Latest Interviews

Capital in Motion: Repositioning at Scale for the Next Cycle | Global Conference 2026

Sara Eisen, Marcie Frost, Ron O'Hanley, Harvey Schwartz, Daniel Simkowitz

Geopolitical conflicts and tariff pressures are driving a fundamental reprioritization of global capital toward national security, supply chain resilience, and AI infrastructure, fundamentally altering the fifty-year status quo of international markets. Leading institutional investors, including Carlyle, State Street, and Morgan Stanley, characterize the current private credit environment as a healthy cycle transition rather than a systemic risk while deploying significant resources to capture the estimated $3.2 trillion in shifting sovereign wealth and the emerging artificial intelligence sector. As the global economy pivots to prioritize defense and compute capacity, market participants are redefining portfolio allocations to focus on US innovation hubs, robust Asian markets, and rigorous underwriting standards to navigate rising capital demands and potential labor displacement.

‘Complexity is Our Friend’: James Brocklebank on Advent's Private Equity Strategy

James Brocklebank, Alison Mass

James Brockelbank details Advent's $100 billion strategy of navigating complex regulatory environments in Europe and expanding into Asia-Pacific through a focus on transformational carve-outs and pure private equity specialization. Facing slowed exit realizations, the firm has integrated proprietary AI tools like "Advent GPT" into its investment committees while shifting toward strategic buyers to manage capital returns. Brockelbank emphasizes that despite these technological advancements, deep human relationship-building and a culture of "healthy paranoia" remain the critical differentiators for identifying high-quality opportunities in volatile markets.

Building a Brand in Midlife: A Conversation with Daphne Oz and Molly Sims | Global Conference 2026

Daphne Oz, Molly Sims, Loretta Lynch, Tara Hernandez O, Weronna Choi, Dorina Arellano Gonzalez Van Cleveen

At the 2026 Milken Global Conference, Molly Sims detailed her strategic expansion of WISE Beauty, a skincare brand securing $15 million in Series A funding to address the unmet needs of women aged 35 and older through a hero-focused product philosophy. Complementing the brand's growth with a rigorous "hire slowly, fire fast" culture and advanced AI integration for operational efficiency, Sims also launched her podcast *Lipstick on the Rim* to provide transparent industry insights outside traditional gatekeeping channels. Simultaneously, Daphne Oz introduced her *The Mothership* podcast to counter negative narratives about female misery, collectively positioning both entrepreneurs as key drivers in redefining the economic and emotional landscape for midlife women.

Conversation with Eldridge Ind. CEO Todd Boehly & MassMutual CEO Roger Crandall | Global Conference

Todd Boehly, Roger Crandall, Dani Burger

Industry leaders from MassMutual and Eldridge contrast their long-duration, policyholder-aligned ownership models against traditional banking systems to demonstrate the strategic advantages of private capital in financing U.S. infrastructure and mitigating maturity mismatches. While both firms address risks related to credit cycles and AI disruption through rigorous capital structure controls and multi-model technology partnerships, they emphasize their capacity to withstand liquidity shocks that threaten short-term financial vehicles. These perspectives highlight a shifting landscape where insurers act as the primary stabilizing capital source for the economy while adapting antiquated legacy systems to meet modern digital consumer expectations.

SpaceX’s $2T Case, Nvidia’s Shock Selloff, America Turns on AI, Trump Pulls AI Order, Bond Crisis?

Trump, Gavin Baker, Andrej Karpathy

Andrej Karpathy's strategic move to lead Anthropic's new pre-training team highlights a critical industry shift toward recursive self-improvement, a frontier expected to unlock exponential model quality gains alongside soaring sector revenues reaching an estimated $100 billion ARR. Concurrently, the broader AI landscape is defined by SpaceX's potential $75 billion IPO and massive revenue contracts with Anthropic, while Nvidia reports record earnings driven by sustained demand for AI infrastructure despite rising macroeconomic risks. These developments collectively underscore a rapidly maturing market where architectural innovations, geopolitical tensions, and aggressive capital deployment are reshaping the economic and technological trajectory of the artificial intelligence sector.

Investing in Hollywood’s Connective Cultural Power: Eva Longoria & Kevin Yorn | Global Conference

Eva Longoria, Kevin Yorn, Rebecca Keegan

Eva Longoria and Kevin Glickman discuss a shifted investment landscape where successful ventures require rigorous operational execution rather than celebrity names alone. Longoria highlights her high-ROI successes with Siete Foods and John Wick, while Glickman emphasizes the critical need for protecting intellectual property and leveraging enterprise relationships in AI and cross-industry deals. Together, they outline a future where "hyphenate" talent must pair storytelling with proven business discipline, relying on specialized operators to ensure financial viability and authentic market conversion.

Stanford MS&E435 Economics of the AI Supercycle | Spring 2026 | Enterprise Internal Knowledge

Yash Patil, Apoorv Agrawal

Stanford graduate and Applied Compute CEO Yash Patil explains how the AI industry is shifting from general pre-training to specialized post-training on proprietary data to solve enterprise bottlenecks. He argues that while frontier models like OpenAI's O1 leverage test-time compute, future progress depends on continual learning from sparse, real-world rewards and deterministic environments like software coding. Patil concludes with a bullish outlook on compute hardware while warning that pure data-selling businesses will fail as synthetic generation and robotics become the new differentiators.

How The Best Companies Defend Against Mediocrity And Rot

Garry, Eric Ries

Eric Ries exposes how the 1980s doctrine of shareholder primacy systematically undermines long-term company value, citing cases like Jeff Lawson's ouster at Twilio and Saul Price's departure from FedMart as evidence that founder control is often lost to short-term investor demands. To counter this instability, the event advocates for structural reforms such as the industrial foundation model, which legally prioritizes mission over profit, as demonstrated by the sustained success of entities like Novo Nordisk and the mission-preserving safeguards of Anthropic. The presentation concludes by urging founders to immediately adopt Public Benefit Corporation status and design "governance fortresses" to insulate their organizations from the inherent conflicts of standard corporate governance.

CIO of Marc & Ben's Multi-Family Office: SpaceX IPO, Anthropic & OpenAI

Michel Del Buono, Molly O'Shea

This comprehensive discussion explores wealth optimization strategies for founders and high-net-worth individuals, covering critical topics such as Trust, Estate, and Tax Planning, Secondary Market dynamics, and Portfolio Construction. Key figures and experts address the risks of isolated trust structures, the complexities of SPV secondary deals, and the tax efficiencies of real assets like data centers and qualified small business stock. The dialogue concludes by emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach that aligns investment diversification with global mobility choices and specific family values to maximize legacy and minimize unnecessary tax liabilities.

Why Rates Could Keep Rising

Phillip Lee, Chris Hussey, Phil Lee

Rising real yields are driven by a convergence of inflation uncertainty, resilient growth, and elevated fiscal deficits, causing market expectations to shift from anticipated rate cuts to a prolonged pause or potential hikes. The Federal Reserve's upcoming June guidance from its new Chairman underscores this uncertainty, while higher mortgage rates are stifling the housing market and eroding consumer spending power. Institutional investors are consequently adopting a bear-steepener strategy, maintaining dynamic patience in fixed income portfolios to navigate the divergence between robust equity performance and weakening underlying consumption.

OpenAI: $2M in tokens to every YC company in the spring and summer batches.

OpenAI and Y Combinator have announced a coordinated initiative offering $2 million in non-cash token equity to startups in the Spring and Summer batches via an uncapped SAFE. This investment targets companies engaged in high-volume software factory patterns, aiming to compress eighteen months of engineering work into a fraction of the time by eliminating early-stage API costs. Recipients must apply by Memorial Day weekend to receive notifications by June 5th, with the credit fungible for any OpenAI usage including code execution and API consumption.

Jane Street on GPUs, Trading, and Hiring: A Conversation with Dwarkesh

Jane Street, Dwarkesh Patel, Ron Minsky, Dan Pontecorvo

Jane Street executes a multi-tiered trading strategy that balances nanosecond-scale FPGA execution with long-horizon AI models while transitioning to a disaggregated global network featuring a $6 billion compute partnership with CoreWeave. The firm prioritizes model architecture diversity and custom hardware, including ARM and NVIDIA infrastructures, to navigate high-noise financial data without relying on single foundation models. This approach is supported by a hiring strategy focused on scarcity-driven talent acquisition and a human-in-the-loop philosophy that maintains critical judgment during complex market anomalies.

How to Build a Self-Improving Company with AI

Tom Blomfield

The event argues for replacing traditional hierarchical management with recursive AI architectures where organizations function as self-improving loops composed of sensor, policy, and learning layers. It demonstrates this shift through a YC case study where autonomous agents analyzed failures and updated code overnight, enabling companies to transition from headcount-constrained models to token-limited systems. By mandating universal data recording and treating internal software as ephemeral, the presentation defines humans as peripheral "edge interfaces" while AI assumes the role of the central "company brain" for decision-making and execution.

Caitlin Clark on Navigating Pressure and the Future of the WNBA

Caitlin Clark, John Mallory

Following her NCAA all-time scoring record and selection as the number one WNBA draft pick by the Indiana Fever, Caitlin Clark overcame significant injury hurdles to secure Rookie of the Year honors and guide the franchise to its first Finals appearance since 2016. Clark's professional development has been shaped by strict parental guidance and a transition to elite competition that prioritizes defensive fundamentals and team chemistry over individual stardom. Looking ahead, she advocates for organic growth in the league, projects WNBA expansion to 18 teams by 2028, and aims to serve as an authentic role model while preparing for future international competition.

International Security: Innovation, Investment, and Partnerships | Global Conference 2026

David Trulio, Christopher Coons, Eric Schmidt, Adam Smith, Chris Coons

Panelists including Eric Schmidt, Senator Chris Coons, and Representative Adam Smith argue that the war in Ukraine has exposed the critical need for the U.S. to replace expensive, traditional military assets with autonomous drones and AI-driven systems to secure a cost-effective deterrence against adversaries. To overcome entrenched bureaucratic inertia and fiscal constraints, the group advocates for bipartisan legislation like the SPEED Act, expanded co-production with international allies, and a workforce shift toward technical innovation over four-year degrees. These strategic adjustments aim to leverage the agility of private sector competitors against legacy defense primes while ensuring American technological leadership in an era of algorithmic warfare.