Latest Interviews

Why compute prices might 10x as AI gets smarter

Anthropic's projected tenfold revenue growth outpaces the industry's threefold compute expansion, forcing a shift toward higher inference margins, increased spot prices, and a reallocation of hardware to inference workloads. This economic divergence is exacerbated by hard supply constraints in Moore's Law, fab construction, and wafer allocation, which concentrate pricing power among frontier labs capable of charging significant premiums for compute-efficient models. Consequently, the market faces a pre-singularity regime where inelastic compute supply drives sustained price increases and intelligence concentration until automated manufacturing potentially resolves future scarcity.

Arena CEO: There Will be a $100BN US Open-Source Model & Data is a Trillion Dollar Market

Anastasios Angelopoulos, Harry Stebbings

Arena founder Anastasios outlines a shifting AI landscape where Chinese open-source models like Kimi K3 challenge American closed-source dominance, while geopolitical tensions and security concerns drive an anticipated five-year migration toward sovereign, fine-tuned architectures. The event analyzes critical economic friction points, including the unsustainability of current open-source business models, the looming risk of US export controls on advanced chips, and the consolidation of a volatile market where 75% of new "neo-labs" may fail or be acquired solely for talent. Ultimately, the discussion projects that future value will derive from integrating data into biological feedback loops and robust physical infrastructure, rather than the current hype surrounding GPU memory and speculative software applications.

Inside the Factory Behind Base Power's $1B Series D

Justin Lopas, Molly O'Shea

Base Power recently secured a $1 billion Series D funding round led by Ribbit and JPMorgan Chase, establishing a $13 billion valuation to accelerate production of its high-capacity BaseCore home battery system. The vertically integrated manufacturer is scaling operations at its Austin facility to 4,000 units weekly, featuring a modular design that enables full-home backup power in under two hours per unit. This growth supports a strategic rollout of both direct consumer sales and utility partnership models across key regional markets as the company prepares to open a second factory near the Austin airport.

Former US Secretary: We Needs To Reform Now, We’re Heading Towards A Catastrophe | Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg warns that the United States faces systemic collapse due to unchecked national debt, wealth inequality, and an electoral system that fuels polarization, urging immediate structural reforms including the abolition of the Electoral College and corporate personhood. He outlines a vision for 2028 where technological advancements like AI are regulated to prevent extreme wealth concentration while redefining social contracts through mechanisms like public dividends and shorter work weeks. Buttigieg also critiques current foreign policy failures in the Middle East and the lack of coherent exit strategies in conflicts with Iran, arguing that only deliberate, transparent leadership can restore trust and prevent democratic backsliding.

Is billionaire wealth becoming more legitimate? | The Economist

Callum Williams, Rosie Blau

Recent research distinguishes between "competitive wealth" derived from creating goods and services and "uncompetitive wealth" from natural resources or political favors, finding the former is expanding while the latter declines. This shift is driven by rapid consumer growth in China, strong market returns, and the mobile-first internet era, which has fueled self-made billionaires in sectors like entertainment and retail rather than just technology. Consequently, data indicates that effective tax rates for the wealthiest Americans are high and that aggressive wealth taxes on competitive entrepreneurs may incur greater economic costs than the benefits of curbing inequality.

The AI Company Simulating the Entire Economy | Simile Co-founder & CEO, Joon Sung Park

Joon Sung Park, Harry Stebbings

Simile, founded by Joon-Sung Park alongside AI luminaries Michael Bernstein and Percy Liang, has secured $300 million in funding to build a "simulation market" that predicts human behavior by modeling irrationality rather than super-rationality. The company recently validated its synthetic panels with 85% accuracy, enabling Fortune 500 clients like CVS to test counterfactuals at a fraction of traditional market research costs while aiming to generate single-session values of $100 million. By prioritizing behavioral data over self-reported metrics, Simile distinguishes itself as the "GPU of intelligence units" designed to scale representation of collective society for enterprise decision-making.

Global Rates & FX Views: Central banks – the aftermath

Sphia Salim, Zviya Salim, Izumi Devalier, Agnieszka Ngerite, Bruno Brzezina

The Bank of Japan maintained a hawkish tone regarding inflation proximity while keeping the September rate hike on contingency, with strategists projecting a terminal rate of 1.75% by 2027 despite political headwinds. Meanwhile, the Bank of England split 6-3 to hold rates amidst balanced forward guidance, while the US Federal Reserve's lack of immediate action triggered a market reassessment that halved the probability of December hikes in favor of a potential September move. Across these major central banks, analysts note diverging paths where exchange rate sensitivity and QT impacts now play critical roles, all set against a backdrop of a potentially overvalued US 10-year yield and a US economy peaking in its reflationary phase.

Declining costs mean more rising rockets; launch costs key for space industrialization

Ron Epstein, TJ Thornton

This analysis details how the aerospace industry's pursuit of full reusability, led by SpaceX's Starship program, aims to slash launch costs from $1,000 to $100 per kilogram to unlock a lunar economy and orbital data centers. While engineering hurdles like thermal management in space remain solvable, this cost reduction is projected to catalyze exponential market growth in satellite broadband, in-orbit manufacturing, and national security surveillance. Ultimately, the sector's future viability hinges on overcoming reusability thresholds and resolving unresolved regulatory frameworks regarding lunar resources and orbital debris.

Live Market Insights: Addressing Client Questions on the Mid-Year 2026 Outlook

Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, Matt Weir, Nicola Gifford

Analysts project a robust 2026 outlook for U.S. equities, forecasting S&P 500 earnings growth of approximately 17% driven by broad-based margin expansion and macroeconomic resilience following a transition to energy independence. Portfolio strategies reflect this optimism by maintaining U.S. allocations while adding targeted exposure to AI supply chain leaders in Korea and Taiwan, while explicitly advising against the high costs of systematic put option hedging. Future market dynamics will be shaped by the tension between hyperscalers deploying 100% of operating cash flow into AI capital expenditures and the counterbalancing force of $1.3 trillion in projected corporate share buybacks.

Things That Will Blow Your Mind | Global Conference 2026

Richard Sandler, Ali Agha, Erin Blanton, Bentzion Levinson, Geoffrey von Maltzahn

This panel featured four innovators presenting distinct AI-driven solutions: Lila Sciences deployed autonomous laboratories to accelerate biotech and material discoveries, Field AI introduced hardware-agnostic robotics for extreme environments, Heaven Aerotech developed hydrogen-powered endurance drones for strategic defense, and Carbon Mapper utilized satellite spectrometry to identify and mitigate global methane super-emitters. Collectively, these breakthroughs demonstrate a shift from conversational AI to embodied, physical intelligence capable of operating 24/7 to solve critical challenges in labor shortages, climate change, and geopolitical security. The discussion concluded with a unified call for the West to reindustrialize and scale automation to prevent falling behind China's rapid advancements in scientific and military capabilities.

Patrick Collison: Is AI Breaking the Lean Startup Playbook?

Patrick Collison, Harj Taggar

Patrick Collison shares his journey from dropping out of college twice to launching Stripe, emphasizing the critical role of retaining "cognitive L1 cache" over reliance on AI tools for deep reasoning. He highlights that while new business formation on Stripe has doubled and AI is accelerating revenue milestones, entrepreneurs should remain wary of decentralization fears and instead focus on solving visceral customer problems like legacy payment friction. Collison concludes by advising founders to build fundamental knowledge of first principles and to assess whether their chosen venture is a cause they are willing to pursue for decades.

What can Big Macs tell you about the global economy? | The Economist

Zanny Minton Beddoes, Edward Carr, Simon, Henry, Josh

Conceived by economics correspondent Pam Woodall, the Big Mac Index uses McDonald's standardized burger prices to gauge Purchasing Power Parity and identify currency misalignments across nations. While widely cited in academic research and occasionally utilized for long-term investment strategy, the metric remains largely symbolic for traders and has faced public rejection from countries like Taiwan that actively undervalue their currencies. Despite successes such as predicting the euro's initial overvaluation, the index cannot account for institutional confidence or central bank policies that frequently drive exchange rates away from theoretical PPP values.

Conversation with CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz & HHS Chief Counselor Chris Klomp | Global Conference

Mehmet Oz, Chris Klomp, Esther Krofah

Under the strategic mandate "Making America Healthy Again," CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and HHS leadership are overhauling the U.S. healthcare system by shifting from fee-for-service to value-based models that target upstream chronic disease prevention and address the nation's 27% unfilled prescription rate. The administration is enforcing strict integrity measures to eliminate $100 billion in annual fraud while simultaneously deploying AI to modernize legacy infrastructure and accelerate FDA drug approvals from 15 years to under five. These initiatives aim to align U.S. drug pricing with global "Most Favored Nation" standards and restore public trust in federal health agencies to counter competitive gaps with international rivals like China.

How Decagon Runs 90% of Its Agents on Open-Source Models

Sarah Wang, Kimberly Tan, Jesse Zhang, Ashwin Sreenivas

Decagon Labs challenges the prevailing 2026 narrative that AI agents will replace all software by establishing a dedicated "model factory" that prioritizes open-source fine-tuning over frontier models to achieve superior latency for voice interactions. The company differentiates its enterprise deployment through a "glass box" approach and its Duet Autopilot system, which automates the creation of agent procedures and reduces production timelines from years to months. Despite rapid international expansion and the lowering of technical barriers, Decagon contends that the primary constraint remains human talent acquisition while affirming that AI will drive new service demand rather than eliminating careers or rendering legacy SaaS obsolete.

AssemblyAI Now Handles 4x YouTube's Daily Volume

Dylan Fox, Molly O'Shea

AssemblyAI has achieved explosive growth with weekly API conversations surging 800% to surpass 120 million voice interactions, driven by CEO Dylan Fox's infrastructure-focused strategy that supports over one million developers. The company distinguishes itself through advanced, context-aware voice models capable of real-time multi-language switching and noise filtering, while maintaining a lean, AI-native operational structure. Looking forward, leadership anticipates voice becoming a universal consumer interface within three years, though the industry must urgently address ethical transparency and on-device latency challenges to ensure trust.