Latest Interviews
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Building a Company in Stealth | Travis Kalanick with a16z
Travis Kalanick, Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg
Travis Kalanick, reflecting on lessons from his 2017 departure from Uber, is now leading ADAM, a stealth-backed venture that digitizes physical manufacturing and logistics to drive meal costs down to $8–$10. By integrating over 300 dark kitchen facilities and autonomous mining operations acquired from Pronto, the company leverages robotics to transform heavy industries while avoiding the external pressures that previously hindered Uber's scalability. Kalanick applies an "Industrial AI" framework focused on internal correctness and management capacity constraints to scale operations in food, mining, and transport simultaneously.
- Y Combinator1 min
A Cloud for Small Software
A new initiative identifies a critical infrastructure gap for purpose-built "small software," arguing that major cloud providers like AWS and Azure neglect the unique needs of applications designed for one to a few users. The proposed solution seeks to resolve significant security and customization hurdles by enabling non-technical teams to deploy and share bespoke code with the simplicity of a collaborative document. The organization is currently soliciting input from stakeholders and competitors working on similar infrastructure to refine these deployment frameworks.
- Sequoia Capital1 min
Every CIO will have to answer for every token | Factory's Matan Grinberg
The factory router introduces a dynamic model selection strategy that optimizes enterprise AI efficiency by routing distinct tasks to specialized, cost-effective models rather than relying on a single frontier solution. This framework enables CIOs to address the critical need for granular token allocation, assigning specific capabilities such as lightweight generation for "vibe coding" or custom fine-tuned models for legacy COBOL maintenance. By matching model performance to precise organizational workflows, the approach allows for complex multi-model validation pipelines while avoiding the inefficiency of blanket usage caps.
- Y Combinator1 min
The Future of American Defense
Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll has formally abandoned traditional acquisition playbooks to prioritize commercially developed, modular solutions for an inflection point in modern warfare. The initiative targets high-priority innovations including low-cost interceptors, open-architecture sensors, and extreme-environment drones, supported by direct capital and proving grounds for startups. This strategic pivot creates an optimal entry point for private sector founders to build next-generation ground combat systems capable of dominating diverse environments from the Arctic to space.
- RAISE Summit20 min
Indexing Humanity: A Fireside With the Simulation Company | Simile | RAISE Summit 2026
Joon Sung Park, Sahir Azam, Jun
Simile, founded by former Stanford researchers including CEO Jun, has launched a foundational model of human behavior that replicates individual subpopulations with 85% accuracy for enterprise clients like CVS and Fortune 500 companies. Leveraging strategic partnerships with Gallup and Dynata to access a 20-million-person data panel, the company differentiates itself by prioritizing human imperfections and biases over pure algorithmic efficiency to augment corporate decision-making in market research and product development. Supported by Index Ventures, Simile operates on a four-stage simulation hierarchy ranging from individual dynamic testing to society-wide forecasting, while adhering to strict ethical principles regarding data consent and transparency.
- All-In Podcast1 min
David Sacks: Anthropic Wants to Ban Open Source AI in America
The speaker argues that specific industry actors, including Anthropic, are strategically constructing a public narrative that frames open source AI models as inherently unsafe to justify future regulatory bans. By publishing detailed critiques linking these technologies to various risks, these entities aim to establish the necessary "predicate facts" required to legitimize restrictive government actions. This calculated approach is expected to culminate in a near-future push for direct prohibitions once the rhetoric has sufficiently shifted the public and policy landscape.
- Y Combinator2 min
The Primer
Inspired by Neal Stephenson's *The Diamond Age*, a new venture seeks to deploy AI-driven adaptive tools that deliver one-on-one tutoring quality in reading, writing, and arithmetic to every child at consumer scale. Rather than replacing educators, the system is designed to augment classroom instruction, addressing historical inequalities in access to personalized learning. Founders are actively recruiting builders to develop this technology, aiming to achieve a fraction of the Primer's societal impact as the foundation for a broader educational revolution.
- All-In Podcast1 min
How the Finance Department Killed Intel - Former CEO
The speaker analyzes Intel's recent decline as a direct consequence of shifting from a technical, PhD-led culture to one dominated by financial management, which prioritized $100 billion in shareholder returns over critical manufacturing investments. This strategic misalignment led to a decade without new factories and the delay of essential Extreme Ultraviolet machine purchases, decisions the speaker argues required technical judgment rather than spreadsheet analysis. In contrast, the discussion highlights that successful modern tech leaders like Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Google's Sundar Pichai maintain deep technical expertise to guide high-stakes, billion-dollar decisions effectively.
- Y Combinator29 min
Why Ambitious Startup Ideas Are Actually Easier To Sell
PostHog is transitioning from an open-source analytics platform to an AI-driven service that autonomously fixes engineering issues and solves customer support tickets by generating production-ready pull requests. Co-founders James and Tim restructured their operations to align with this new "self-driving software" vision, delegating management duties to the latter so the former can focus exclusively on AI product architecture while the company doubles in size. This strategic pivot replaces traditional manual product management with a system where AI configures workflows and implements fixes based on deep user data, aiming to secure massive market valuation through "insane" ambition rather than conservative growth.
- The Economist6 min
The art of deception in modern war | The Economist
The event analyzes how modern deception strategies now target an adversary's intent rather than mere presence to neutralize overwhelming surveillance, drawing on historical precedents like D-Day alongside recent intelligence failures in Ukraine, Israel, and Russia. It further details how transparent battlespaces compel forces to deploy resource-intensive drone operations that paradoxically increase human density and logistical footprints, requiring teams of five and nearly two tons of equipment per unit. By forcing enemies to waste munitions on decoys, these tactics aim to degrade capabilities, though the summary notes their inherent vulnerability and limited operational endurance of roughly three days.
David Friedberg Explains America's Economic Crisis in 60 Minutes
David Friedberg warns that the United States faces potential social collapse within two years due to policy failures that exclude the bottom 50% from capital ownership, a structural gap he estimates represents a $33 trillion wealth disparity. He advocates for replacing Social Security and Treasury-bond-heavy pension systems with equity-based individual accounts, while proposing a 40% capital gains tax and a national goal of shifting 2% of Americans to capital ownership annually. Friedberg argues these reforms, alongside closing inheritance loopholes and eliminating income tax for the bottom earners, are essential to prevent a socialist death spiral and restore economic mobility before the chaotic political landscape of 2028.
- RAISE Summit20 min
Beyond the Helpdesk: AI Turning IT Into a Strategic Function | Serval | RAISE Summit 2026
Serval is an AI-native platform that completely rebuilds IT Service Management infrastructure to replace legacy systems like ServiceNow by integrating dual-agent architecture for full automation of enterprise workflows. Co-founded by Jake, the company has driven an 80% automation rate for major clients such as SeatGeek and Ramp, enabling thousands of IT staff to shift from support roles to building cross-functional solutions in marketing, legal, and HR. By treating AI as a core foundation rather than an add-on layer, Serval allows enterprises to eliminate support queues and rapidly reinvent their operational roadmaps every six months.
- RAISE Summit13 min
The Golden Age of Software Engineering | Scott Wu, Cognition | RAISE Summit 2026
Founded two and a half years ago, global firm Cognition leverages its autonomous AI agent, Devin, to generate 90% of committed code while scaling engineering output tenfold with only a 40% headcount increase. By closing the full software development lifecycle autonomously, the company enables asynchronous, event-driven workflows that effectively add 130 engineers to every 1,000-person team through a 10:1 human-to-AI ratio. This shift toward outcome-based delivery signals the imminent "Golden Age of Software Engineering," where the primary constraint moves from labor availability to identifying complex problems worth solving.
- Goldman Sachs19 min
US Midyear Outlook: Geopolitical Shocks, the New Fed Era, and Growth
Recent U.S. economic data reveals unexpectedly resilient job growth and stickier inflation stabilizing near 3%, driven by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and AI-related price measurement distortions. Goldman Sachs forecasts core PCE inflation to settle around 2.1% with real GDP growth of 2%, prompting expectations that the Federal Reserve will maintain current interest rates through July while shifting its policy stance toward neutralizing inflation regardless of its source. Despite market speculation regarding rate hikes, the primary economic risk remains a potential escalation of the Middle East conflict that could trigger sustained price increases and destabilize financial markets.
- Sequoia Capital1 min
90% of AI tokens will be asynchronous | Matan Grinberg, Factory
The event outlines a critical shift in AI consumption from fragile, prompt-dependent synchronous models to robust asynchronous workflows where autonomous agents initiate tasks without human triggers. Industry forecasts predict that within 12 to 24 months, 90% of tokens will be generated by these autonomous systems, marking the transition from current "co-pilot" tools to fully "agent-native" operations. This evolution promises to decouple revenue growth from active human intervention by enabling systems to independently identify customer signals and execute first-pass solutions.