Latest Interviews
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Civitai: Open Sourcing AI Art
Justin Maier, Maxfield Hulker, Maxville Holker
Co-founded by Justin Mayer and Maxville Holker, the platform Civitai rapidly scaled to one million users by March 2023 to consolidate open-source image technology and host community-created models. The site differentiates itself through detailed metadata tracking, automated content safety via Safe Prompt Models, and integrated tools that allow users to train custom LoRAs from uploaded data. By balancing unrestricted creative expression with necessary moderation, the organization currently fosters a growing creator economy where developers can monetize their work without sacrificing open accessibility.
- The Economist24 min
Yuan direction: Chinese firms head south
Rosie Bloor, Jason Palmer, Tom Lee Devlin, Wendell Stevenson, Tom Nuttall
Amidst domestic growth headwinds and Western protectionism, Chinese firms are aggressively expanding into the Global South by establishing local factories and leveraging the Belt and Road Initiative, a strategy that challenges Western manufacturers' competitiveness. Concurrently, Russian military campaigns have intensified attacks on Ukraine's diverse energy infrastructure, forcing the nation to rely on imported Soviet-era components and diesel generators while navigating a paradox between immediate thermal needs and long-term nuclear or renewable goals. In Europe, the Döner kebab continues to evolve from a 1970s migrant adaptation into a complex cultural symbol marked by distinct national identities, cross-cultural re-exportation, and emerging regulatory disputes over quality standards.
- Milken Institute48 min
A Conversation with Prime Minister of Malaysia, H.E. Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim | Asia Summit 2023
H.E. Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Yeen Chong, The Honourable Dato' Seri Anwar Bin Ibrahim, Haslinda Amin
The provided transcript lacks the substantive facts, coherent narrative, or specific decisions necessary to summarize an event. It is characterized by random topic jumps, repetitive filler, and conflicting speaker identities that prevent the identification of any key figures or outcomes. Consequently, no descriptive pitch can be generated because the source material contains no actionable information or logical structure.
- The Economist23 min
Struck out: A Hamas leader is assassinated
Rosie Bloor, Jason Palmer, Greg Karlstrom, Kinley Salmon, Carla Subidana
The assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr have heightened regional tensions while complicating ceasefire negotiations amid Iran's constrained military response. Simultaneously, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro claims an election victory despite overwhelming evidence from independent counts and the opposition indicating a decisive win for Edmundo González, triggering violent protests and a deepening political crisis. On the global health front, indoor air pollution from traditional cooking fires remains a leading cause of premature death, disproportionately affecting women and children in developing nations where financial and structural barriers hinder access to cleaner fuels.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
The Future of Mobility | Milken Institute Global Conference 2024
Diane Brady, Pablo Di Si, Stella Li, Andrew Littlefair, Éric Martel, Shauna McIntyre
Industry leaders from Volkswagen, BYD, Northvolt, and Bombardier convened to address the stagnation of U.S. EV adoption, citing grid constraints, conflicting policies, and consumer range anxiety as primary barriers to full electrification. The panel highlighted immediate technological pivots, including the deployment of renewable natural gas for heavy-duty transport, the validation of lithium metal batteries for aviation, and the integration of AI to optimize manufacturing and energy grids. While contrasting the U.S. market with China's consistent policy-driven success, experts emphasized a 20-to-30-year transition timeline requiring a diverse mix of combustion, hybrid, and renewable solutions rather than a single-technology mandate to meet 2032 climate goals.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
Can the US consumer stay strong?
David Mericle, Kate McShane, Bonnie Herzog, Alison Nathan
Goldman Sachs Chief Economist David Miracle projects moderate U.S. consumption growth in 2024, attributing current resilience to strong household balance sheets while warning that unemployment risks could trigger a shift to job loss. Retail analysts Kate McShane and Bonnie Herzog observe a bifurcated consumer environment where spending prioritizes services and essentials while lower-income demographics defer discretionary purchases and trade down to private labels. Despite these pressures, the market faces further headwinds from a five-day shorter holiday shopping window, persistent price levels, and election uncertainty, leading management to adopt cautious strategies focused on revenue growth and value optimization.
- The Economist21 min
Down to the wires: Africa’s digital lag
Rosie Bloor, Jason Palmer, Ore Ogunbiyi, Sophie Pedder, John Bleasdale
The event analyzes Africa's critical digital infrastructure deficit, highlighting how energy shortages and regulatory barriers threaten to exclude the continent from $16 trillion in potential AI-driven economic growth. It further examines the Paris Olympics' environmental contradictions, where a billion-euro cleanup of the Seine failed to prevent bacterial contamination during the triathlon despite the river's vital role in global logistics. Finally, the discussion retrospectively evaluates the enduring success of the *Blair Witch Project*, detailing its record-breaking $250 million return on a $35,000 budget through innovative viral marketing and psychological storytelling techniques.
- Sequoia Capital42 min
Meta’s Joe Spisak on Llama 3.1 405B and the Democratization of Frontier Models | Training Data
Joe Spisak, Stephanie Zhan, Sonya Huang, Amy
Meta has open-sourced its Llama 3.1 405B model with a permissive commercial license to maximize ecosystem adoption and challenge closed-source competitors while serving as a teacher for distilling smaller, on-device variants. The release prioritizes expanded multilingual support, extended context windows, and state-of-the-art tool use, leveraging a massive 16,000-GPU training run that rivals or surpasses current frontier models from other companies. This strategic move shifts industry value from base model architecture to proprietary data and application layers, encouraging startups to build fine-tuned solutions on open foundations rather than investing in expensive pre-training.
- Milken Institute18 min
A Conversation with CDC Director Mandy Cohen | Milken Institute Global Conference 2024
CDC Director Mandy is advancing a strategic realignment that treats public health as a cornerstone of national security and economic stability, prioritizing the forward deployment of personnel to contain outbreaks in Sub-Saharan Africa before they reach U.S. borders. Domestically, the agency targets critical life expectancy disparities and a mental health crisis through zero-to-ten age interventions, while simultaneously modernizing data infrastructure to leverage artificial intelligence and eliminate legacy reporting silos. This comprehensive approach seeks to unify government, business, and community voices to build lasting public trust in vaccines and optimize workforce health as a financial imperative.
- The Economist26 min
Warpath: Israel vows revenge on Hizbullah
Rosie Bloor, Anshul Pfeffer, Tom Sass, David Harrington, Paul Wianco
A rocket attack in the Golan Heights that killed twelve Druze children has intensified Middle East tensions, placing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under pressure to balance a necessary retaliation against Hezbollah with the strategic need to avoid all-out war while Gaza ceasefire negotiations proceed. Simultaneously, the UK faces a critical prison crisis with severe overcrowding and unsanitary conditions prompting the new Labour government to implement emergency early releases while pursuing long-term rehabilitation strategies to reverse decades of rising incarceration rates. In the cultural sector, the Kronos Quartet marks its fiftieth anniversary by retiring founding members, introducing new leadership, and launching a digital archive that prioritizes diverse commissions to fulfill its mission of expanding the classical repertoire.
- Milken Institute1h 1m
Critical Minerals: Mining the Future Economy | Milken Institute Global Conference 2024
Ari Untracht, Amos Hochstein, Shauna McIntyre, Zimi Meka, Amit Midha
A global panel warns that meeting net zero and AI infrastructure demands requires 40 to 50 times more copper supply than currently available, yet production timelines lag by up to 14 years while supply chains remain dangerously concentrated in single nations. To address this critical shortage, proposed solutions include Saudi Arabia's $100 billion Allat initiative to establish a clean-energy refining hub, pooled Western financing to de-risk upstream investments, and regulatory shifts to mandate mineral origin tracing. The discussion concludes that without immediate government intervention to crowd-in private capital and develop technologies like direct lithium extraction, the energy transition faces severe supply shocks that threaten national security.
- Milken Institute58 min
M&A: Moving On and Up | Milken Institute Global Conference 2024
Romaine Bostick, Anu Aiyengar, Andrew Bednar, Ron Eliasek, Andrea Guerzoni, Alan Tannenbaum
The global M&A market is rebounding in 2024 with over $1.5 trillion in projected volume and a 26% rise in billion-dollar deals, driven by valuation normalization and a strategic shift toward AI integration and portfolio rationalization. Private capital markets are deploying more than $4 trillion in dry powder to navigate stabilized but volatile financing conditions, prompting increased use of all-stock structures and creative exit strategies as regulatory scrutiny and geopolitical tensions suppress cross-border activity. Although large-scale take-private transactions and private equity volumes are surging, market leaders anticipate a gradual recovery trajectory rather than an immediate surge, expecting full maturity only between 2025 and 2026 as interest rates stabilize and structural market shifts resolve.
- All-In Podcast1h 39m
Mag 7 sell-off, Wiz rejects Google, UBI, Kamala in, China's nuclear buildout, Sacks responds to PG
Kamala, Sacks, PG, Nostracanis, Wiz, Sam Altman, Rupert Murdoch, Biden, Josh Shapiro
Wiz rejected a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google to pursue an IPO, a strategic move that underscores growing demand for cloud security following the CrowdStrike global outage and highlights the critical role of Alphabet's $40 billion run-rate cloud division amid antitrust scrutiny. The event also examined broader market volatility driven by AI stock rotations and geopolitical shocks, while analyzing a failed UBI experiment in Texas and Illinois that challenged the economic necessity of universal basic income. Finally, the discussion covered high-stakes developments including Rupert Murdoch's succession struggle within News Corp, the swift U.S. presidential nomination shift to Kamala Harris, and urgent warnings regarding U.S. nuclear energy deficits relative to China's aggressive infrastructure expansion.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
Private Credit Cashing In | Milken Institute Global Conference 2024
Liz Hoffman, Dianna Carr-Coletta, David Geenberg, Theodore L. Koenig, Danielle Poli, James Reynolds, Ted, Francois Chollette
Private credit assets have expanded to an estimated $1.5 trillion through a 20% CAGR since the financial crisis, driven by institutional reallocations from 1-2% to 15% and expanding participation from retail investors. While competition intensifies among originators targeting the lower-middle market and specialized sectors like life sciences, the sector differentiates itself through superior recovery rates via maintenance covenants and a strategic pivot toward capital protection rather than yield maximization. Looking forward, the industry faces liquidity and regulatory headwinds but expects to sustain 10-11% unlevered returns by diversifying into asset-backed finance and addressing distressed capital structures created by the current M&A slowdown.
- Goldman Sachs9 min
Is the big tech trade over?
The S&P 500 recently declined 5% following a year-end rally, driven by reassessments of mega-cap valuations amid shifting inflation data and skepticism over AI profitability. Goldman Sachs analysts characterize this correction as a market rotation where capital is flowing from large-cap tech stocks to small-cap equities, a divergence that benefits smaller companies anticipating interest rate cuts. Despite the drop, the firm maintains a positive outlook, citing robust earnings and historical precedents where similar market dips often result in higher valuations within three months.