Latest Interviews
Showing 841–855 of 2,502 transcripts.
Clear all filters- a16z26 min
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.
- Sequoia Capital48 min
Building the System of Record for the AI Era ft Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach
Carl Eschenbach, Sonya Huang, Pat Grady
Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach is redefining the platform as a unified "Agent System of Record" to govern both human employees and AI agents across its database of over 70 million users. To monetize this shift, the company is deploying a multi-faceted pricing model involving seat-based uplifts, role-based agent fees, and consumption-based API access while utilizing strategic acquisitions like HiredScore to drive measurable productivity gains. Despite an 8% workforce restructuring to fund reinvestment, Eschenbach emphasizes that AI will serve as a growth engine rather than a cost-cutting tool, maintaining a human-in-the-loop approach for critical decisions to preserve the company's core values.
- Milken Institute23 min
A Caregiving Conversation with Patrick Dempsey | Global Conference 2025
Founded by Patrick Dempsey following his mother's prolonged battle with ovarian cancer, the Dempsey Center provides free holistic care to cancer patients and their families across 32 states and four countries. The organization operates on a wraparound model that pairs medical treatment with services like nutrition counseling, yoga, and peer support while advocating for systemic insurance reforms to cover alternative therapies. Dempsey leverages his acting platform to expand the center's reach and fundraising efforts, aiming to reduce wait times for immediate intervention and establish a culture of caregiving that addresses the root causes of rising cancer rates.
- Milken Institute50 min
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.
- All-In Podcast50 min
Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture | All-In DC
Brooke Rollins, David Friedberg
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins is spearheading a major realignment of the Department, utilizing executive orders to reduce waste, cancel billions in contracts, and refocus the agency on food security as a national security imperative while addressing obesity through SNAP restrictions. The administration pairs these internal reforms with a protectionist trade strategy designed to eliminate agricultural deficits and personally secure new markets in Asia and South America, all while navigating labor shortages through targeted visa programs. Simultaneously, Rollins is working with bipartisan legislators to deconstruct the Farm Bill's political "Christmas tree" structure, aiming to separate nutrition reform from agricultural support to foster a more efficient, sovereign food system.
- All-In Podcast1h 35m
Trump's First 100 Days, Tariffs Impact Trade, AI Agents, Amazon Backs Down
Trump, Aaron Levie, Ryan Petersen, Chamath, Jason, David Sacks
This panel discussion evaluates the Trump administration's first 100 days, highlighting a record-breaking 143 executive orders, an A+ rating for border security, and a projected $1 trillion in foreign direct investment driven by aggressive tariff strategies. Simultaneously, the conversation explores transformative shifts in the technology sector, where AI agents are evolving from simple chatbots into autonomous workflow systems that promise to disrupt software business models and address national security dependencies on Chinese supply chains. While praising the administration's dismantling of DEI initiatives and pro-open-source AI stance, critics within the group also raise significant concerns regarding rule-of-law execution, conflicts of interest, and the urgent need for clearer communication on specific economic incentives.
Windsurf: The Making of a Billion-Dollar AI Company | Leigh Marie Braswell, Kleiner Perkins
Leigh Marie Braswell, Molly O'Shea
Kleiner Perkins deployed its $2 billion combined KP21 fund through a nine-partner team led by Lee Marie Braswell, utilizing a "major and minor" specialization model to target early and growth stages in AI-driven sectors like Windsurf and Glean. The firm is actively validating high-velocity startups such as Windsurf, which recently hit $100 million ARR by pivoting from GPU infrastructure to a unified IDE, while rejecting the notion that current market conditions prevent the creation of historically significant companies. By enforcing rigorous diligence on recurring revenue and leveraging a "talent vortex" hiring strategy, the partnership aims to capture outliers in coding agents and enterprise automation despite macroeconomic turbulence and skepticism regarding AI profit margins.
- Goldman Sachs13 min
Stagflation and the Fed's next move
The U.S. economy confronts a stagflationary shock driven by spending cuts, restrictive immigration policies, and tariff uncertainty, creating a complex backdrop for Federal Reserve monetary strategy. Policymakers are advised to pause rate decisions at the May meeting to assess new trade data while maintaining a tough rhetorical stance to anchor inflation expectations without pre-committing to specific future cuts. As the Fed balances its dual mandate amidst potential political pressure, global investors are cautiously retaining dollar allocations despite signs of institutional skepticism and capital outflows that are currently characterized as temporary positioning rather than a permanent strategic shift.
- The Economist7 min
Why US tariffs on China will hurt American shoppers
Effective May 2, the Trump administration revoked the "de minimis" exemption, eliminating duty-free status for Chinese imports under $800 and directly impacting the US market-dependent business models of fast-fashion giants Shein and Temu. Facing high tariff costs that threaten their core pricing advantages, these companies currently rely on direct shipping from Chinese hubs while navigating geopolitical pressure from Beijing against relocating manufacturing to avoid tariffs. Experts anticipate Shein and Temu will survive this regulatory shift by diversifying into new global markets and transitioning into multinational corporations despite strict US efforts to close trade loopholes.
- a16z37 min
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.
- Goldman Sachs10 min
Time to buy bonds?
Despite a macroeconomic shift toward higher inflation and lower growth driven by tariff announcements since April, the 10-year Treasury yield has remained stable while credit spreads have partially recovered from their initial widening. Goldman Sachs Asset Management has strategically increased portfolio duration and favored Investment Grade credit over High Yield, citing bond outperformance versus equities and the U.S. dollar's status as a global safe haven. Although the firm acknowledges an increased recession probability and sector divergence within travel, it concludes that current market pricing does not yet fully reflect downside risks, prompting continued allocation to structured credit opportunities.
- a16z21 min
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.
- Goldman Sachs37 min
Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman on the future of public markets
Adena Friedman, John Waldron, Allison
Led by CEO Adena Friedman, the NASDAQ has evolved from a US electronic stock exchange into a global technology platform supplying critical infrastructure to 130 markets while prioritizing liquidity, transparency, and anti-financial crime solutions. The organization recently navigated record trading volumes and leverages hybrid cloud architecture and generative AI to enhance market resilience, with a specific strategic focus on the anti-financial crime sector following the Verifin acquisition. Looking forward, leadership advocates for structural regulatory reforms to reverse the decline in public listings and attract capital back to public markets against the backdrop of rapid private market growth.
- a16z27 min
Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Former Halozyme CEO Jonathan Lim leverages his experience scaling biotech startups to lead Araska Therapeutics, a company targeting the historically undruggable RAS pathway with a pipeline including the pan-RAF inhibitor Naporafenib. Concurrently, his family office, City Hill Ventures, manages a diversified portfolio of life sciences assets and media projects that parallel the high-risk, high-reward dynamics of pharmaceutical development. Lim's strategy emphasizes capital preservation and the combination of novel molecular glues with standard therapies to drive long-term remission rates beyond current limits in pancreatic, lung, and colon cancers.
- a16z1h 31m
How Andreessen Horowitz Disrupted VC & What’s Coming Next
Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg
Established in 2009 by Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) redefined venture capital by replacing the passive "Sushi Boat" model with an active, capital-intensive platform strategy designed to provide deep operational support for "Full Stack" companies across verticals like AI and crypto. This structural shift responded to an overfunded market and dysfunctional public exits, enabling the firm to scale from a traditional two-person partnership into a decentralized network of expert operators that rivals major tech giants in domain capability. By prioritizing founder success over secrecy and leveraging a media-centric branding approach, a16z has transformed the VC asset class into a mechanism that fuels a wider pool of ambitious entrepreneurs despite the enduring unpredictability of human judgment in project selection.