Azeem Azhar's Exponential View

Greg Williams has joined EV as Executive Editor — two years in the search. He was editor-in-chief of WIRED UK, recognized as Editor of the Year (Technology) three times, and is a five-time novelist. Introducing him to our community in this week’s episode became an opportunity to redefine what EV is: why we make maps instead of stories, and where I think AI is taking institutional media.

Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2026

Published in early March 2026, Andrej Karpathy's autoresearch AI tool makes autonomous scientific experimentation cheap and easy — but it was designed to solve machine learning problems. I wanted to see if I could apply its loop architecture to my own work: refining my worldview, testing arguments, solving business problems.  In this video, I share how I adapted Karpathy’s autoresearch loops for problems that aren't easy to quantify, how to avoid the local minima trap, and the broader impact of these kinds of methods. I covered:

Transcribed - Published: 1 April 2026

Last week Jensen Huang shared the numbers from NVIDIA’s order book: AI compute demand has grown a millionfold in two years. Much GCT coverage focussed on chips, robots, data centers in space, but I think Jensen revealed something far more important in his keynote: “the inference inflection has arrived,” and this is about to transform how all companies should manage their budgets. The inference era is already the operating assumption of the world’s most valuable company.

Transcribed - Published: 25 March 2026

Apple may have stumbled into one of the most defensible positions in AI. This was not on my radar – just two months ago, I was describing a credibility crisis at the company; they appeared wrong-footed on the most important technology of our times and an acquisition was their only plausible way out. In this episode I work through what I and many other commentators missed – and what road lies ahead for Apple.

Transcribed - Published: 18 March 2026

AI has become so embedded in how I work that I can no longer cleanly separate it from my thinking. That raises a question I find genuinely unsettling: is intensive AI use making me a sharper thinker, or quietly doing the opposite? In this episode I pull back the curtain on my full research and writing process — the custom tools, the friction points, and the places where I'm still not sure I've got it right. For Ezra Klein, having AI summarize material is a disaster for original thought. But my AI systems are designed to protect the cognitive work that has to stay human, while they handle everything else. Knowing where to draw that line turns out to be the hardest and most important question.

Transcribed - Published: 13 March 2026

Meet R Mini Arnold - my OpenClaw chief of staff, which manages the equivalent of a ten-person team from a Mac mini in my garden studio. While I slept, that AI team debugged its own code at 3am, researched a trending Substack essay using five parallel investigators, and wrote a 4,600-word script for this very episode in 40 minutes. The gap between people who've started building this way and those who haven't is widening every week.

Transcribed - Published: 5 March 2026

This is the first episode of AI Vistas, a new series where I bring together people I trust and respect to tackle a major question collectively. Today’s question: are we in charge of our AI tools, or are they in charge of us? Joining me are Nita Farahany, distinguished professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and a leading thinker on cognitive liberty and mental privacy; Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and one of the world's most cited medical researchers; and Rohit Krishnan, engineer, former hedge fund manager, and AI builder. Moderating the conversation is Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic.

Transcribed - Published: 25 February 2026

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Rohit Krishnan - writer of the Substack newsletter Strange Loop Canon - for a hands-on conversation about what it actually looks like to build with AI agents today. Between us we're burning through tens of billions of tokens a month - I hit nearly 100 million in a single day this week - and we share what we're each running on our own machines. We dig into the quirks and surprising power of tools like OpenClaw, Claude Code, and Cowork, debate why AI remains stubbornly bad at good writing, and zoom out to ask what a world of trillions of agents might actually look like — and what economic infrastructure it will need.

Transcribed - Published: 19 February 2026

In this episode, I'm joined by Jaime Sevilla, founder of Epoch AI; Hannah Petrovic from my team at Exponential View; and financial journalist Matt Robinson from AI Street. Together we investigate a fundamental question: do the economics of AI companies actually work? We analysed OpenAI's financials from public data to examine whether their revenues can sustain the staggering R&D costs of frontier models. The findings reveal a picture far more precarious than many assume; we also explore where the real infrastructure bottlenecks lie, why compute demand will dwarf energy constraints, and what the rise of long-running agentic workloads means for the entire industry.

Transcribed - Published: 13 February 2026

A week before OpenClaw was released, I recorded a prescient conversation with Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and co-founder of DeepMind. We talked about what happens when AI starts to seem conscious – even if it isn’t. Today, you get to hear our conversation. Mustafa has been sounding the alarm about what he calls “seemingly conscious AI” and the risk of collective AI psychosis for a long time. We discussed this idea of the “fourth class of being” – neither human, tool, nor nature – that AI is becoming and all it brings with itself.

Transcribed - Published: 5 February 2026

At Davos 2026, the mood was unlike any previous World Economic Forum gathering. With Donald Trump arriving amid escalating geopolitical tensions and European leaders sounding alarms about sovereignty, I recorded live dispatches from the ground. In this special episode, I bring together observations from four days at the annual meeting, tracking the seismic shifts in global order alongside the practical realities of AI adoption in the enterprise.

Transcribed - Published: 29 January 2026

In this episode, Peter McCrory, Head of Economics at Anthropic, unpacks the company's new Economic Index report. His team analyzed millions of real Claude conversations to map exactly where AI is augmenting human work today and where it isn't. We explore the striking divergence between API and chat usage, why businesses need to extract tacit knowledge to unlock AI's potential, the "hollow ladder" risk for junior workers, and Anthropic's estimate that AI could add 1.0-1.8% to annual productivity growth over the next decade.

Transcribed - Published: 21 January 2026

In this episode, I share my outlook for 2026 and explain why AI tools now feel genuinely different. I explore how the act of making has been transformed, why authenticity and meaning will become the new scarcity, and whether the foundations of energy and capital can hold. I also address the question I was asked most in 2025: when will the AI bubble burst?

Transcribed - Published: 16 January 2026

In this episode, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and I discuss how a strong US economy, high asset valuations, and rapid AI adoption are sitting in uneasy tension. We explore what past technology cycles can teach us, why safety nets struggle to address disruption, and where genuine optimism still makes sense.

Transcribed - Published: 8 January 2026

What made 2025 special? 🎊 We recorded this to publish after Christmas, but demand for year‑end reflections prompted an early release - so if you hear me say Christmas has passed, that’s why. 🎊 In this episode, I reflect on the past year and what it revealed: a K-shaped divide. On one track, AI models are now doing hours of high quality work, improving at exponential pace, and shifting how we work from doing to judging. On the other, organisations and the broader economy are struggling to keep up. Stay to the end for my seasonal film recommendation.

Transcribed - Published: 20 December 2025

In this episode, I’ve distilled a year of extraordinary dialogue into one 20-minute briefing. I’ve spent 2025 in conversation with the architects of our future - the builders and thinkers redefining AI, energy, and the global economy. These are the "eureka" moments from my most exclusive interviews. From the future of "protopia" with Kevin Kelly to the hidden tech gaps with Dan Wang, this is your strategic roadmap for the exponential age.

Transcribed - Published: 19 December 2025

In this episode, I look at the next 24 months of AI. The technology is improving rapidly – so what could hold back widespread transformation of how we work and live? I dig into the real constraints, from electricity shortages to institutional inertia, why mid-2026 matters for enterprise AI, and why so many people remain uneasy about a technology they use every day.

Transcribed - Published: 10 December 2025

In this episode, I reflect on the third anniversary of ChatGPT's launch as a marker of where we are in the exponential age. As a product, ChatGPT captures the speed of technological progress, the new behaviours emerging around it and the widening gap between innovation and institutional change – all symptomatic of the era I called the exponential age in my 2021 book.

Transcribed - Published: 5 December 2025

The AI industry is sending mixed signals, with markets turning red while teams report real productivity gains. In this session I explore why we are living in a split reality, where individuals move faster with these tools but the wider economy is ambivalent. We once assumed juniors would get the biggest lift from AI, yet the newer agentic tools seem to reward senior workers who know how to structure problems and judge output.

Transcribed - Published: 21 November 2025

Junior roles in AI-exposed fields are disappearing fast. The obvious culprit is AI rapidly automating entry-level jobs. And yet, this isn't quite right. What is driving the drop is managers’ expectations about what AI will do, not the work that it's already replacing. I discussed this with Ben Zweig of Revelio Labs, which builds global workforce data from millions of individual profiles to track hiring, separations and job flows. Together, we explored the future of work and shared practical advice for new grads.

Transcribed - Published: 14 November 2025

The AI boom isn’t just about chatbots. In this video, I explain why cloud companies and chipmakers are exploding in value: we’re moving into an economy where computation becomes a fundamental input – like steel, electricity or oil. If that’s true, our demand for compute could approach infinity.

Transcribed - Published: 7 November 2025

In this episode, I speak with Jordan Schneider, creator of Chinatalk, to explore the new phase of US–China competition. Both countries are using trade policy, export controls and industrial strategy to shift the balance of global power. Yet, their economies remain tightly bound.

Transcribed - Published: 23 October 2025

This conversation is a practical map of how AI “answer engines” upend the web’s traffic-funded model – and what could replace it. Matthew Prince (co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare) joins Azeem to discuss scarcity, pricing, and why unique, trustworthy content becomes the premium input to AI.

Transcribed - Published: 8 October 2025

In this episode, I spoke with Dan Wang, author of “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future”. We unpacked a bold thesis: China is not merely a competitor in AI and tech, but is re-imagining its entire state apparatus as an engineering state - in contrast to the more “lawyerly” institutions of the US and UK.

Transcribed - Published: 1 October 2025

Is AI in a bubble or a boom? I spent hundreds of hours figuring this out. Today I present a practical five-gauge framework to benchmark today’s AI frenzy against history’s bubbles, from railways to dot-coms. A clear, data-driven guide for investors and decision-makers.

Transcribed - Published: 25 September 2025

GPT-5 was the most advanced AI when it was released, but most people were disappointed. Why? In this episode, I unpack the two key paradoxes that shape how we judge new technology: shifting goalposts and negative space.

Transcribed - Published: 24 September 2025

Can AI stocks beat Big Tech? In this episode, I discuss OpenAI and its decision to expand a secondary share sale that lets insiders sell about $10.3 billion of stock at roughly a $500 billion valuation. Although skeptical at first, the calculations reveal there is a path for OpenAI to deliver outsized returns.

Transcribed - Published: 10 September 2025

This is the single most important paper to come out in tech in recent weeks. Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen investigated whether generative AI is leading to job losses in roles most exposed to AI – and how these effects differ by age and the way AI is used. In this episode, I break down these results and their implications.

Transcribed - Published: 5 September 2025

Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, led one of the first major content licensing deals with OpenAI in 2024. In this conversation, he joins Azeem to unpack how AI is transforming media – and what that means for every business navigating the shifting economics of attention, trust, and discovery.

Transcribed - Published: 24 July 2025

At the start of the year, I made seven predictions about how 2025 would unfold. Six months in, it's time to mark my own work. From AI capability breakthroughs to autonomous vehicles, climate extremes to workforce transformation, I examine what I got right, what I missed, and why the 2027-2028 period will be when vertical AI hits the real economy in force.

Transcribed - Published: 9 July 2025

In this episode, I reflect on a whirlwind three-day visit to China - my first in over 20 years. And what I saw was remarkable. The infrastructure puts most of the West to shame. The AI isn't just hype - it's working at serious scale. And the electric vehicles? They're about to steamroll the global auto industry. Here's what really struck me during my whirlwind trip to Beijing and beyond.

Transcribed - Published: 2 July 2025

Broadcasting live from Paris, I tackle three massive technology stories that are reshaping our digital future. From Apple's stunning interface redesign to the collapse of traditional search advertising, and Sam Altman's vision of an AI singularity that's already begun - this episode captures the tectonic shifts happening in tech right now.

Transcribed - Published: 18 June 2025

This week, I'm speaking with Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, who is steering product development at what might be the world's most important company right now.

Transcribed - Published: 10 June 2025

Economist and polymath Tyler Cowen challenges Silicon Valley's optimistic projections about AI-driven economic growth. We explore what could slow down AI's economic impact, despite its remarkable capabilities – and where humans find the new normal amidst major shifts.

Transcribed - Published: 4 June 2025

Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, joins Azeem to explore how AI is fundamentally transforming software development.

Transcribed - Published: 28 May 2025

Aaron Levie, CEO & co-founder of Box, joins Azeem Azhar to explore how an “AI-first” mindset is reshaping every layer of Box – from product road-maps to pricing – and what that teaches the rest of us about building faster, smarter organisations.

Transcribed - Published: 21 May 2025

Lennart Heim, a researcher and information scientist at RAND Corporation, joins Azeem Azhar to unpack a provocative claim: China is catching up with US AI capabilities, but it doesn't matter.

Transcribed - Published: 14 May 2025

Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, joins Azeem to discuss the Iberian blackout and how we can create a more stable, flexible, and resilient energy grid for the future.

Transcribed - Published: 7 May 2025

Physicist and entrepreneur Steve Hsu, whose startup Superfocus tackles hallucination problems in large language models, joins Azeem to discuss AI agents, hallucination challenges and what happens when technology meets labor markets.

Transcribed - Published: 30 April 2025

Sir Niall Ferguson, renowned historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss the evolving relationship between the U.S. and China, Trump's foreign policy doctrine, and what the new global economic and security order might look like.

Transcribed - Published: 23 April 2025

In this episode, Azeem Azhar speaks with Ryan Petersen, CEO and founder of logistics platform Flexport, about the current state of global trade amidst escalating tariffs, geopolitical tensions, and technological disruption. Ryan offers unique insights from the frontlines of the US-China trade war and explores how businesses are adapting to a rapidly changing landscape.

Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2025

Azeem Azhar welcomes Packy McCormick, founder and investor at Not Boring, to discuss the current tech landscape – reflections on Web3, why bits and atoms are cool again and how AI and energy are reshaping the world as we know it.

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2025

Anthropic's co-founder and chief scientist Jared Kaplan discusses AI's rapid evolution, the shorter-than-expected timeline to human-level AI, and how Claude's "thinking time" feature represents a new frontier in AI reasoning capabilities.

Transcribed - Published: 1 April 2025

Kevin Kelly is a co-founder of Wired Magazine and a renowned author and futurist. Decades ago, Kevin predicted much of today's technological and cultural landscape. In this discussion, he presents his new bold vision for what’s coming next: The Handoff to Bots.

Transcribed - Published: 19 March 2025

Kai-Fu Lee joins me to discuss AI in 2025. Kai-Fu is a storied AI researcher, investor, inventor and entrepreneur based in Taiwan. As one of the leading AI experts based in Asia, I wanted to get his take on this particular market.

Transcribed - Published: 2 January 2025

Nathan Benaich, Founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital, joins me to discuss AI in 2025. From runaway consumer adoption to evolving enterprise moats, from still-elusive AI-driven drug breakthroughs to the renewed vigour in robotics, several core themes stood out.

Transcribed - Published: 26 December 2024

Dylan Patel, founder of SemiAnalysis and one of my go-to experts on semiconductors and data center infrastructure joins me to discuss AI in 2025. Several key themes emerged about where AI might be headed in 2025: (1) The hyperscalers are racing ahead in capital expenditure, (2) The expected explosion in AI workloads is drawing in a wave of new specialized GPU cloud providers, (3) By 2027, AI data centers alone could account for 10% or more of total US electricity consumption, straining America’s aging infrastructure, (4) Open-source variants like Llama 3.1 are driving commoditization at speed, slicing away the profit margins of plain-vanilla model-serving.

Transcribed - Published: 23 December 2024

Transcribed - Published: 28 November 2024

Azeem Azhar is joined by Richard Socher, CEO and founder of You.com, an AI chatbot search engine at the forefront of truthful and verifiable AI. They explore approaches to building AI systems that are both truthful and verifiable. The conversation sheds light on the critical breakthroughs in AI, the technical challenges of ensuring AI's reliability, and Socher's vision for the future of search.

Transcribed - Published: 7 February 2024

As 2024 begins, leaders are facing increasing uncertainty and a host of difficult decisions. Azeem Azhar returns to bring clarity amid a complicated information landscape, with his analysis of 12 core themes that will shape the year ahead, including AI adoption, geopolitics, decentralization, the energy transition, and more.

Transcribed - Published: 31 January 2024