bibi driver: battles led by and within Israel

Claudia Sheinbaum, Richard Fortey, Rosie Bloor, Jason Palmer, Greg Karlstrom, Sarah Burke, Anne Rowe

Israel has ended a fragile ceasefire in Gaza by redeploying troops to encircle Rafah while simultaneously purging domestic security and judicial officials to consolidate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition ahead of an election-triggering budget vote. In parallel, US-Mexico relations have stabilized under President Claudia Sheinbaum, who leveraged tariff threats to secure a two-month reprieve while implementing stricter border security and targeting corrupt allies within her party. The summary also marks the death of paleontologist Richard Fortey, whose research on trilobites fundamentally reshaped understanding of ancient continental drift and pre-Pangaea geography.

Navigating co-founder relationships is a journey that takes self examination and discovery.

This discussion examines how high-pressure startup environments and immigrant backgrounds often condition co-founders to suppress dissent and prioritize stability, leading to extreme work habits and internal conflict. The speakers identify these intense relational dynamics as catalysts for deep self-examination, revealing that the resulting emotional strain is a normal, albeit difficult, aspect of the entrepreneurial journey. Ultimately, the dialogue frames the ongoing resolution of these internalized patterns not as a final achievement but as a necessary process for healing and eventual growth.

White House BTS, Google buys Wiz, Treasury vs Fed, Space Rescue

Cyan Banister, David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg

Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg spent three days embedded in the Trump White House to conduct high-level interviews with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick regarding fiscal reform and deregulation. Concurrently, the group analyzed critical market shifts, including Google's $32 billion acquisition of Wiz and the Federal Reserve's diverging monetary strategy, while celebrating major aerospace milestones like SpaceX's successful ISS rescue. The panel concluded that the current administration's intense, mission-driven culture represents a "money for purpose" opportunity for private sector leaders to address national challenges without bureaucratic inertia.

Better Bonds: De-Risking Communities Through Resilience Investments | Finance Forum 2025

Matt Posner, Sarah Frey, Megan Kilgore, Charlie Yadon

Moderated by Matt Posner, this panel convened decision-makers from Florida, Columbus, Ohio, and PFM to diagnose the structural financial barriers preventing effective climate resilience, including reactive credit ratings and misaligned return-on-investment metrics. Participants highlighted divergent strategies where Florida's long-standing building codes and gaming revenue streams contrast with Columbus's deployment of Generative AI tools to optimize municipal capital stacks. The discussion concludes that overcoming these hurdles requires proactive rating reforms, cross-jurisdictional utility districts, and nonpartisan messaging to shift the perception of resilience from a government cost to a viable investment.

How Top 1% Founders Navigate Co-founder Conflict

Harj, Patrick Collison, Garry, Gary, Jared Harge, Diana

Founders often face severe psychological strain and destructive co-founder dynamics, such as self-abandonment and cultural clashes, which experts argue require shifting from servant leadership to asserting personal authority for effective conflict resolution. To support technical talent, YC is simultaneously launching Summer Fellows Grants that award $20,000 in cash and $90,000 in compute credits to undergraduate students working on novel AI projects, while providing access to AI Startup School and in-person co-working sessions. The discussion concludes that while solo founders avoid interpersonal friction, they are at a significant disadvantage against the superlative collaboration necessary to build exceptional, scalable companies.

Automating Developer Email with MCP and AI Agents

Zeno Rocha, Yoko Li

Resend and other industry leaders are reimagining product architecture to treat autonomous agents as first-class citizens, prioritizing instant execution workflows over traditional human-centric interactions. The organization leverages emerging standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and plain-text "Agent Experience" formats to enable seamless communication between AI systems and critical data sources such as Linear and Notion. This shift transforms development and marketing processes into high-velocity loops where services like email delivery and domain provisioning operate automatically, allowing founders to launch side projects that solve immediate, high-friction problems.

Spy-fall: Trump imperils intelligence pact

Trump, Rosie Bloor, Shashank Joshi, Shalas Chitnis, Alexandra Suech-Bass

Amidst a restructuring of US intelligence leadership under Donald Trump and potential disruptions to the Five Eyes alliance, China has surged to become the world's second-largest drug developer, offering Western pharmaceutical companies critical intellectual property to navigate an upcoming patent cliff. Concurrently, The Economist has launched a curated weekly film and television guide designed to highlight globally diverse, notable titles while explicitly advising against unworthy viewing, complementing its subscriber-only coverage of unique international social experiments. These developments collectively reshape intelligence security, biotech market dynamics, and cultural consumption within a rapidly evolving geopolitical landscape.

SpaceX, Stripe, Ramp, Anduril: Navigating Liquidity in Private Markets

Molly O'Shea, Christian Garrett, Trae Stephens

137 Ventures partners, including Christian Garrett, analyze the structural shift where companies like SpaceX remain private longer to compound value and avoid public market scrutiny. The firm leverages secondary markets and tender offers to manage employee liquidity while advocating for concentrated investment in generational defense and aerospace firms. Furthermore, the discussion highlights how accelerating government-tech collaboration and specific policy changes are reshaping capital allocation strategies in the modern tech ecosystem.