BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

Recent Episodes

1. The SpaceX IPO, Fable 5, AI Capex Update & Market Check w/ Gavin Baker, Andrew Fox & Clark Tang | BG2

   Jun 11, 2026

   Brad Gerstner hosts Gavin Baker and Andrew Fox of Atreides Management, along with Altimeter partner Clark Tang, to analyze the SpaceX IPO and its implications for AI infrastructure. The discussion covers SpaceX's three major business drivers: launch reusability, Starlink broadband and direct-to-cell connectivity, and xAI's emerging AI compute business (including the Cursor acquisition). The group debates whether SpaceX is becoming a hyperscaler competitor and explores orbital data center economics, with particular focus on the revenue potential from AI infrastructure as companies race to meet compute demands.

2. ChatGPT – The Super Assistant Era | BG2 Guest Interview

   Mar 15, 2026

   Nick Turley, Product Lead at OpenAI, discusses ChatGPT's explosive growth to 900 million weekly active users and the product decisions that drove it. He explains OpenAI's North Star metric of long-term retention over raw growth, the 'smiling' retention curve, and how friction removal, core product investments (search, personalization), and model improvements each contributed one-third of historical growth. The conversation explores the path to the next billion users through more intuitive product design, proactive AI agents, and the evolution from chatbots to true "super assistants" capable of taking actions and completing long-horizon tasks.

3. AI Enterprise - Databricks & Glean | BG2 Guest Interview

   Dec 23, 2025

   Ali Ghodsi (Databricks) and Arvind Jain (Glean) join Altimeter partner Apoorv Agrawal for a candid discussion on enterprise AI adoption, challenging the narrative that 95% of AI projects fail and arguing instead that this represents healthy experimentation. They share real-world use cases from RBC, Merck, and 7-Eleven, contend that LLMs have become commodities, and assert that competitive advantage lies in proprietary data and agentic workflows rather than model improvements.

4. All things AI w @altcap @sama & @satyanadella. A Halloween Special. 🎃🔥BG2 w/ Brad Gerstner

   Oct 31, 2025

   Brad Gerstner hosts Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for a deep dive into the $3 trillion AI infrastructure buildout, the restructured OpenAI partnership with Microsoft, and the implications for compute, revenue, jobs, and American reindustrialization. The conversation covers the nonprofit structure, exclusivity agreements through 2032, compute constraints, AGI verification processes, regulation, and the productivity gains expected from AI agents across enterprise and consumer markets.

5. AI Bubble, Stablecoin Boom, and Runnin' Down a Dream | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner

   Oct 14, 2025

   Bill Gurley discusses his decision to step back from co-hosting BG2 to focus on his upcoming book 'Runnin' Down a Dream' and other major initiatives including work on regulatory capture, U.S. healthcare, and nuclear energy. He and Brad Gerstner analyze the AI capital expenditure buildout, circular revenue concerns at scale, and potential bubble risks, while also exploring the emerging stablecoin ecosystem and fragmented AI regulation across U.S. states.

6. NVIDIA: OpenAI, Future of Compute, and the American Dream | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner

   Sep 26, 2025

   Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, discusses the transformative impact of AI and accelerated computing on the global economy. Topics include NVIDIA's $100 billion partnership with OpenAI on the Stargate project, the shift from general-purpose to accelerated computing, the trillion-dollar AI revenue opportunity, and how AI will augment human intelligence across the world's $50 trillion GDP. Huang also addresses concerns about market saturation, circular revenue claims, and the importance of inclusive growth through initiatives like Invest America.

7. Inside OpenAI Enterprise: Forward Deployed Engineering, GPT-5, and More | BG2 Guest Interview

   Sep 11, 2025

   Sherwin Wu (Head of Engineering, OpenAI Platform) and Olivier Godement (Head of Product, OpenAI Platform) discuss OpenAI's enterprise strategy and real-world AI deployments. The conversation covers three major case studies—T-Mobile's AI voice support automation, Amgen's drug development acceleration, and Los Alamos National Lab's on-premise reasoning model deployment—along with insights on why 95% of AI deployments fail, the role of forward-deployed engineers, and the emerging reasoning paradigm with GPT-5 and o3 models.

8. China, China, China. Breaking Down China’s Tech Surge | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner

   Aug 28, 2025

   Bill Gurley, venture capitalist and Benchmark co-founder, discusses his recent trip to China and what he observed about innovation, competition, and implications for U.S. policy. Drawing on Dan Wang's book Breakneck, Gurley explores China's engineering-led culture, provincial competition dynamics, and breakthroughs in EVs (BYD, Xiaomi), AI (DeepSeek, Baidu's Apollo), and autonomy. The conversation examines why China is outbuilding the U.S., tariff strategy, the retreat of Western VCs from China, and what America must do to compete—focusing on regulatory reform rather than decoupling.

9. China Open-Source, Compute Arms Race, Reordering Global Trade | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner

   Jul 31, 2025

   Sonny Madra, CEO of Grok, joins Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley to discuss China's dominance in open-source AI models, the global compute arms race, and the reordering of international trade through tariffs. The conversation covers how Chinese open-source models are achieving 90% of proprietary model quality at 10-20% of the cost, the infrastructure demands of inference-time reasoning, and the Trump administration's tariff strategy with trading partners including the EU, Japan, and potentially China.

10. Michael Dell – Invest America Act Becomes Law, AI Talent Wars, Compute Demand, Market Update | BG2

    Jul 10, 2025

    Michael Dell joins Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley to discuss the newly signed Invest America Act, which creates private investment savings accounts for American children seeded with $1,000 in the S&P 500. The conversation covers lessons from Dell's 1990s growth, government spending and budget deficits, the AI talent war and compute demand explosion, and market outlook. Dell emphasizes AI productivity gains exceeding those from PCs and the internet, while the hosts address policy concerns around AI diffusion, skilled immigration, and tariffs.