Latest Interviews
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Clear all filtersWhy a16z Bet $15 Million on THIS Controversial Startup
Bryan Kim, Roy Lee, Molly O'Shea
Brian Kim secured a $15 million investment in Cluely by leveraging a "momentum as a moat" strategy that prioritizes velocity and personal rapport over traditional fundraising pitches. His investment thesis for the AI era emphasizes rapid scaling and efficiency, as evidenced by his high-velocity deals with 11 Labs and Function Health while navigating regulatory headwinds regarding deepfakes. Kim argues that the current technology landscape requires building "in the plane as it falls," with companies achieving profitability through smaller teams and massive growth trajectories.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
Green or Gray: What's Next for Transportation? | Global Conference 2025
Susan Li, Adam Goldstein, Nina Hachigian, Alex Israel, Mark Morelli, Will Thompson
Industry leaders including Mark Morelli of Circle K and Will Thompson of Barclays convened to analyze the severe financial and operational headwinds facing the U.S. mobility sector, such as projected tariff losses for Ford and GM and a critical $400 billion grid infrastructure gap. The panel debated divergent paths forward, ranging from China's state-subsidized pricing advantages to the necessity of multi-fuel strategies and a "technological war" for AI dominance in defense and electric vehicle manufacturing. While consensus emerged that autonomous fleet deployment and EV charging profitability will likely materialize within two to three years, stakeholders uniformly dismissed the 2035 total electrification mandate as unrealistic given current fleet turnover rates and transmission constraints.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
The Global Landscape and Opportunities for Medical Breakthroughs | Global Conference 2025
Usha Lee McFarling, Jay Bradner, Doug Drysdale, Neil Kumar, Alice Pomponio, Grant Verstandig
Biomedicine leaders from BridgeBio, Amgen, and Zephyr AI outlined a strategy to accelerate the industry from discovery to commercialization by leveraging precision diagnostics, population-scale genetics, and AI-driven protein folding to overcome the "valley of death." While startups like Saiban pioneer high-efficacy mental health treatments and the American Cancer Society launches "BrightEdge" to blend venture capital with donor funds, panelists warned that eroding NIH funding threatens this innovation ecosystem. The discussion emphasized that sustaining global competitiveness requires public-private partnerships to fund basic research and expand diverse genomic databases beyond Western populations.
- Y Combinator44 min
Fei-Fei Li: Spatial Intelligence is the Next Frontier in AI
Fei-Fei Li, Diana, Alex, Karl, Yashna, Annie
Dr. Fei-Fei Li, founder and CEO of World Labs, leads a team of renowned technologists to develop spatial intelligence and 3D "world models" as the essential pathway to achieving Artificial General Intelligence. The venture addresses the unique mathematical and physical complexities of reconstructing and generating the three-dimensional world, distinguishing its approach from current language-centric large language models. By combining rigorous data quality standards with a focus on fundamental, interdisciplinary research, the company aims to power next-generation applications ranging from the metaverse to advanced scientific discovery.
- Milken Institute56 min
Aging Societies: Opportunities amid Challenges | Global Conference 2025
Maneet Ahuja, Cynthia Hardy Maasry, Ted Koenig, Timothy Lyne, Andrew Milgram, Cynthia Masry, Tim Line
Panelists Andrew Milgram, Ted Koenig, and Tim Line characterize the current economic landscape as a technical recession driven by tariff uncertainty and wage compression, resulting in middle-market EBITDA margins near 5-6% and bankruptcy filings at 14-year highs. The institutional focus is shifting as non-bank lenders now execute 90% of leveraged finance while private equity capital flows toward private credit to navigate declining deal valuations and extended hold periods. Experts forecast a tepid 2025 followed by a recovery in 2026 and 2027, with lenders increasingly prepared to act as permanent owners of distressed assets through robust restructuring capabilities.
- Milken Institute54 min
The Future of Venture Capital: AI, IPOs, and Tech Investment | Global Conference 2025
Romaine Bostick, Raj Ganguly, Amir Husain, Dana Settle, Hemant Taneja
Venture capital leaders from B Capital, General Catalyst, and Greycroft discuss a strategic pivot away from the stalled IPO market toward inorganic growth and M&A as primary exit routes. The panel emphasizes that firms must evolve into "AI-native" entities to navigate geopolitical supply chain shifts and address liquidity constraints for the "long tail" of private companies. With a focus on deep industry transformation over application-layer speculation, investors are prioritizing technically elite founders capable of driving efficiency in hardware, robotics, and healthcare sectors.
- Milken Institute59 min
Charting the Rise of the Podcast Economy | Global Conference 2025
Jamie Patricof, Jessica Cordova Kramer, Mary Alice Haney, Josh Lindgren, Hernan Lopez, Ben Meiselas
Industry leaders define the evolving podcast ecosystem as a dissolving convergence of audio and video formats, evidenced by major market shifts such as PodX's acquisition of Lemonada and the Golden Globes' addition of "Best Podcast" awards for 2026. Economic analysis projects the global industry to reach $7.3 billion in 2024, driven by a 30% revenue share from consumer subscriptions and a migration of high-profile talent away from legacy cable networks toward independent production. While generative AI serves primarily as a localization and editing tool to expand global reach, the sector faces upcoming challenges regarding standardized cross-platform metrics and the preservation of entry-level job pipelines amidst these technological and media mergers.
- Y Combinator41 min
Satya Nadella: Microsoft's AI Bets, Hyperscaling, Quantum Computing Breakthroughs
Satya Nadella frames the current era as a fourth platform shift driven by AI, cloud infrastructure, and supercomputers, predicting a transition where software engineers evolve into architects managing autonomous agents. He identifies change management as the primary deployment barrier and outlines a strategy where Microsoft utilizes forward deployment engineers to help organizations restructure workflows for "over-constrained" problems in sectors like healthcare and education. Looking ahead, Nadella emphasizes that future growth depends on resolving energy constraints, establishing trust, and developing first-class systems for memory and tool use to maximize social surplus.
- Milken Institute1h 2m
Institutional Investors: Charting the Course | Global Conference 2025
Christopher Ailman, Justin Barton, Jenny Chan, Edwin Denson, Jonathan Glidden, Guadalupe Rodriguez, Chris
Representatives from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, Delta Airlines, the UCLA Foundation, and a single family office convened to discuss how their distinct balance sheets and liabilities shape divergent capital allocation strategies. While SWIB and UCLA maintain long-term horizons and increased non-U.S. equity exposure, Delta prioritizes de-risking and liquidity management within its pension structures amidst a shifting macro environment. The panelists collectively signaled a cautious stance toward private market pricing and hedge fund correlation, anticipating stagflation and regulatory volatility that will likely dictate 2025 investment flows and secondary market activity.
- All-In Podcast12 min
Which Company Is Going To Win The AI Race? - David Friedberg
David Friedberg, Chamath, Jason, Thomas, Free
Investors Thomas, Chamath, and Freeman identified NVIDIA, Tesla, and Google as the primary mid-term AGI investment vehicles, citing NVIDIA's foundational GPU architecture, Tesla's vertical integration into physical robotics, and Google's diversified portfolio spanning search, quantum computing, and multimodal models. The panel analyzed a strategic economic pivot for Google from click-based advertising to token pricing while debating the valuation risks of Tesla's current premium against its high-conviction potential in the humanoid robotics sector. Despite NVIDIA's status as the most durable business, the discussion highlighted a severe, albeit low-probability, long-term threat from China's rapid advancements in semiconductor manufacturing and the emergence of independent domestic chip stacks.
- Goldman Sachs24 min
Mid-year outlook: diversify and hedge
Christian Mueller-Glissmann, Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, Alison Nathan
Goldman Sachs strategists Christian Mueller-Glissman and Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo analyze a complex macro environment where unprecedented volatility in equities, bonds, and the dollar has converged, yet the US economy remains on track for a non-recessionary cool-down. They recommend a shift from traditional diversification toward a "constellation" of alternatives and selective optimism, highlighting opportunities in defensive stocks, European banking, and private capital while warning of elevated summer risks from tariffs and geopolitical tensions. The consensus advice is to embrace growth trajectories while hedging against near-term liquidity thinning, anticipating a market recovery driven by policy clarity and positive fiscal dynamics extending into 2026.
- All-In Podcast8 min
"I Don't Think Apple Has A Chance" - The Brutal Truth About Apple - Chamath Palihapitiya
Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason, Friedberg, Thomas
Apple's current hardware strategy relies on tactical optimization of legacy iPhone and accessory sales, creating internal barriers that hinder the development of disruptive AI innovations despite speculative collaborations involving Johny Ive and OpenAI. Chamath Palihapitiya and Thomas compare this AI transition challenge to Michael Jordan's failed baseball attempt, noting that Siri's stagnation contrasts sharply with modern AI capabilities while acknowledging Apple's successful prior pivot to recurring revenue models. Meanwhile, the broader market favors high-growth themes like AI and crypto, where Meta's acquisition of Scale AI has encouraged aggressive IPOs for firms like CoreWeave, effectively leaving traditional S&P 500 companies with stagnant single-digit growth behind.
- Milken Institute59 min
AI Leadership: Business Aspirations and Value Propositions | Global Conference 2025
Julia Boorstin, Aparna Chennapragada, Francis deSouza, Arianna Huffington, Clara Shih, Matt Wood
Moderated by CNBC's Julia Boorstin at the Milken Institute Global Conference, industry leaders from Meta, Microsoft, Google, PwC, and Thrive Global characterized AI as a transformative inflection point comparable to electricity rather than an incremental tool. The panel detailed rapid enterprise adoption, noting that AI now generates over 30% of code at Google and drives revenue growth for cloud providers, while predicting a shift toward an agent-to-agent economy where human roles evolve from task execution to orchestration. Ultimately, the discussion emphasized a dual strategy of accelerating innovation while establishing governance frameworks to mitigate risks such as disinformation and bias, forecasting a future where AI expands human capabilities across healthcare, science, and lean "frontier" business models.
- Y Combinator43 min
Sam Altman: The Future of OpenAI, ChatGPT's Origins, and Building AI Hardware
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman projects that superintelligence will arrive within two decades while declaring the current era the optimal moment to launch companies due to the convergence of reasoning models, falling costs, and new hardware. He outlines a strategy where OpenAI serves as a platform for third-party innovation rather than building all applications, emphasizing the imminent release of powerful open-source models and the integration of AI into robotics and energy infrastructure. Altman further advises founders to prioritize velocity and unique concepts over established pedigrees, warning that the path to success requires immense resilience against skepticism while pursuing radical technological abundance.
- Milken Institute58 min
AI and Digital Transformation's Impact on Investing | Global Conference 2025
David Steinberg, Jim Breyer, Dipanjan "DJ" Deb, Greg Emerson, Dennis Gada, Jodie Wallis, Shanali Basak
A panel of industry leaders including Jodi, Dennis, DJ, Greg, and Jim established a consensus that organizations must adopt a hybrid "build, buy, and partner" strategy, favoring external foundational models while retaining in-house development for specific strategic assets. The discussion highlighted acute shortages of top-tier mathematical talent and warned of critical risks ranging from quantum decryption threats to deepfake fraud, necessitating robust, materiality-based governance frameworks. Looking forward, experts predicted AI will act as a catalyst for enterprise transformation and private equity value creation, though they cautioned that true value lies in revenue growth rather than mere productivity gains or marketing hype.