Onward, a Fundrise Production

Days after ChatGPT launched, Intercom called it an “iPhone moment" and bet a $300 million ARR business that AI was the future of customer service. On this episode of Onward, Ben talks with Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer of Fin (formerly Intercom), about the pivot to AI customer service: why the decision was easier than you might think, why the culture change was brutal, and how the bet ended up...

What if the biggest barrier to a longer life isn't science, but the economic incentives of corporations? In this episode of Onward, Ben sits down with Celine Halioua, founder and CEO of Loyal — the biotech company on track to earn the first-ever FDA approval for a drug whose only purpose is to extend lifespan. The catch: they're starting with dogs. Celine walks Ben through why the U.S. healthcare...

Raza Habib, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic (creators of Claude and Claude Code) unpacks what “Artificial General Intelligence” even means, why the pace of AI progress still looks steep, and what that implies for jobs, companies, and public policy. Raza shares how his own “AGI probability” evolved from PhD-era skepticism to today’s conviction that we’re on a transformative trajectory.  — Fo...

IPO Roadshow: VCX is the public ticker for private tech The number of public companies has been cut in half over the past 25 years. The best private companies are staying private longer than ever. As a result, ordinary investors have been locked out of the biggest wealth-creation opportunities of this generation. With AI threatening to drive wealth inequality to new levels, Ben calls this a fairne...

Real estate is about to get disrupted by technology, again. AI is coming for the core workforce of the industry—acquisitions, underwriting, asset management, market analysis—and it’s going to separate winners from everyone else. If you’re not adopting it, you’re not just missing upside—you’re putting career and company risk. Ben unveils RealAI—a “real estate AI analyst” that Fundrise has been buil...

Willy Walker joins Onward to share how he scaled a small, local mortgage shop into a national real estate finance platform—what he got right, what he’d do differently, and the leadership lessons he learned the hard way. We talk about the pivotal decisions that unlocked Walker & Dunlop’s growth, how to lead through a crisis (2008 and COVID), what it really means to be a public-company CEO, and...

Let's move past the tired “Is AI a bubble?” debate and ask the bigger question: What happens after the buildout—when trillions of dollars of AI data centers translate into real economic output. Co-hosts Ben Miller and Cardiff Garcia frame AI as a new kind of factory—massive capex producing tokens that can be converted into real white-collar work. Then Ben grounds it with concrete Fundrise examples...

Hallie Hoffman is a career federal prosecutor, former General Counsel of the DEA and Criminal Chief of the Northern District of California. She knows how the justice system really works behind the scenes. Hallie explains why justice moves slowly, what breaks when massive institutions have to scale, and how individual agents and prosecutors drive the most meaningful cases. She shares lessons from p...

Scott Plank—who helped build Under Armour from the ground up, was the largest angel investor in WeWork, and is a seed investor in Fundrise—joins us to share what it really feels like to bet everything, lose big, win bigger, and keep moving forward. In this conversation, Scott traces his path from building homes as a carpenter and selling bracelets in Guatemala to helping Under Armour grow from a f...

Data-center veteran Kervin Pillay walks us through the coming AI infrastructure boom. Pillay argues the U.S. is about to sink 10x the capital it took to create the Interstate Highway System into new data center capacity, racing toward “hundreds of gigawatts” of compute—each gigawatt-scale campus drawing more power than a major city.  — For a deeper dive into these insights and more, be sure to lis...

Rob Nishihara is the co-creator of Ray, the open-source software now used by OpenAI, Amazon, DeepSeek, and Nvidia as part of the essential stack for building AI at scale. Rob offers a rare insider’s view of the bottlenecks, breakthroughs, and practical limits shaping AI today. The discussion ranges from the philosophical to the technical—covering synthetic data, future policy, career resilience, a...

He helped break the British pound and Swedish krona alongside George Soros, Stanley Druckenmiller, and now–Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Rob Johnson shares extraordinary insights into currency warfare, reflects on his time inside institutions of power, and assesses the Trump administration’s bid to rebalance the global economy. You can also listen to Rob’s first appearance on Onward episode #1...

Months before trade policy was on anyone's radar, Stephen Miran—now Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Trump—quietly published "A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System." In this episode, Ben and Cardiff dive into Miran’s roadmap and assess how Trump's policies in practice have diverged from Miran’s original vision. Ben and Cardiff explore three key scena...

Anna Wong is the Chief US Economist at Bloomberg and previously worked at the Federal Reserve, White House Council of Economic Advisors, and US Treasury Department. I can imagine few people in the world better suited to analyze and forecast the impact of the tariffs. — For a deeper dive into these insights and more, be sure to listen to the full episode of the Onward podcast. Have questions or fee...

Tal Kerret is the President of Silverstein Properties, the company behind the historic rebuilding of the World Trade Center in New York City, and on the board of directors of Fundrise. Tal provides an in-depth look into the challenges and triumphs associated with redeveloping this iconic site, emphasizing its immense logistical complexity, symbolic importance, and economic impact. He shares his jo...

As a serial tech entrepreneur, VC investor, and expert in data-driven businesses, Auren Hoffman has been a player in Silicon Valley for nearly 30 years. Auren reflects on the pivotal decisions behind selling LiveRamp, the evolution of data companies, and how AI is reshaping industries. From the lessons learned in entrepreneurship to predictions about the future of technology, this episode is packe...

Over his 36-year career, Simon Ziff, President of Ackman-Ziff, has overseen more than $100 billion in transactions and witnessed the dramatic evolution of the real estate industry brought about by the Savings and Loan Crisis. Simon shares his journey from joining Ackman Brothers in the 1980s to seizing the opportunities created by the rise of CMBS and private equity in the 1990s. From personal ane...

The most important decision President Trump may face is how to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute, is a policy insider with nearly two decades of experience inside the halls of power. Neil walks us through how to think about the tradeoffs and approaches to capturing the enormous potential upside of artificial intelligence while protect...

The data revolution is transforming every business in the world, and Tristan Handy sits near the center of it. Starting with a simple idea, he and his team built dbt Labs into a multi-billion-dollar tech company by understanding how technology is changing the world and what that meant for how people should change with it. This episode dives into Tristan’s journey, his thoughts about entrepreneursh...

Build-to-Rent (BTR) may be the biggest innovation in real estate this decade and NexMetro Communities is arguably the originator. Since 2010, NexMetro has been developing BTR projects, with over 55 projects across the U.S., offering cottage-style homes specifically designed for renters. Hartmann provides insight into BTR’s growth, his unique business strategies, and the challenges in reshaping rea...

A couple hundred people in San Francisco may be on the cusp of inventing artificial general intelligence (AGI). Yet most people are not paying close attention, are skeptical, and are certainly not in the room. Dwarkesh pulls back the curtain so that the broader public can understand what people who are actually building AI think is going to happen. The conversation begins with Dwarkesh drawing par...

John Burns is a renowned expert on the housing market. In this episode, John unravels the complexities of today’s economic climate and housing trends, providing a comprehensive analysis of the housing market, demographic shifts, homebuilding industry, and rental sector. Whether you're a homeowner, investor, or simply interested in economic trends, this episode offers valuable perspectives on the c...

Artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize warfare and reshape geopolitics. Professor Andrew Wilson, professor of Strategy at the US Naval War College, explores the transformative power of military technology throughout history and its implications for the future. In this episode of Onward, host and Fundrise CEO Ben Miller and Professor Andrew Wilson explore how technological advan...

Although each major technology wave is unique—mainframes, the personal computer, internet, mobile, cloud, and now AI—the way they have played out has been surprisingly consistent. The core financial, product, and economic patterns repeat each innovation cycle and help define which companies go on to win or lose. In this episode, Ben and Cardiff identify and discuss the five most significant patter...

Two roads diverged before the US. One the way of growth and the other the way of a debt spiral. In this episode, Cardiff Garcia and Ben Miller look at the state of US dynamism vs. indebtedness, and the narrow path that would lead to a prolonged US boom. They scenario plan three potential futures: the continuation of current growth trends, a major recession, and a surprise development. The discussi...