Latest Interviews

Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture

Anjney Midha, Liam Fedus, Ekin Dogus Cubuk

Founded by co-creators of ChatGPT and DeepMind physicists, Periodic Labs operates a frontier AI research facility dedicated to advancing physical science by coupling Large Language Models with automated high-throughput experimentation. The organization deploys a unique "mid-training" methodology and physically grounded reward functions to overcome the epistemic limits of current models, specifically targeting the discovery of high-temperature superconductors exceeding 200 Kelvin. By integrating ML scientists, experimentalists, and simulators into a unified workflow, the company aims to replace theoretical predictions with real-world data loops, eventually expanding its "AI physicist" capabilities to serve aerospace, defense, and semiconductor industries.

Alok Sama & Nikesh Arora: AI, Cybersecurity, and Bold Leadership

Alok Sama, Nikesh Arora

The event outlines a systemic shift toward the democratization of intelligence, where agentic AI transforms search, disrupts traditional ride-sharing economics through autonomous fleets, and expands cybersecurity threats into state-sponsored warfare. Parallel to these technological shifts, the discussion contrasts high-risk investment strategies at SoftBank with Palo Alto Networks' disciplined acquisition model of retaining founders to build unified security platforms. The presentation concludes by warning of an imminent quantum computing vulnerability that threatens current encryption standards before defenders can establish quantum-safe protocols.

Mike Mattacola, CBO of CoreWeave: Building the Next Generation of Cloud in Europe

Mike Mattacola, Michael

CoreWeave announced an all-stock acquisition of Core Scientific to secure over 1.3 gigawatts of U.S. power capacity, while its revenue surged from $15.8 million to nearly $2 billion driven by strategic partnerships with major AI firms like Mistral and NVIDIA. The company is aggressively expanding European infrastructure with €1 billion in investments across six data centers and a seventh pipeline, utilizing a global supply chain strategy to mitigate local capital and talent shortages. Looking ahead, CoreWeave aims to lead industry consolidation by focusing on rapid capacity deployment and talent acquisition rather than active mergers, positioning its Blackwell and future Rubin hardware to support the next generation of high-performance computing.

Alexis Ohanian, Founder, 776, Reddit & Victorien Tixier, CEO, ScorePlay: The Future of AI in Sports

Alexis Ohanian, Victorien Tixier, Vic

At an industry conference, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian interviewed Scoreplay CEO Vic LaRosa to discuss how artificial intelligence will commoditize content production while elevating live sports as the premier vehicle for authentic, real-time human connection. Their dialogue highlighted Scoreplay's mission to replace legacy infrastructure with centralized AI automation for media asset management, a strategy designed to unlock global market reach through instant localization and data-driven camera placement. The conversation further emphasized a strategic pivot toward women's sports, where Ohanian argues that re-underwriting assets from first principles and leveraging digital-first storytelling will drive exponential valuation growth and reshape traditional league dynamics.

Fabricio Bloisi, CEO of Prosus Group at RAISE 2025

Fabricio Bloisi

On the one-year anniversary of his appointment as CEO, Fabricio outlined Prosus's strategy to transform its $130 billion valuation into a €1 trillion European tech giant through a $15 billion AI investment and aggressive expansion. The company is accelerating this vision by restructuring 40,000 employees, deploying 200 AI models at portfolio firm iFood, and seeking regulatory approval for a $4 billion acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway. With profitability increasing tenfold and $18 billion in reserves, Prosus plans to double its size and target fintech and e-commerce sectors to secure global leadership in AI-driven commerce execution.

AI Exchanges: The Role of Data

Neema Raphael, George Lee, Allison Nathan

Nima Raphael, a 20-year Goldman Sachs veteran, details the industry's strategic shift from deterministic coding to probabilistic machine learning, emphasizing the critical role of proprietary enterprise data in driving innovation beyond consumer hype. He argues that future AI differentiation relies on overcoming public data saturation by leveraging trapped internal datasets through rigorous engineering and emerging agent-based automation. Raphael further warns that sustained value depends on distinguishing high-quality insights from synthetic data risks while preparing for new frontiers in video and robotics generation.

Stephanie Cohen - CSO @ Cloudflare: Future of Content & Fair Compensation in the Age of AI

Stephanie Cohen

On July 1, Cloudflare implemented a permission-based default policy to block AI scrapers while launching a beta for micropayments via HTTP 402, aiming to transition the web into a value-based economy where content creators control data access. This strategic shift, supported by data showing a 65% surge in training crawler traffic, has drawn criticism from industry figures like BrightData's David Bossert but is defended by CEO Matthew Prince as necessary to repair the broken economic relationship between publishers and tech giants. Complementing this infrastructure, newly appointed Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen leverages her Wall Street background to guide Cloudflare's expansion into cybersecurity and AI financial services, predicting that high-value human judgment will remain essential even as automation transforms data-rich sectors.

Science Corner Special! David Friedberg, Cleo Abram, Alex Filippenko, and Keller Rinaudo Cliffton

David Friedberg, Cleo Abram, Alex Filippenko, Keller Rinaudo Cliffton

Vox alumna Cleo Abram, astrophysicist Alex Filippenko, and Zipline CEO Keller Renato Clifton converge to discuss the transformative potential of optimistic technology, from Abram's independent media platform that champions solutions over fear-mongering to Filippenko's insights on the James Webb Space Telescope's discovery of early galaxy formation and the critical funding crisis threatening scientific research. Clifton details Zipline's success in delivering over 115 million autonomous miles to save lives in developing nations and its rapid scaling in the U.S., arguing that reliable robotics are essential for future logistics and geopolitical stability. Together, these leaders emphasize that sustained investment in independent innovation and basic science is vital for creating better futures and expanding access to life-saving infrastructure globally.

Block CTO Dhanji Prasanna: Building the AI-First Enterprise with Goose, their Open Source Agent

Dhanji Prasanna, Sonya Huang, Roelof Botha

Block CTO Dhanji Prasanna drives a strategic shift from a siloed management model to a centralized AI-first architecture, spearheading the "Goose" project that functions as an open-source agent to orchestrate workflows across internal systems. This initiative, which evolved from an internal hack week, enables high autonomy for engineers by integrating diverse LLMs and saving 25% of manual hours through shared, self-learning scripts. Looking forward, Block aims to transition from single-agent co-pilots to collaborative swarm intelligence by 2030, while simultaneously extending this technology to its public-facing Square AI for merchant financial simulations.

Anduril CEO: China Has Scale. Can America Catch Up?

Ben, Marc, Erik Torenberg, Brian Schimpf, Chris Power

A strategic assessment reveals a critical gap in U.S. defense industrial capacity, where Russia currently outproduces NATO on 155mm munitions and existing stockpiles would deplete within six to seven days of conflict. This deficit stems from decades of offshoring, an aging skilled workforce, and a reliance on technical superiority rather than mass production, leaving the U.S. unable to sustain high-intensity wars or effectively deter China in scenarios such as an invasion of Taiwan. To address these vulnerabilities, experts recommend a "factory-first" approach featuring government-backed long-term offtake agreements, concentrated capital investment in scaled manufacturing entities, and regulatory reforms to rebuild domestic supply chains and reinvigorate the talent pipeline.

CoreWeave @ RAISE 2025: Building the Next Generation of Cloud in Europe

Michael

CoreWeave announced a strategic all-stock acquisition of Core Scientific to secure 1.3 gigawatts of U.S. power capacity, a move designed to accelerate AI cluster deployment and eliminate intermediary costs. Following its rapid pivot from crypto to artificial intelligence, the company recently completed an innovative IPO and is aggressively expanding its European footprint with $2.2 billion in committed capital and plans to deploy next-generation Blackwell and Rubin Next architectures. This growth trajectory positions CoreWeave to address global power bottlenecks while advising the market that future consolidation will be driven primarily by talent migration rather than traditional mergers.

Wes Cummins, Founder & CEO of Applied Digital: Ellendale’s Purpose Built AI Factory in North Dakota

Wes Cummins

Applied Digital is expanding its high-power density data center operations by securing a 400-megawatt contract with CoreWeave to construct a North Dakota campus utilizing stranded wind energy and designed for AI workloads. The company transitioned from Bitcoin mining to Tier 3 semiconductor-grade infrastructure after spending $5 billion on this project to ensure "five nines" reliability and extreme cooling standards for hyperscalers. With approximately 3% ownership by NVIDIA, the firm is capitalizing on the shortage of available power sites in the U.S. heartland while planning future phases that will integrate gas assets and explore nuclear options like small modular reactors.

RAISE 2025: Building AI for Security-Minded Enterprises

A French math PhD turned AI leader leveraged their academic background to build the Llama family at Meta before joining Cohere to prioritize business traction and secure, localized enterprise solutions. The speaker details a strategy where data quality and strategic partnerships, such as those with Fujitsu and RBC, drive the development of models optimized for specific languages and industries rather than pursuing Artificial General Intelligence. By focusing on grounded generation and flexible hosting options, the organization ensures data sovereignty and verifiable outputs for regulated sectors while avoiding the inherent risks of trying to mimic human cognition.

RAISE 2025 : Fireside Chat with Amit Bendov, CEO & Co Founder of Gong

Amit Bendov, Brian Bauman, Amit Bhandav

Founded by Amit Bhandav to solve CRM data gaps, Gong.io leverages autonomous AI to capture sales communication and transform enterprise productivity from manual entry to instant, context-aware insights. Operating on a maturity scale between assisted and near-autonomous levels, the platform currently handles high-volume administrative tasks while preserving human judgment for high-liability decisions. As enterprise leaders demand integrated AI for revenue generation, Gong drives adoption by eliminating briefing bottlenecks for Fortune 500 clients while fostering a unique culture that prioritizes employee personal branding and deep client relationships.

Inside the GLP-1 Gold Rush: Eli Lilly CEO on New Breakthroughs, Addiction & Mental Health, Pricing

Dave Ricks, Chamath, Jason, Friedberg

Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks has steered the company to an 860% market capitalization increase and record-breaking Mounjaro sales by leveraging a massive research workforce and aggressive manufacturing expansion to secure global dominance in GLP-1 therapies. While the firm faces capital shortages in the broader biotech sector, it is diversifying its pipeline beyond weight loss to address brain disorders and developing oral formulations to improve accessibility without compromising the high R&D reinvestment model Ricks defends. Personalized by Ricks' own successful treatment, the company balances aggressive clinical innovation with strategic supply chain controls to maintain its competitive edge against emerging international rivals.