Latest Interviews

How AI Coding Agents Will Change Your Job

Tom Blomfield, David Lieb

Tom Blomfield and other Y Combinator founders describe a rapid shift where AI coding tools have surged to 50% adoption, enabling individuals to generate massive software artifacts and achieve tenfold productivity gains. This technological leap promises to replace traditional software engineering roles within a decade, transitioning the industry toward small, owner-led teams that manage AI agents rather than writing code manually. While these advances create unprecedented opportunities for solo founders to build valuable companies with minimal capital, the broader displacement of white-collar workers in fields like law and medicine is expected to trigger significant societal turbulence over the coming decades.

From CIO to CEO: TCW’s Katie Koch on running a $200B asset manager

Katie Koch, Allison Mass

TCW President and CEO Katie Koch, a former Goldman Sachs CIO with two decades of investment experience, is steering the firm's strategic evolution from its fixed-income heritage into private credit and ETFs to address a shrinking public market landscape. Leveraging significant dry powder during recent market dislocations, Koch emphasizes a culture rooted in integrity and psychological safety while executing active management strategies designed to generate outsized returns for institutional clients. Her leadership philosophy blends operational discipline with personal values regarding resilience, aiming to provide holistic investment solutions that allow borrowers and investors to navigate volatility across both public and private asset classes.

Anthropic CPO Mike Krieger: Building AI Products From the Bottom Up

Mike Krieger, Trevor Johnsen, Sam Nelsons, Emily Fortuna, Dave Elliott Smith, Mike McDonald Jr.

At a recent strategic discussion, Anthropic executive Mike McDonald Jr. outlined a paradigm shift where the distinction between AI-generated and human-created content becomes irrelevant, emphasizing instead that provenance via blockchain and compelling human storytelling will define future value. The organization is operationalizing this vision through a "bottoms-up" product philosophy and the development of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which evolved from engineer-led integrations to establish a standardized, open framework for autonomous agent interactions and economic transactions. Internally, this approach has resulted in massive AI adoption with over 70% of code reviews generated by machines, though leaders note that non-technical organizational bottlenecks now pose the primary constraint on high-velocity development.

AI for Scientific Advancement

A new "Test Time Compute" paradigm is empowering startups to solve previously intractable challenges in drug discovery, chemical processing, mining, and power grid optimization by modernizing decades-old scientific software. This initiative aims to fundamentally accelerate physical manufacturing through AI-driven transformations that no longer rely solely on traditional PhD-level expertise. The organization is currently seeking engagement from founders and teams capable of executing these specific applications to redefine how physical things are made.

Did OpenAI truly give up on going for-profit – or is this a trap? (with Rose Chan Loui)

Rose Chan Loui, Rob Wiblin

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.

9 Years to AGI? OpenAI’s Dan Roberts Reasons About Emulating Einstein

Dan Roberts, Einstein

OpenAI demonstrated a strategic pivot toward test-time compute and reinforcement learning by showcasing models like O1 and O3 that solve complex physics problems, such as quantum electrodynamics and General Relativity, in minutes compared to human timescales. To support this new scaling paradigm where reasoning effort outweighs pre-training data, the organization plans to raise $500 billion to construct massive data center facilities in Abilene, Texas. This infrastructure investment aims to accelerate a timeline predicting that within nine years, systems will evolve from reproducing existing scientific knowledge to generating novel discoveries comparable to Einstein's major breakthroughs.

How OpenAI Built its Groundbreaking Deep Research Product ft. Isa Fulford

Isa Fulford

OpenAI's Deep Research introduces an agentic o3 model capable of executing complex, multi-step online investigations over five to thirty minutes to generate analyst-level reports. Targeted at professionals like venture capitalists and academics, the system synthesizes cross-lingual data through interactive clarifications and real-time transparency into its reasoning process. While current versions prioritize read-only browsing and citation granularity, the roadmap outlines plans to integrate these tools into broader reasoning models and enable autonomous action-taking based on findings.

A Conversation with Citadel CEO Ken Griffin | Global Conference 2025

Ken Griffin, Michael Milken

Ken Griffin critiques current U.S. fiscal policies and immigration frameworks, warning that regressive tariffs and restrictive visa rules threaten to erode national flexibility while failing to retain the international scientific talent essential for future growth. He advocates for aggressive K-12 and higher education reforms driven by school choice and data transparency to dismantle systemic inefficiencies, citing Success Academy and his own Harvard philanthropy as models for overcoming institutional inertia. Looking forward, Griffin aims to mobilize an estimated $150 billion in generational wealth to fund private-sector innovations and inspire a new era of scientific ambition similar to the 1960s space race.

Is Putin‘s narrative working?

Putin, Arkady Ostrovsky

Marked by the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russia's 80th Victory Day parade transformed the 1945 Allied triumph into an isolated, state-orchestrated ritual that explicitly excludes Western allies. Vladimir Putin leverages this historical narrative to forge a continuous "cult of victory" that legitimizes his rule and the ongoing war in Ukraine as a reenactment of Soviet-era greatness. The event underscores Russia's geopolitical severance from the West, replacing the original concept of a shared liberation with a dependency on non-Western alliances and a focus on great power status rather than territorial expansion.

Wise Founder Taavet Hinrikus on Europe’s Tech Renaissance

Taavet Hinrikus, Clif Marriott

Tavit Tammemäe catalyzed Estonia's transformation into a European tech powerhouse by co-founding Skype, which triggered a wave of successful exits, and later launching the fintech unicorn Wise. Transitioning from operator to investor, he founded Plural in 2021 alongside four other former European CEOs to deploy €500 million in Fund II toward complex, high-impact sectors like defense and healthcare AI. The firm targets "obsessed" founders capable of building $100 billion companies, aiming to replicate the scalability of Skype and Wise within the European market.

Benchmark vs a16z: Why Stage Specific Firms Win

Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings

A recent analysis contrasts the hit-rate precision of focused funds like Benchmark against the aggregate returns of mega-funds, highlighting how the latter's dominance forces mid-tier firms into an "option value" squeeze while distorting Series A and B pricing. Concurrently, the venture landscape is shifting toward high-risk AI-driven "option value" investments as M&A activity accelerates with strategic acquisitions like Windsurf by OpenAI and distressed exits for high-flier startups. Experts warn that while AI will displace up to 50% of knowledge workers within 24 months, the broader economic impact may mirror historical tech revolutions by increasing efficiency without significantly boosting global GDP, compelling firms to adopt AI-first workflows or face obsolescence.

Voice AI

For nearly a century, business voice interactions have relied on inefficient legacy systems like IVR trees, yet consumer demand remains fixed on human connection. Advancements in conversational LLMs now allow startups to deploy AI agents capable of handling over one trillion annual transactions with performance matching or exceeding human standards. This technological leap is rapidly replacing outdated keypads and wait times, offering a functional quality unlock comparable to early autonomous vehicle experiences.

Chris Eubank Jr: I Was Paid $***** For The Fight! The Night Before, Dad Finally Opened Up!

Chris Eubank Jr, Dad

Following a grueling 12-round bout against Conor Benn that generated over 1,500 total landed punches, Chris Eubank Jr. survived a severe medical emergency caused by dehydration while securing an eight-figure purse despite a $1 million fine for overage. Eubank attributes his ability to endure the physical toll to a recent reconciliation with his father, whom he credits as his primary motivation after years of estrangement over career management and family tragedy. With a rematch officially booked for September, the boxer is now seeking vengeance against drug cheats like Billy Joe Saunders and aiming for high-profile clashes with Canelo Alvarez, all while expressing zero trust in his former promoter Matchroom Boxing.

How AI is Reinventing Software Business Models ft. Bret Taylor of Sierra

Bret Taylor, Ravi, Robin Wright, Clay, DAN GALPIN, BRETT HESTERBERG

Brett Taylor, formerly CTO of Facebook and current leader of Sierra, outlines a transformative vision for the AI sector where specialized, outcome-based agents replace traditional websites and software subscriptions. Taylor advises entrepreneurs to evolve beyond personal technical expertise to avoid stagnation, emphasizing that the next trillion-dollar opportunities lie in vertical-specific solutions that deliver tangible business results rather than generic productivity tools. Through Sierra's innovative pricing model that charges only for autonomous resolutions, the company exemplifies a strategic shift toward selling outcomes, positioning startups to outmaneuver legacy incumbents struggling to adapt their business models to this new era.

More Design Founders

The presentation argues that integrating advanced coding tools over the next decade will elevate superior design to a primary strategic asset, prompting a shift from traditional employment to founder-led product launches. By redefining the "design job of the future" as entrepreneurship, the speaker highlights how user empathy and quality standards, proven by successes like Airbnb and Stripe, can drive independent company formation. Consequently, the strategy prioritizes funding teams that embed strong design culture from the outset to capitalize on these accelerating technological capabilities.