BIG INTV: CTO Elizabeth Stone On The Future of Netflix: “Personalized, Interactive, Immersive”
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone is an anomaly. Instead of coding, she spent her twenties getting a PhD in economics. She quietly rose through the ranks in Silicon Valley and is now responsible for leading Netflix’s technology push towards live programming. In this candid conversation, Stone discusses the value of failure, the power behind genuine curiosity, and why she can’t pick her favorite Love is Blind couple.
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| 0:00.0 | From Wired, this is The Big Interview. I'm Katie Drummond. |
| 0:08.5 | Just days after we sat down with Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone, the streamer announced its |
| 0:13.6 | $83 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery, the century-old Hollywood player. |
| 0:18.8 | And a few days after that, Paramount's David Ellison made $103 billion all-cash offer to Warner |
| 0:24.0 | Brothers in an attempt to thwart the deal. |
| 0:27.0 | Elizabeth Stone probably knew all of this was around the corner, but her reserved and focused |
| 0:31.5 | energy would never have betrayed even a slice of anticipatory anxiety. |
| 0:36.1 | And it's that energy that's gotten her very far. |
| 0:39.3 | She's somewhat of an anomaly when it comes to Fortune 500 CTOs. |
| 0:43.1 | Instead of spending her 20s writing code, |
| 0:45.4 | Stone worked in finance and got a PhD in economics at Stanford. |
| 0:49.7 | Now she's got one of the biggest jobs in the entertainment business |
| 0:52.7 | because with or without Warner Brothers, she needs to turn Netflix into a live programming giant. And it hasn't all been pretty. |
| 1:00.0 | We talked about what the control room looked like during the Paul Tyson fight, when Netflix |
| 1:04.3 | shakily hosted 65 million concurrent streams, and how the company is preparing to integrate |
| 1:09.6 | live voting into its new |
| 1:11.0 | Star Search reboot in 2026. Then there's generative AI, Netflix's corporate culture, and the |
| 1:17.1 | fact that Stone doesn't really think about being the only woman in the room. Here's our conversation. |
| 1:30.2 | Elizabeth Stone, welcome to the big interview. |
| 1:32.8 | Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. |
| 1:36.9 | I'm delighted that you're here. And we always start these conversations off with a little warm-up. |
| 1:39.7 | So like some very quick questions if you are ready for that. |
... |
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