Big Technology Podcast

Rick Heitzmann is the founder and managing director of FirstMark Capital. Heitzmann joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss whether AI startups can compete against the ChatGPTs of the world, or whether the big AI bots have ingested all the opportunity. Tune in to hear Heitzmann break down the economics of AI investing today and whether the application layer is investable. We'll also break down the...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Why the AI industry needs to get to AGI to make the investments pay off 2) The diverging tracks between AI model improvement and investing in scaling 3) Why the LLM craze may delay the path to AGI 4) So what is all this compute for? 5) OpenAI's $1 trillion infrastructure investment 6) The increasing pre...

Mike Krieger is the chief product officer at Anthropic and co-founder of Instagram. Krieger joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Anthropic's Sonnet 4.5 launch and how the company's been able to speed up AI model development. Tune in to hear how Anthropic is using internal tools to move fast, where the next generations of model improvements will look like, and whether model orchestration will be...

M.G. Siegler of Spyglass is back for our monthly tech news discussion. Today we discuss OpenAI and AMD's megadeal, whether the AI investment cycle is a disaster waiting to happen, and how NVIDIA might feel about the arrangement. We also discuss Sam Altman and Jony Ive's struggles in developing their own AI device and how all tech companies seem to be building the same AI enabled ambient computing....

Max Zeff, Sr. AI reporter at Techcrunch, joins for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI introduces Sora 2 2) Will these AI video feeds catch on? 3) Is Sora 2 an important technological advance above all? 4) Why Meta is nervous about OpenAI's momentum in social 5) OpenAI employees have mixed feelings about Sora 6) Why AI video feeds may be the end of the creator econom...

Scott Guthrie is the executive vice president of Cloud and AI at Microsoft. Guthrie joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the tech industry's massive AI infrastructure buildout and whether it is overdoing it with the hundreds of billions of investment. Guthrie discusses the way Microsoft thinks about its OpenAI investment, whether it's worth investing in scaling pre-training, and Silicon Valley'...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Nvidia invests $100 billion in OpenAI 2) Will the money ever get there? 3) Do AI companies have to make money eventually? 4) What has to happen for OpenAI to return NVIDIA's investment? 5) Is another financial crisis coming? 6) OpenAI's new Pulse feature 7) Is Pulse a precursor to ChatGPT ads? 8) Meta's...

Yinon Costica is the co-founder and VP of product at Wiz, which sold to Google for $32 billion in cash. Costica joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the extent of the cybersecurity threats that generative AI is creating, from vulnerabilities in AI software to the risks involved in “vibe coding.” Tune in to hear how attackers are using AI, why defenders face new asymmetries, and what guardrails...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI tells us how people use ChatGPT 2) Practical guidance is the top use of ChatGPT 3) Is generative AI actually a threat to search given the use cases? 4) OpenAI has a very broad definition of 'doing' or agent work 5) The hidden impact of AI 'decision support' in the economy 6) People trust AI bots...

Aaron Levie is the CEO of Box. Levie joins Big Technology to discuss the reports that a vast majority of businesses are not getting a return on their AI investments. Levie shares his takeaways from the reports, gives a rebuttal, and discusses the reality on the ground. Stay tuned for the second half where we separate hype from reality in the AI agent conversation. Tune in for a wide-ranging, post-...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Apple's impressive new iPhone Pro models 2) Who is the iPhone Air for? 3) Has the phone reached its ultimate form factor 4) Is generative AI threatening to upend the smartphone market 5) Meta's new smartglasses are coming 6) Nepal's Gen Z overthrows the government and picks a new leader on Discord 7) Op...

Bill Vass is the Chief Technology Officer of Booz Allen. Vass joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how governments can harness AI to cut redundancy and deliver better citizen services. Tune in to hear his inside view on LLM deployments from the VA to the International Space Station and the difficulty of modernizing mass bureaucracies. We also cover autonomous driving, humanoid robots, and quant...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Google's Gemini may power Siri 2) Google gets to keep Chrome and Android 3) Google can keep paying Apple for distribution 4) Is generative AI enough rationale to allow the market to decide Google's fate? 5) Google's Nano Banana image creator goes viral 6) Google's stock is up 47% in the past year and st...

Dr. Ben Rapoport and Michael Mager are the co-founders of Precision Neuroscience, a company building a minimally invasive, high-resolution brain-computer interface. The two join Big Technology to discuss the modern day applications of BCIs and frontiers of the technology, including computer control, stroke rehab, decoding consciousness in coma patients, AI-powered neural biomarkers for depression,...

M.G. Siegler is the author of Spyglass. He joins Big Technology podcast for the latest of our monthly discussions about Big Tech strategy and AI. Today we cover whether OpenAI broke ChatGPT with its GPT-5 rollout and whether new AI models are similar to typical technology rollouts. We also cover Apple's forthcoming new lineup of phones: the iPhone Air, the folding iPhone, and the curved glass iPho...

Sally Adee is the author of We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds. Adee joins Big Technology Podcast to pull back the curtain on the body’s hidden wiring and brain-computer interfaces. We dig into how electricity drives every thought and twitch, why Neuralink’s first patient blew our minds, and what it will take to keep implants workin...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Did AI take a step back with GPT-5? 2) Is AI hype going to cool off? 3) GPT-5's switching problem 4) Do we need AI agents? 5) Thinking Vs. Doing AI 6) Sam Altman says parts of AI are a bubble 7) Eric Schmidt says the U.S. should stop overindexing on AGI and instead build it into products 8) GPT-6 is goi...

Nick Fox is the SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google. Liz Reid is the VP of Search at Google. The two join Big Technology Podcast to discuss the way Google plans and builds in the generative AI era, including how it chooses what to ship and when. We also cover publisher traffic, search monetization and ads, shopping and product research, and the near-term future of the web. Hit play for a cl...

Matthew Prince is the CEO of Cloudflare. He joins Big Technology podcast to discuss whether the web can withstand a wave of generative AI companies scraping content, summarizing it, and not cutting the original creators into the revenue. Tune in to hear Prince masterfully dissect the problem and put forth a solution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthony Aguirre is the executive director of the Future of Life Institute. He joins Big Technology to discuss how AI could fail in the worst case and whether our push toward increasingly autonomous, general systems puts control out of reach. Tune in to hear how agentic systems operating at superhuman speed complicate oversight, and why “just unplug it” is naive. Hit play for a cool‑headed, nuanced...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI's launch of GPT-5 2) Whether GPT-5's tool calling ability is its hidden strength 3) GPT-5 is good at 'doing stuff' 4) But GPT-5 is not AGI 5) Do AI models need more than book smarts to thrive? 6) OpenAI's medicine play 7) GPT-5's coding use case 8) We need AI tables for travel 9) Do the big model...

Brad Lightcap is the Chief Operating Officer of OpenAI. Lightcap joins Big Technology to discuss the launch of GPT-5, how it works, what sets it apart from previous models, and whether it's AGI. We also cover scaling laws, post-training breakthroughs, enterprise adoption, health care applications, pricing strategy, and the company’s profitability outlook. Hit play for a front-row seat to OpenAI’s...

Amjad Masad is the CEO of Replit. Masad joins Big Technology podcast for a frank discussion about vibe coding, or building software via prompt. We discuss all the use cases, whether anyone can do it or whether it's just a tool for already-technical builders, whether vibe coding replaces saas, and what the role of the engineer becomes in the future. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss w...

M.G. Siegler is the author of Spyglass. He joins Big Technology podcast for the latest of our first Monday of the month discussion about Big Tech strategy and AI. Today we cover Mark Zuckerberg's vision for personal superintelligence and whether it's more of a recruiting play or a real difference in the way the company builds AI. We also cover the massive bets on AI and whether they'll ever pay of...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Alex's profile of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei + extra reporting 2) Are Anthropic's convictions earnest or marketing? 3) Where does Anthropic fit in the broader AI landscape 4) Will one AI company 'win it all' 5) Anthropic is raising at a new, $170 billion valuation 6) OpenAI hits 700 million ChatGPT user...