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Acquired Podcast

Acquired Podcast

Podcast | United States | Centre

Deep dives into the playbooks of the greatest companies and investors. Hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal.

Engagement Insights

0.71 score
164
Discussions
1
Participants
1
Total Votes
165
Articles

Discussions from Acquired Podcast

Healthcare

AI, Growth, and the Future of Healthcare | Anish Acharya & Sachin Jain

SCAN Health Plan CEO Sachin Jain speaks with a16z General Partner Anish Acharya about AI, healthcare, and what it takes for established organizations to adapt during periods of technological change. The conversation explores how AI is reshaping work, customer experience, software development, and organizational structure. Acharya argues that artificial intelligence is not simply another productivity tool, but a fundamentally new technology capable of performing work on behalf of people and or...

United States
Business

Jack Altman on Product-Market Fit

Jack Altman joins Speedrun to discuss product-market fit, customer feedback, hiring, fundraising, and the realities of building an enduring company. Drawing on his experience building Lattice from startup to multi-billion-dollar company, Altman explains how founders should think about customer requests, when to pivot, and why some of the hardest decisions come from balancing conviction with market feedback. He shares lessons from the early days of Lattice, including finding product-market fit...

United States
Technology

Designing the Physical World with AI

Erin Price-Wright speaks with Alex Modon, cofounder and CEO at Unlimited Industries, and Davide Asnaghi, CEO at Diode Computers, about how AI is moving from software into the physical world. They discuss automating construction and electronics design, using code and simulation to model real-world systems, and how incentives and manufacturing constraints shape adoption. They also examine what it takes to scale infrastructure, reduce build times, and unlock more abundant industrial capacity in ...

United States
Economy

Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

Theo Jaffee speaks with Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis, about AI, industrial capacity, economic growth, and the institutions that shape civilization. The conversation explores how AI’s demand for compute, energy, and infrastructure could trigger a new wave of industrial expansion, benefiting sectors far beyond technology. Burja argues that AI is not just a software story but a demand shock that will ripple through energy, manufacturing, construction, and global supply chains. They a...

Global
Technology

AI, Design, and the Power of Open Models

Yoko Li and Justine Moore speak with Ideogram founder and CEO Mohammad Norouzi about image generation models, design workflows, and the evolving relationship between AI and creative work. The conversation covers Ideogram's decision to release an open-weight model, the challenges of generating text and layouts within images, and why controllability has become an increasingly important area of research. They discuss prompting, customization, editing, and the tradeoffs between general-purpose mo...

Global
Technology

Building Search for AI Agents with Exa CEO Will Bryk

Sarah Wang speaks with Exa cofounder and CEO Will Bryk about building search infrastructure for the AI era. The conversation covers Exa’s origins, why traditional search engines were not designed for AI agents, and how search changes when the user is no longer a human but an autonomous system. They discuss retrieval, agent workflows, coding agents, data access, and why search may become a foundational layer for the emerging agent economy. Along the way, Bryk shares his views on AI-native prod...

United States
Technology

AI Agents and the Fight for Customer Data

Martin Casado speaks with George Fraser, cofounder and CEO of Fivetran, about the future of data infrastructure in the age of AI. The conversation covers Fivetran’s merger with dbt, the changing role of data platforms, and why Fraser believes many companies are overestimating the threat AI poses to enterprise software. They discuss open data access, the backlash against AI agents accessing systems of record, and why businesses still need centralized data foundations even as agent-based workfl...

United States
Technology

AI Eats the World? A Reality Check with Benedict Evans

Erik Torenberg speaks with tech analyst Benedict Evans about the current state of AI, what has changed over the past year, and which questions remain unanswered. The conversation covers coding agents, foundation models, AI infrastructure spending, software economics, and the tension between today's AI excitement and the long-term realities of technology adoption. Evans discusses why coding has emerged as AI's first breakout use case, how previous platform shifts can help frame the current mom...

Global
Geopolitics

Balaji and Steven Glinert on Network States, Supply Chains, and Allied Coalition Strategy

Theo Jaffee and Sophia Puccini speak with Balaji Srinivasan and Steven Glinert about the shifting balance of power between nations, networks, and technology. The conversation covers China’s industrial rise, America’s manufacturing challenges, the role of alliances in a multipolar world, and whether the internet is becoming a political force independent of traditional nation states. They discuss supply chains, technological sovereignty, decentralization, and competing visions for the future gl...

Global
Technology

Steven Sinofsky on Apple at 50, Microsoft, and the Future of Computing

Theo Jaffee speaks with Steven Sinofsky about Apple’s 50th anniversary and the evolution of personal computing over the last four decades. Drawing on his experience helping lead Microsoft through the Windows era, Sinofsky reflects on the cultural differences between Apple and Microsoft, the rise of the Mac, the history of Windows, and how product design, hardware integration, and software platforms shaped the modern technology industry. They also discuss the Apple Vision Pro, the new MacBook ...

United States
Technology

Building AI Agents for Enterprise Operations

Anish Acharya and Olivia Moore speak with Pablo Palafox and Luis Paarup about the challenges of deploying AI agents in operationally complex industries. The conversation covers the evolution of voice AI, enterprise workflows, and why logistics became an early proving ground for agent-based systems. They discuss context, coordination, and execution inside large organizations, as well as the role of forward-deployed engineering, enterprise deployment, and what it takes to move AI from experimen...

United States
Technology

Why $1B Exits are Dead

David George, General Partner at a16z, and David Clark, CIO at VenCap, discuss how AI is reshaping venture capital and the technology industry itself. They examine why today’s AI companies are scaling faster than any previous generation of startups, and why the eventual outcomes may be significantly larger than most investors currently expect. The conversation covers frontier AI models, coding agents, open source competition, data center constraints, and who ultimately captures value in the A...

United States