Latest Interviews

Has science finally cracked the secret to invisibility?

Alok Jha, Professor Sir John Pendry, John Pendry

Physics professor John Pendry introduced metamaterials as geometrically engineered structures capable of manipulating light paths to achieve the effects described in his "invisibility cloak" concept. This theoretical framework, initially named by Pendry's wife to aid a 2005 DARPA presentation, faced early skepticism before David Smith's team at Duke University successfully constructed a functional prototype for radar waves. The field has since evolved from resolving debates over negative refraction to experimental recreations of conditions existing near black holes.

Sequoia’s Roelof Botha: Why Venture Capital is Broken & How Great Companies Are Built

Roelof Botha, Jason Calacanis

Sequoia Capital, led by a third generation of partners, sustains its legacy by prioritizing long-term value creation and consensus decision-making over aggressive fee maximization. The firm counters industry capital overhang by deploying proprietary AI tools and maintaining a selective investment strategy that has historically generated trillions in public market value through companies like Apple and Nvidia. While navigating geopolitical shifts by separating its Chinese operations and adapting to a regulatory landscape that has drastically reduced startup formation there, Sequoia continues to back founders with exceptional curiosity despite unconventional profiles.

Actress Shefali Shah: Stories that Move; Strength that Inspires | Asia Summit 2025

Shefali Shah, Teresa Whang, Curtis S. Chin

Acclaimed actress Shefali Shah, known for her Emmy-winning role as DCP Shreya Sharma in Netflix's *Delhi Crime*, discusses the industry's shift from limiting stereotypical roles to complex character portrayals. She details the upcoming third season of the series, which tackles human trafficking and bride sales through a narrative blending multiple true cases, while highlighting her work in *The Three of Us* and *Adolescence* to explore dementia and social media's impact on children. Shah further emphasizes her advocacy for women's and children's safety, urging audiences to view her award-winning projects to understand these critical social issues.

This Startup Is Trying To Delete 29% Of All CO2 Emissions

Paul Gross, Gustaf Alströmer

Remora has launched a solid-pellet based carbon capture system that reduces CO2 emissions by up to 90% in hard-to-electrify diesel trucks and freight trains, converting the captured gas into beverage-grade CO2 for commercial reuse. Backed by $117 million in venture capital, the Detroit-based company is vertically integrating its manufacturing to deploy modular retrofits to major partners like Ryder and Union Pacific while testing the technology on a repurposed locomotive. Co-founders Paul Gross and Christina Reynolds aim to scale this point-source solution to capture one billion tons of carbon annually by overcoming the logistical challenges of retrofitting diverse vehicle fleets.

OpenAI's Multi-Billion Deal with AMD & Polymarket, Vercel and Supabase Raise Mega Rounds

Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings

OpenAI secured a strategic partnership with AMD to purchase six gigawatts of Instinct chips in exchange for equity warrants, a deal that triggered a 30% surge in AMD's stock price while reinforcing OpenAI's leverage over chip manufacturers. Concurrently, OpenAI Developer Day introduced native app integrations and an "AgentKit" tool to accelerate AI agent development, though critics questioned the immediate utility of these features compared to existing ecosystems. In the broader venture landscape, massive valuations for infrastructure firms like Vercel and Supabase coexist with tightening liquidity for sub-scale assets, as university endowments divest stakes and new SPAC structures aim to curb speculative pricing.

The Future of Software Engineering: Cognition’s Russell Kaplan

Russell Kaplan, Marco Argenti

Cognition, founded by former Olympiad medalists and now valued at $4 billion, is advancing software engineering by deploying Devin, an autonomous AI agent capable of executing end-to-end development tasks. The company differentiates itself through a dual-product strategy combining Devin for independent execution with the recently acquired Windsurf IDE for human-in-the-loop collaboration, targeting enterprise integration into proprietary codebases. While AI capabilities in coding are projected to double every seven months, Cognition aims to elevate Devin to senior engineer status within a year, though future growth is anticipated to be constrained by energy availability rather than data scarcity.

Louis Tomlinson: When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew! "The Room Was Cold That Day".

Louis Tomlinson, Steven

Louis Tomlinson recounts his journey from a working-class Doncaster upbringing to global stardom with One Direction, detailing the intense isolation, guilt, and personal losses, including the deaths of his mother and sister Felicity, that defined his early years in the spotlight. He reflects on the band's rapid ascension, the painful fragmentation following Zayn Malik's departure and the eventual hiatus, and the enduring legacy of bandmate Liam Payne, while discussing his current focus on fatherhood and mental stability. Now at 33, Tomlinson is channeling his experiences into a positive solo musical direction, expanding his entrepreneurial ventures with a music festival and streetwear brand, and redefining success beyond industry metrics to prioritize family and personal fulfillment.

The Shortcut Rule

The Shortcut Rule demonstrates that optimizing for a single metric achieves the measured target while sacrificing unmeasured objectives, effectively causing programs to hit the target but miss the point. This phenomenon is illustrated by the AI chess case, where Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov to satisfy engineering goals without yielding new insights into general human intelligence. Consequently, the event highlights the divergence between technical success and foundational learning when research focuses exclusively on a narrow definition of victory.

The Shutdown’s Economic Impact

Alec Phillips, Alison Nathan

A partisan role reversal has precipitated a broad federal government shutdown as Democrats withhold support for clean spending bills to demand the extension of ACA health insurance subsidies, a move that polling suggests is driving voter blame toward Republicans. The crisis faces a critical resolution pressure point on October 15 when active-duty military personnel miss a pay cycle, a deadline that historically compels congressional action to avoid widespread economic disruption. While the shutdown projects to reduce Q4 GDP by approximately 0.3 percentage points and delay key economic data releases, market analysts and the Federal Reserve anticipate the stalemate will resolve quickly through a targeted fiscal compromise.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on AI, Censorship & the Future of Creators

Neal Mohan, Chamath, Jason, Friedberg, Ari

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan outlined the platform's dominance with 2 billion monthly active users and over $70 billion paid to creators, while addressing tensions between its 55/45 revenue model and high-profile creators who opt for direct monetization. Mohan defended YouTube's algorithmic fragmentation as a driver of niche engagement while highlighting new AI initiatives that prioritize creator likeness rights and transparency labels over blanket bans. The discussion further detailed strategies to balance global moderation complexities with evolving regulations and a renewed focus on YouTube Premium and TV to reinvent the viewer experience.

Smart Finance: The Intersection of AI, Technology, Talent, and Transformation | Asia Summit 2025

Krist Boo, Asilah Azil, Marcelo Claure, Andreas Kreuz

Global AI investment is surging toward $500 billion annually, yet a 95% failure rate persists as enterprises struggle to move beyond pilot programs, with only top performers like T-Mobile and K Health demonstrating significant commercial payback. While 47% of organizations report recent AI risk incidents, the primary barrier to value realization remains cultural resistance and workflow inertia rather than technology, necessitating CEO-led change management and governance models that treat agents as corporate citizens. As geopolitical dynamics force Southeast Asian nations like Singapore to adopt a multipolar strategy leveraging both US and Chinese strengths, the race for success now hinges on massive workforce reskilling and the strategic integration of human capital with autonomous systems.

Anthropic: The Great Equaliser: How Agentic AI Is Powering Europe’s Next Generation of Startups

Guillaume, Charlie

Guillaume, Head of Anthropic for EMEA, discusses the strategic deployment of the Cloud4 coding model which self-wrote 90% of its own code to power a growing ecosystem of European startups like Dust and Lovable. The conversation highlights how major enterprises including BMW and Novo Nordisk are utilizing these models as virtual collaborators to accelerate R&D and customer service, while emphasizing Anthropic's strict data sovereignty and safety policies to address European regulatory concerns. Amidst this expansion, the company aims to hire over 100 new staff members across its London, Dublin, and Zurich offices to support the region's robust AI funding environment and mitigate local talent gaps.

NextSilicon & More Than Moore. The Silicon Revolution: Why the Future of Hardware is Software

Next Silicon introduces a reconfigurable compute platform that utilizes a smart runtime algorithm to dynamically adjust chip hardware within 20 nanoseconds for CPU, GPU, and AI workloads without requiring code rewrites. This "software-aware hardware" targets the most computationally intensive code segments to deliver projected performance speedups of 4x to 10x while consuming only a quarter of the energy used by static ASICs. By supporting established languages and frameworks like CUDA and PyTorch, the system aims to decouple hardware efficiency from the need to pre-anticipate future algorithmic shifts.

A Chat with AI21 Labs: Building Custom AI Systems That Actually Work From Hype to Business Impact

Yuval, Asaf

AI21, a foundational LLM builder, highlights the persistent gap between individual AI experimentation and institutional production adoption, driven by "ChatGPT Syndrome" and fear of missing out. The company identifies a critical "underground movement" where employees innovate silently due to a lack of official guidelines, resulting in disjointed pilots and missed collective wisdom. To escape this paralysis, successful deployment requires multidisciplinary teams to map granular workflows and align stakeholders on clear KPIs, transforming informal usage into a structured, high-value organizational framework.

Roshn Group & Enhance Ventures: AI Meets Real Estate: Hype or Real Value

Robert, Yazeed Al-Ghamdi, Aristide, Maria Paula

Saudi Arabia's Roshan giga-project, mandated to deliver 400,000 housing units under Vision 2030, is leveraging Google Cloud AI and a proprietary digital sales platform to generate over 6 billion SAR in revenue while reducing land selection time by 40%. This hybrid transaction model, which integrates global KYC protocols and visualizes amenities for remote buyers, was further accelerated by the region's largest PropTech hackathon that sourced external solutions for operational bottlenecks. Driven by a young demographic and supported by upcoming infrastructure projects, the organization plans to launch a corporate venture capital arm and export its technology stack to international markets within the decade.