Latest Interviews

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.

The Data Center is the New Unit of Compute: Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller

Chase Lochmiller, David Kahn, Pat

Crusoe Energy is rapidly constructing massive AI factories in Abilene, Texas, leveraging a vertically integrated supply chain to deliver gigawatts of power capacity decades ahead of traditional utility timelines. By repurposing stranded renewable energy and deploying advanced cooling architectures, the company accelerates the shift toward sovereign AI infrastructure while addressing critical bottlenecks in power and hardware availability. Founder Chase Lockmiller positions this industrial-scale approach as the mechanism to manufacture intelligence, creating a resilient foundation for the next phase of artificial general intelligence.

The Physical Turing Test: Jim Fan on Nvidia's Roadmap for Embodied AI

Jim Fan

NVIDIA Director Jim Phan outlines the "Physical Turing Test," a benchmark for robots performing complex physical tasks indistinguishable from human performance, while identifying data scarcity as the primary bottleneck for current systems. To overcome this, NVIDIA employs Simulation 2.0, utilizing generative models like Robocasa and video diffusion to exponentially scale training environments and introduce the GR00T N1 open-source model capable of zero-shot generalist control. This technological evolution aims to transition the physical world into a "Physical API," where software-defined skills enable autonomous robots to seamlessly handle household and industrial tasks, effectively embedding human-like dexterity into everyday infrastructure.

AI Exchanges: How tech giants are navigating the AI landscape

Eric Sheridan, Allison Nathan, George Lee

Major technology giants are sustaining record capital expenditures through 2025 to solidify AI infrastructure dominance, with Goldman Sachs projecting this peak intensity to slow in 2026 despite tariff-related cost increases. Executives from Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon characterize the sector as being in the early innings of a third computing shift, prioritizing defensive positioning and infrastructure monetization over immediate application-layer profitability. Although investor sentiment remains bifurcated by macroeconomic risks, current valuations reflect a strategic reliance on these incumbents' unprecedented balance sheet scale to navigate the transition from raw training to commercial deployment.

A Conversation with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang | Global Conference 2025

Jensen Huang, Michael Milken

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang frames AI as a $100 trillion industrial revolution that creates "AI factories" to automate labor and reintegrate millions of workers into the global economy. Operating as an end-to-end infrastructure provider, the company builds massive, gigawatt-scale systems while arguing that unrestricted global chip trade is essential for establishing dominant U.S. standards. Through a culture of perpetual resilience and a focus on "Physical AI," NVIDIA aims to close the technology divide and drive GDP growth across healthcare, manufacturing, and robotics sectors.

AI's Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: Sequoia AI Ascent 2025 Keynote

Pat Grady, Sonia, Konstantin Vargas

Sequoia Capital outlines a strategic framework for the AI opportunity, predicting that the sector will disrupt both software and services markets by shifting value from selling tools to selling outcomes. The firm emphasizes investing in companies that demonstrate durable adoption and functional data flywheels, noting that 2024 marked a transition from hype to utility in vertical applications like healthcare and law. Looking ahead, the presentation predicts the emergence of an agent economy where interconnected agents manage resources and tasks, potentially enabling a "one-person unicorn" era through new management strategies.

Ambient Agents and the New Agent Inbox ft. Harrison Chase

Harrison Chase

LangChain CEO Harrison Chase introduces ambient agents as background systems designed to execute complex, multi-step operations by monitoring event streams rather than relying on direct chat input. These agents operate within a strict human-in-the-loop framework that utilizes patterns like action approval, editing, and time-travel rollback to ensure accuracy while preventing full autonomy. To support this architecture, LangChain has enhanced its LangGraph infrastructure for state persistence and scalability while deploying an Agent Inbox UI that enables users to manage long-running workflows through direct oversight and feedback integration.

Game Changers: Unlocking the Global Sports Economy | Global Conference 2025

Emmanuel Acho, Willow Bay, Sam Kennedy, Rich Paul, Alex Rodriguez, Jason Wright

Moderated by Emanuel Ocho, a panel of five high-profile sports leaders including Alex Rodriguez, Rich Paul, and Sam Kennedy detailed the economic transformation of women's sports and the strategic necessity of institutional capital for franchise growth. The discussion highlighted how shifting from altruistic models to revenue-focused ecosystems has driven record attendance and a 200% surge in sponsorship, while establishing that sustainable success relies on defining culture through face-to-face interaction and long-term investment patience. By addressing market gaps in media coverage and merchandise, these leaders argued that balancing fiduciary duties with player well-being is essential for navigating an era where athletes now control their own narratives and investors target high-growth asset classes.

Modernizing Warfare and Beyond

Liz McNally, Qasar Younis, Erin Price-Wright

The Defense Innovation Unit is accelerating the integration of dual-use commercial technology into the Department of Defense by partnering with companies like Applied Intuition to prototype and field software at scale. This strategy leverages new congressional flexibility and the Commercial Solutions Opening model to bridge the gap between agile industry innovation and military needs, addressing critical challenges in the Indo-Pacific against China's advancing autonomy capabilities. By prioritizing "dual fluency" talent and a venture-first procurement approach, DIU aims to modernize the defense industrial base and ensure the U.S. maintains a technological edge in software-defined warfare.

The State of the Global Economy: Global Capital Markets | Global Conference 2025

David Faber, Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, Jane Fraser, Jenny Johnson, Harvey Schwartz, Andrew Sullivan

Amidst rising tariff uncertainties and unsolvable fiscal deficits, major global investors from Carlyle, Mubadara, and Prudential are shifting capital allocation toward defensive balance sheets and the fastest-growing asset class, private credit. While short-term market volatility is expected as corporations delay supply chain transformations, long-term strategies increasingly prioritize U.S. assets and emerging markets like India alongside massive infrastructure investments in AI energy and data centers. Panelists project that despite immediate headwinds from regulatory burdens and debt concerns, artificial intelligence will ultimately drive superior productivity growth compared to fiscal policy measures over the next decade.

What Is an AI Agent?

Guido Appenzeller, Matt Bornstein, Yoko Li

Industry experts define AI agents as multi-step systems capable of dynamic reasoning and tool usage, distinguishing them from simple prompt wrappers despite widespread marketing inflation. Current market adoption is constrained by data silos, security gaps in authentication, and the technical difficulty of enabling non-deterministic models to interact reliably with fragmented user environments. Ultimately, the field is shifting toward specialized workflows and multimodal capabilities, with agents expected to become invisible infrastructure within two to five years rather than standalone products.

How to Enable a Manufacturing Renaissance

Bryon Hargis, Chris Power, Ian Cinnamon

Amid a strategic space race against China, Los Angeles-based startups Apex and Hadrian are scaling satellite manufacturing and automated defense production to counter rapid geopolitical shifts and a domestic labor crisis. Despite facing significant regulatory hurdles regarding energy infrastructure and permitting, these companies are successfully attracting top software talent to traditional aerospace roles by merging Silicon Valley innovation with industrial capacity. Their unified efforts aim to establish a resilient, onshored U.S. industrial base while pressuring policymakers to streamline export licensing and incentivize skilled trade careers.

The Software Crisis Behind America's Infrastructure

Leila Hay, Phillip Buckendorf, Leonard J. Kosinski

ASI Co-founders Philip and retired General Leo Leo address the United States' critical software crisis by merging commercial aviation technology with Department of Defense logistics to replace fragmented legacy systems. Their strategy establishes a unified "collective logistics" framework that leverages AI-driven predictive capabilities to secure supply chains against cyber threats and geopolitical instability. By standardizing software stacks across the private and public sectors, the organization aims to rapidly modernize military infrastructure and maintain U.S. power projection capabilities by 2034.

Plural Partner, Taavet Hinrikus: Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds

Taavet Hinrikus, Harry Stebbings

Venture capitalist Tal Talbot outlines Plural's strategic shift toward a low-fee, high-volume model that aligns incentives by charging half the industry standard management fee and requiring partners to personally back every investment. The firm targets deep hard-tech sectors like defense, fusion, and AI, explicitly rejecting saturated enterprise software markets to pursue 100x returns while advocating for European geopolitical sovereignty through government purchasing and unified capital mobilization. With Fund II expanding its reserve ratio to 50% and targeting companies such as Helsing and Proxima Fusion, Plural aims to rebuild Europe's critical industries amid a tri-polar global landscape where traditional VC metrics are declining.

Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery

Trump, Bessent, Elon, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Chamath, Jason, Friedberg

A panel of experts analyzes global market dynamics, noting that recent rallies stem from trade deal expectations rather than Federal Reserve support, while highlighting strategic tensions over China's control of rare earths and its lead in thorium energy research. The discussion extends to foreign policy, where participants advocate for accepting the Istanbul Deal to end the Ukraine war and criticizing the moralistic approach to nation-building. Finally, the group evaluates corporate strategies for Alphabet and Tesla, the fiscal hurdles facing the Department of Government Efficiency, and the regulatory complexities surrounding Nvidia's global supply chain.