Latest Interviews
Showing 646–660 of 6,339 interview transcripts.
Dara Khosrowshahi’s Full Circle Launch: Expedia x Uber
Dara Khosrowshahi, Molly O'Shea, Barry Diller
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi detailed a strategic pivot from deep losses to $10 billion in annual free cash flow, driven by a multi-service ecosystem that integrates Rides, Eats, and an expanded Travel suite. The platform recently launched new features including an Expedia hotel booking partnership, a "Shop For Me" procurement service, and AI-driven development tools designed to accelerate innovation while preparing for a future fleet of autonomous and air taxis. By aggregating third-party mobility providers and emphasizing cross-platform membership loyalty, Uber aims to outperform single-line competitors through increased user retention and global service accessibility.
- Goldman Sachs15 min
How to Trade Oil Now
Oil markets are currently navigating a binary valuation dependent on a potential memorandum signing, which determines whether prices stabilize near $95–$105 or re-price higher following a 30-day sell-off window. While the April ceasefire has removed the immediate risk premium on infrastructure, refined product shortages and yield shifts are expected to constrain European jet fuel supplies and sustain elevated summer prices for at least three to six months. Investor sentiment has subsequently pivoted from directional trading to downside hedging, anticipating that full supply normalization and a bearish market scenario will not materialize until nine months post-conflict.
- The Economist6 min
Will Rahm Emanuel run for president? | The Economist
Rahm Emanuel, Zanny Minton Beddoes
A prospective Democratic presidential candidate outlines a strategy for winning swing states by prioritizing "redistribution and growth" while centering campaign values on candor and authenticity to counter perceptions of weakness. On foreign policy, the figure proposes a significant NATO troop realignment west of the Rhine to deter Russia and rebuild U.S.-European trust damaged by recent administrations, while explicitly condemning the 2003 Iraq War and current Gulf conflict as strategic failures. The analysis concludes that American public support for Ukraine will persist provided leadership adopts a "smart" approach that fosters shared burdens rather than isolationism or unilateral mistakes.
- 80,000 Hours2h 35m
Godfather of AI: How To Make Safe Superintelligent AI – Yoshua Bengio
Yoshua Bengio proposes "Scientist AI," a new paradigm developed by the startup LawZero that trains models to approximate a Bayesian posterior, effectively distinguishing verified truth from human speech acts to ensure honesty by design. By replacing standard reinforcement learning with a loss function that penalizes deviations from verified facts like mathematical proofs and code outputs, the system aims to eliminate deceptive instrumental goals while potentially increasing capability through better causal reasoning. To validate this approach, the organization has raised $35 million to deploy non-agentic safety guardrails within months, advocating for international coalitions to fund the technology and prevent a global race to the bottom on AI safety.
Anthropic's Raise & What It Means for Potential IPO? Mag7: Google & Amazon Up, Meta & Microsoft Down
Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
The current earnings quarter reveals aggressive capital deployment by top-tier technology firms, where hyperscalers like Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon are pouring billions into AI infrastructure while facing heightened market scrutiny regarding the direct revenue correlation of these expenditures. Parallel to this infrastructure boom, private AI valuations have surged with Anthropic reaching a $900 billion post-money valuation, signaling a potential delay in public market exits and shifting the competitive landscape toward large-scale application-layer integrations. Simultaneously, the labor market is undergoing a structural bifurcation as executives replace traditional management hierarchies with autonomous AI agents, fundamentally altering productivity metrics and forcing a rapid redefinition of corporate roles in response to the "most aggressive quarter in American capitalism."
- Sequoia Capital1h 7m
Twitter Ex-CEO Dick Costolo: The Operator's Case Against Founder Mode
Dick Costolo, Jack Dorsey, Ev Williams, Steve Jobs, Elad Gil
Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo transformed the platform from a dysfunctional startup into a scalable business by replacing consensus-based decision-making with a "bias to action" culture and shifting leadership focus from tactical fire-fighting to strategic territory management. While he successfully implemented advertising models and promoted internal talent, his tenure is marked by the regret of passing on the Instagram acquisition and a candid admission of delaying necessary personnel terminations. Costolo also warns that excessive capital raises can erode operational efficiency and advocates for maintaining private company autonomy to shield long-term strategy from the volatility of public market expectations.
- The Diary Of A CEO2h 11m
Professor Jiang: Is World War 3 Is About To Begin?
A speaker presents a series of six geopolitical predictions asserting that Donald Trump may attempt a third presidential term through constitutional loopholes while the United States engages in a decades-long war of attrition against Iran to preserve the petrodollar system. These conflicts are framed as precursors to a global expansion of AI surveillance, a "Greater Israel" project, and a NATO-Russia clash over Odessa that could trigger a Bronze Age-style collapse of the American Empire within a decade. Consequently, the speaker urges a shift away from political resistance toward individual community resilience and the formation of local cooperatives to navigate the anticipated infrastructure failures and global famine.
- Stanford Online58 min
Stanford CS153 Frontier Systems | Amit Jain from Luma AI on Unified Intelligence Systems
Founded by former Apple engineer Amit, Luma has secured $1.5 billion in funding to pivot from 3D capture to unified intelligence systems that integrate text, vision, and physics reasoning. This architectural shift, validated by Dream Machine's six million users, enables enterprise deployments for high-stakes production while employing strict data isolation to prevent sensitive content from entering public training loops. By replacing disparate model towers with a single transformer backbone, the company positions itself to outpace competitors in scaling multi-modal data and redefining creative workflows through automated iteration.
- Goldman Sachs19 min
Will AI Make Markets Less Efficient?
Osman Ali, Alison Nathan, George Lee
Goldman Sachs' Global Co-Head of Quantitative Investment Strategies, Osman Ali, discusses how his team leverages AI and machine learning to analyze market sentiment across 15,000 stocks daily, capturing the fact that over half of recent equity returns are now driven by themes rather than fundamentals. Ali explains that while advanced language models enhance market efficiency, their widespread adoption creates new alpha opportunities through crowding effects and predictable herd behavior, which the firm actively models to exploit. This strategy relies on a hybrid approach combining proprietary data, custom technology, and human experience to navigate a zero-sum game where increasing market complexity continuously generates fresh sources of value.
- The Economist9 min
Do plants feel pain? | The Economist
Biologists Michael Levin and other experts presented evidence that non-neural mechanisms like bioelectric fields enable information processing in organisms without centralized brains, as demonstrated by planaria worm regeneration and conditioned *Mimosa pudica* responses. The event detailed documented plant capabilities including visual mimicry, auditory toxin release, and the distinction between environmental sentience and human-style consciousness. While debate persists regarding whether immobile flora can perceive pain, the consensus among interviewed scientists suggests that plant intelligence is fundamentally an adaptive problem-solving tool rather than a basis for moral objection to consumption.
- Sequoia Capital26 min
ElevenLabs' Mati Staniszewski: How Voice Becomes the Interface for AI
Mati Staniszewski, Andrew Reed, Alfred Fuller, Gabriel Sanchez, Konstantin
Established in 2022 by high-school friends Gabriel Sanchez and Piotr to address monotone localization in Poland, Eleven Labs has rapidly scaled to generate over $400 million in revenue with a flat, title-less organization of 400 remote employees. The company distinguishes itself by prioritizing immediate monetization and emotional nuance in audio synthesis, evolving its technology from text-to-speech to complex voice agents deployed by governments, enterprises, and educational platforms. With a roadmap focused on emotional intelligence and the integration of audio as the primary interface for robotics, the firm maintains defensibility through proprietary data and a vast ecosystem of user-contributed voices.
- Y Combinator32 min
Harshil Mathur: AI Is Compressing Every Moat
Founded by Harshil Mathur in 2015, Razorpay became the first Indian Y Combinator company to pivot from a failed educational focus to a payment infrastructure provider for startups after navigating a twelve-month regulatory gestation period. The firm secured a competitive moat by rejecting early global acquisition offers and becoming the first gateway to support UPI, subsequently processing over $180 billion in gross merchandise value while maintaining capital efficiency that inadvertently generated profits. Today, Mathur continues to lead the company through a strategic reinvention using AI, emphasizing that founder-led conviction in long-term problem-solving remains essential despite advancements in software development speed.
- Milken Institute30 min
A Conversation with Citadel’s Ken Griffin | Global Conference 2026
Ken Griffin characterizes the Middle East conflict as a severe humanitarian crisis that threatens to trigger a global recession within six to twelve months, though he maintains that U.S. energy independence from fracking insulates the American economy from immediate oil shocks. He details a shifting political landscape where rising extremism and progressive policies in Chicago and New York drive a corporate exodus toward business-friendly states like Florida, where Citadel is doubling down on its operations. Looking ahead, Griffin emphasizes education as a national emergency to combat inflation and workforce displacement, advocating for meritocratic reforms and the integration of AI to create new jobs while preserving the skills of older workers.
- a16z1h 23m
Building Blackstone, Backing Costco, and Working with Munger | Tony James on The a16z Show
Tony James, Munger, David Haber, Jim Sinegal, Steve Schwarzman
James transformed DLJ from a niche player into a market leader with $14 billion in sales, subsequently steering Blackstone to nearly $1 trillion in assets by cultivating a team-based culture and scalable platform. His strategic investments in entities like Costco and his tenure alongside Charlie Munger underscore a philosophy rooted in flawless execution and long-term value creation. Looking forward, James advocates for structural shifts in private credit and fund models while championing an HBCU initiative designed to leverage private equity capabilities for broader societal impact.
- Stanford Online1h 1m
Stanford CS153 Frontier Systems | Andreas Blattmann from Black Forest Labs on Visual Intelligence
Andreas Blattmann, Anjney Midha
Black Forest Labs, a Freiburg-based team of former Stability AI researchers, has scaled a 25-person operation to a $3 billion valuation by bootstrapping the Flux family of multimodal generative models. The company distinguishes itself through an open-weight commercial strategy and a strict adherence to EU AI Act compliance, maintaining identical safety guardrails for all partners including Meta and XAI. Looking forward, the organization is shifting its research focus from image synthesis to physical AI and robotics, aiming to validate model intelligence through real-world causal interactions rather than subjective aesthetic metrics.