Andy Hunter is the CEO of Bookshop.org, a website he launched in 2020 that lets local bookshops sell all over the country. He always meant it to compete directly with Amazon, and the timing of that launch right into the teeth of the pandemic meant it was able to start strong and grow quickly. Now Bookshop is selling ebooks, which is another market hugely dominated by Amazon. For Andy and Bookshop to get what they want, theyre probably going to have to gear up for a big fight. Its kind of the app...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, were talking about DeepSeek, and how the open source AI model built by a Chinese startup has completely upended the conventional wisdom around chatbots, what they can do, and how much they should cost to develop. Were also talking about Stargate, OpenAIs new $500 billion data center venture thats supposed to supercharge domestic AI infrastructure. Both stand in stark contrast with one another and represent a new, escalating front in the US-China relationship and the geopolitics of AI. Ver...
Jan 30, 2025•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Im talking with Gary Smith, CEO of the networking company Ciena. You probably arent familiar with Ciena the company isnt really a household name. But every internet user has relied on the companys products; Ciena makes the hardware and software that makes the fiber optic cables connecting the world light up with data. Thats everything from local fiber networks for broadband ISPs to the massive undersea cables that connect continents. Theres a high probability that this very podcast came t...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Its been a messy couple of weeks for big tech companies as the second Trump administration kicks off an unprecedented era of how we think about who controls the internet. Right now, there's a major collision, or maybe merger, happening between billionaire power and state power, and everyone who uses tech to communicate so, basically everyone is stuck in the middle. I sat down with law professor and online speech expert Kate Klonick to break it all down. Links: Welcome to the era of gangster tech...
Jan 23, 2025•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Im talking with Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services. Matt took over as CEO last June you might recall that we had his predecessor Adam Selipsky on the show just over a year ago. That makes this episode terrific Decoder bait, since I love hearing how new CEOs will decide what to change and what to keep going after theyve settled into their role. Links: Theres no AI without the cloud, says AWS CEO Adam Selipsky | Decoder Amazon's AWS to invest $11 bln in Georgia to boost AI infrastr...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello, Nilay here. Were still on winter break; well be back with brand-new Decoder interviews next week, and with our Thursday shows later this month. Im excited for what weve got in the pipeline. I think youre going to love it. For today, though, were sharing an episode of Peter Kafkas new show Channels hes talking to disinformation researcher Renee DiResta about whats going on with speech online in an era where platforms seem less inclined to moderate than ever. Peters an old friend and Renee ...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Decoder team turns the tables on Nilay and makes him answer your burning listener questions in our end-of-year wrap up special. We also reflect on the years biggest Decoder themes, discuss some of the most popular feedback weve received, and tease what we have planned for next year. Links: Here we go: The Verge now has a subscription | The Verge How The Verge Works | The Vergecast Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode | Decoder Whats really behind Big Techs return-to-office ...
Dec 20, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today were talking about antitrust policy and tech, which is at a particularly weird moment as we enter the second Trump administration. A lot of tech policy is at a weird moment, actually, but antitrust might be the weirdest of them all the pendulum has swung back and forth on antitrust policy pretty wildly over the past few years, and its about to swing again under Trump. So I asked Leah Nylen, an antitrust reporter for Bloomberg News and a leading expert on this subject, to come on the show a...
Dec 18, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alex Heath, Deputy Editor at The Verge, guest hosts this episode of Decoder featuring a live interview with Arm CEO Rene Haas about the future of AI and the semiconductor industry. The two discuss his thoughts on the struggles of Intel, the rumors Arm is developing its own AI chips to rival Nvidias, and his thoughts on the incoming Trump administration. Links: What Arms CEO makes of the Intel debacle | Command Line How Arm conquered the chip market without making a single chip | Decoder Arm coul...
Dec 16, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Weve been talking a lot this year about the changing internet, and what its doing to the media ecosystem particularly journalism, which has taken a backseat to creators and influencers. But the tech platforms themselves have a lot of influence over what those creators and influencers make, too. If youre a Decoder listener, youll recognize this as one of my common themes the idea that the way we distribute media directly influences the media we make. To break this all down, I invited media critic...
Dec 13, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Theres something strange happening these days in the podcast world in particular, the way companies that deal in money have been using podcasting as not just an entertainment medium, but a unique kind of hybrid of marketing, thought leadership, and networking. Guest host David Pierce and Vulture podcast critic Nick Quah break it all down. Links: How Venture Capitalists Use Podcasts to Lure in Founders | Vanity Fair Your Next Podcast Interview Might Be a Meeting In Disguise | Bloomberg Elliott la...
Dec 11, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Im talking with Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI. Mustafa is a fascinating character in the world of AI hes been in and out of some pivotal companies like DeepMind, which he cofounded, and Google. He landed at Microsoft through a unique not-quite-acquisition deal of his latest startup, Inflection AI. As CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa now oversees all of its consumer AI products, including the Copilot app, Bing, and even the Edge browser and MSN two core components of the web experi...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast AI investment is massive, but AI profits are not and yetinvestors seem confident massive AI fundraising will one day translate into sizable AI profits. To break it down, Verge Deputy Editor Alex Heath guest hosts this episode of Decoder featuring Menlo Ventures partner Tim Tully and AirStreet Capital founder Nathan Benaich. Links: 2024: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise | Menlo Ventures State of AI Report | Nathan Benaich AI Index Report 2024 | Stanford HAL How companies are spending ...
Dec 05, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bluesky has really taken off since the election, and since the Decoder team took some time off for Thanksgiving break, we felt it was a great time to bring back the interview we did earlier this year with Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky, the upstart competitor to Metas Threads and the platform formerly known as Twitter. At the time, Bluesky was a pretty small platform. It had just reached 5 million users when Jay and I spoke. But since the election, Blueskys growth has absolutely skyrocketed to m...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast I spoke with GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani live on stage last week at an event hosted by Alix Partners in Palo Alto. GoDaddy is one of those companies that feels tied to an earlier era, but Amans been CEO since 2019, and hes been building out what he calls adjacencies. The business of the web has really changed in the past few years: the walled-garden, social network era really took over in the past decade, and now huge changes to Google Search and the addition of generative AI have really put a mass...
Nov 25, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast For nearly 20 years now, the web has been Googles platform; weve all just lived on it. Google is constantly changing that platform it launched another attempt to combat parasite SEO just this week and not all of those changes have worked well. Earlier this year I talked to a lot of people who have built on that platform. For a lot of small businesses and content creators, thats suddenly not stable anymore. The number one question I have for anyone building things on someone elses platform is: Wh...
Nov 21, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hey everyone, its Nilay Decoder is on a short break this week. Well be back with a special live interview episode on Monday of next week, and then regular programming will resume in December. Im very excited for what we have coming up on the schedule. But while were out, wed like to highlight a great episode of a new podcast from our friends over at Vox called Explain It To Me. On this episode, host Jonquilyn Hill and her team tackle a decision that looms large for a lot of young people in Ameri...
Nov 18, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today were talking about Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Tesla and I have to say, it feels like the first of many episodes about these three characters that well be doing over the course of the next four years. Because when Elon used his wealth and influence to help Trump get elected, he also bought himself a seat at the president-elects inner circle. But what does the worlds richest person really want in return? And how is the CEO of an electric car company, an outspoken advocate for combating cli...
Nov 14, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Harvey Mason, Jr is CEO of the Recording Academy, the nonprofit organization most famous for the Grammy Awards. We spoke right before this year's Grammy nominations came out, and you'll hear us talk a whole lot about the changes he's tried to make with how the awarding membership works. I always say to watch whats happening to the music industry because its a preview into what will happen to every other creative industry five years later. My chat with Harvey really drove the point home: AI, dive...
Nov 11, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, were talking about work. Specifically, where we work, how our expectations of working remotely were radically changed by the pandemic, and how those expectations feel like theyre on the verge of changing yet again. For many people, the pendulum has swung wildly between working fully remote and now a push to return to the office from their bosses, and there are a lot of theories about what might really be motivating big companies to try and bring everyone back. To explain it, I caught up w...
Nov 07, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Im talking with Baris Cetinok, who is in charge of all the software in the cars that GM makes, which is a lot of cars. And if youve been following any of the drama in the world of car software, you know it also means Baris is the guy who has to defend GMs decision to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from most of its cars, especially EVs. Ive had versions of this conversation with the CEOs of car companies before, but Baris is in charge of actually building this stuff. So we really got ...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Trump and a bunch of billionaires, like Elon Musk, are calling for the FCC to punish TV stations by revoking their licenses and using the spectrum for other stuff. In a normal world, this would be idle billionaire wishcasting. Punishing news organizations is one of those things we have a First Amendment to protect against. You know the one that protects free speech by prohibiting the government from making speech regulations or punishing people for what they say? But, it turns out, there is a lo...
Oct 31, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Im talking with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who is only the second person to be on Decoder three times the other is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Brian made a lot of waves earlier this year when he started talking about something called founder mode, or at least, when well-known investor Paul Graham wrote a blog post about Brians approach to running Airbnb that gave it that name. Founder mode has since become a little bit of a meme, and I was excited to have Brian back on to talk about it, and w...
Oct 28, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, were going to try and figure out "digital god." I figured weve been doing Decoder long enough, lets just get after it. Can we build an artificial intelligence so powerful it changes the world and answers all our questions? The AI industry has decided the answer is yes. In September, OpenAIs Sam Altman published a blog post claiming well have superintelligent AI in a few thousand days. And earlier this month, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic published a 14,000-word post laying out what h...
Oct 24, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Todays episode, well its a ride. Im talking to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, whos built Intuit into a juggernaut business software company in part through a series of major acquisitions: TurboTax, MailChimp, CreditKarma, and loads more. Theres a lot of good Decoder material there, and we get into it. But its TurboTax, and the companys tax lobbying efforts to protect it, that really drives a major narrative about Intuit, for better and worse. So you can bet I asked Sasan about all this, and it got a...
Oct 21, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Todays episode is a little different: Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi and I recorded this conversation live on stage during advertising week in New York City at an event graciously hosted by Adweek. I've actually been dying to talk to Amy. Digitas is one of the most important agencies in the entire advertising business with huge clients and massive influence over big platforms like Instagram and YouTube. After all, they're the ones buying the ads that keep all of those companies afloat. As you'd expect, s...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Luis von Ahn is the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. There are lots of opportunities to enhance a product like Duolingo with AI, and we talk about all that but I also wanted to talk to Luis about learning, generally. Duolingo is a global product, and there are a lot of tech tensions there, dealing with different user needs worldwide. We talk about it all in a pretty direct way... including all those unhinged things the owl does on social media. Links: Duolingo Introduces AI-Powered Innovations at...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Im talking with my good friend David Pierce, Vergecast co-host and The Verges editor-at-large, about something he spends an ungodly amount of time thinking and writing about: software. Scores of new workplace apps are cropping with clever metaphors to try to make us work differently. Sometimes that works and sometimes it really, really doesnt. And it feels like the addition of AI to the mix will accelerate the pace of experimentation here in pretty radical ways. Links: Why software is eating the...
Oct 10, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rabbits adorable R1 gadget launched with a lot of hype, but early reviews of the device were universally bad. Now, a core feature, its long-promised LAM Playground has arrived. I had a lot of big questions for CEO Jesse Lyu about how it all works not just technologically, but if his plans are sustainable from a business and legal perspective. Links: Rabbit R1 review: an unfinished, unhelpful AI gadget | The Verge Loopholes arent a technology | Buzzfeed News (2012) I tested Rabbit R1's next gener...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Im talking to Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg journalist and author of the new book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. If you dont know Blizzard, you do know its games the studio behind Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch has achieved legendary status over three decades. At the same time, the company has become emblematic of many of gamings biggest failings. Jasons book is out on October 8th, and its an incredible, detailed accounting of how Blizzard started, grew in...
Oct 03, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast