Exponential View by Azeem Azhar

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.exponentialview.co Listen on Apple Podcasts The AI industry is sending mixed signals – markets are turning red while teams report real productivity gains. Today, I examine the latest research to understand this split reality. Skip to the best part ( 02:53 ) Unpacking three years of AI productivity data ( 09:54 ) The surprising group...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.exponentialview.co Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts Something important is happening with the labor market. US employers announced over 153,000 job cuts in October, the highest monthly total in more than two decades. Amazon announced about 14,000 corporate job cuts as it pivots towards AI-driven operations. At the same time, rese...

In today’s live, I explored why AI feels transformative for individuals but frustratingly slow at the organisational level. It’s the exponential gap that I dissect in my book : organisations struggle to update old processes in the face of rapidly improving technology. Enjoy! Azeem This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts The cloud boom, the chip frenzy, the race to build ever-larger data centres – surely we are simply riding the hype cycle of GPTs and chatbots? That view is far too small. What is happening is a structural re-engineering of the economy. From an economy that uses computation to one that is built on computation. Global computing power has grown by roughly 11 orders...

In today’s live I asked whether the cloud and chip surge is exuberance or something deeper. The answer is that we’re seeing a profound, structural shift: the economy is moving into a computational fabric alongside the physical elements of the real economy. I’ll publish more on this topic this weekend. Happy Halloween! Azeem This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscri...

Watch on YouTube Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts I got together with China expert Jordan Schneider to understand his view on the new phase of the US-China competition. Both countries are using trade policy, export controls and industrial strategy to shift the balance of global power. Just earlier this month, China rolled out its toughest-ever curbs on rare earths and related tech. Yet, the US...

Today’s live featured Jordan Schneider , founder and host of ChinaTalk , who’s been analysing China’s rise for years. We examined how rare earth policy, export controls, and tariff carve outs suggest a shift in China’s relationship with the US: from containment to system building. I’ll publish more detailed notes and reflections soon. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.exponentialview.co I recorded a conversation with Matthew Prince , co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare, a company that sits at the heart of the internet. Few operators have Matthew’s vantage point on how the network is evolving, which makes him uniquely placed to answer: if AI agents read, who gets paid ? Jump to highlights: ( 00:46 ) Th...

Is AI a bubble? In this episode, I unpack a new five-gauge framework for understanding the biggest question in tech.  Drawing on lessons from past manias – railways, telecoms, the dot-com boom – and grounding our analysis in fresh data, we examine economic strain, revenue growth, valuations, and the quality of capital fueling AI’s ascent. This is our effort to cut through hype and fatalism to prov...

In today’s live, I spoke with Dan Wang , author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future , shortlisted for the FT & Schroders Business Book of the Year . Dan is one of the most astute observers of China’s technological and industrial development, and his annual letters from Beijing have long been required reading for those seeking to understand the country’s evolving role in the world. I...

OpenAI is expanding a secondary share sale that lets insiders sell about $10.3 billion of stock at roughly a $500 billion valuation. That raised a simple question: is a private slice of OpenAI better than buying the Nasdaq? I have an exclusive essay ready for members (arriving in your inboxes tomorrow!) breaking down the math and my assumptions in detail. Become a premium member to receive it in f...

Thanks to all who joined my 30-minute live briefing today. For those of you who were not there, here’s a chance to catch up. Skip to 1:30 when I start the event. How is AI impacting the labour market? In today’s live, I discussed Erik Brynjolfsson and colleagues’ latest paper “ Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence ”, which found that e...

At the start of the year, I made seven predictions about how 2025 would unfold. Six months in, it’s time to mark my own work. * No AI wall ( Grade: A)I had foreseen that we’d see no slowdown in AI capability growth. Ten-million-token models exist (Meta, Mistral, Gemini). Benchmark scores are rising sharply - Frontier Maths, RKGI, MMLU. O3 is 25% on Frontier Math where GPT-4 was 2%. There’s been re...

In today’s live I reflected on a whirlwind three-day visit to China. You can’t do justice to a small country in three days, let alone a big one. But I was observing. And here are a few things that stuck out: * Infrastructure built at speed: Beijing’s immaculate airport, 300 km/h rail to Tianjin, and smooth expressways hammer home the sustained investment, the concrete and steel, that China has pou...

In today’s live I explored three tectonic shifts: Apple’s puzzling WWDC reveal and the turn towards ambient computing, Google’s waning click-ads as users embrace chatbots, and Sam Altman’s “gentle singularity” that still demands hard institutional work. Quick takes: * Apple after the iPhone : Liquid Interface points to a post-phone world of voice-first, invisible assistance; yet Cupertino lags on...

In today’s live show I spoke with Kevin Weil , CPO of OpenAI, just moments after he announced a range of new features including enterprise connectors and meeting recordings. We discussed: * ChatGPT now ingests Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Dropbox, Box, SharePoint and OneDrive data, while new agents summarise docs, run multi-step research and commit code. * GPT-4o becomes the default; GPT-5 is...

What happens when AI writes more of our code than we do? In today’s Live show, I spoke with Thomas Dohmke , CEO of GitHub, the epicentre of modern software development, about the transformative impact AI is having on the way we build software. We explored: * How AI, including tools like GitHub Copilot, fundamentally reshapes the developer's role from coding to problem-solving and creativity. * Why...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.exponentialview.co What does it really take to transform your organisation into an AI-first business? In today’s Live show, I spoke with Aaron Levie , CEO and co-founder of Box, a leader who’s been on the front lines of enterprise AI adoption and is refreshingly open about what works (and what doesn’t). We discussed… * How AI is res...

What happens when the power to shape AI’s future lies not in the smartest model—but in who controls the compute? This week, I spoke with Lennart Heim , researcher at RAND and advisor to Epoch AI, to unpack the geopolitics of compute: why sheer model capability is no longer the only game in town, and how control over compute may define who leads in AI. We discussed: * Why China matching US models d...

What happens when Europe's leading renewable grids buckle under pressure, and energy becomes as volatile as it is vital? This week, I spoke with Greg Jackson , CEO of Octopus Energy, the UK's largest electricity provider, to unravel the Iberian blackout, where tens of millions lost power overnight, and explore how to future-proof our energy grids. We discussed: * Why Spain and Portugal's "energy i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.exponentialview.co This week, I sat down with Ryan Petersen , CEO of Flexport, at a moment of real upheaval in the global trading system. Ryan runs a logistics platform that sees about 1% of all US trade, so he’s got a direct line into how companies are reacting in real time: pausing shipments, renegotiating supply chains and in som...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.exponentialview.co Last week, I wrote to my portfolio companies with a simple message: the game is changing fast. The global order is being renegotiated in real time, driven by the inversion of globalization and the rise of AI. These forces are creating confusion, hesitation and for the sharpest operators – opportunity. If you’re a...

I hosted a live discussion today with physicist and entrepreneur Steve Hsu . We covered a lot, including… * AI agent development & hallucination challenges : Steve shares how he’s thinking about tackling LLM hallucinations at his startup Superfocus and what the future of AI agents could be. * Barriers to business adoption : We explore why organizations are slow to adopt AI technologies despite the...

What happens when the world’s two superpowers go head-to-head in an era of economic upheaval, tech acceleration and military recalibration? This week, I sat down with the eminent historian and Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson to wrestle with what might be the $120 trillion question: what kind of world order is emerging as the US pivots to confront China? We explored: * The emerging “Trump...

I hosted a live with Packy McCormick earlier today and we had a blast—covering a wide range of topics, including: 1. A sense-check on crypto and Web3: * Transition from idealistic vision to mainstream financial instrument. * Importance of regulation and guardrails. * Challenges of open systems and manipulation. 2. AI’s current state & impact: * “Super SaaS” vs existential threat. * ChatGPT and Cla...