Danny In The Valley

Continuing our big name-dropping look-back with Sam Altman, Lisa Su, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Satya Nadella, Matthew Prince, Arthur Mensch, Sir Demis Hassabis, Marc Benioff, and Dario Amodei, this is the second special Christmas edition of the pod – and this time we’re looking at what we’ve learned about the impact of AI on the real world since the Tech Pod started in October 2024 with DeepMind's Sir Demis Hassabis. From robotaxis to listening pendants: what does AI look like in real life? How is it being used in business? And will there be any jobs left? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the biggest, most shameless holiday name-drop of the year, Katie and Danny bring you – in no particular order – insights from Sam Altman of OpenAI, AMD’s Lisa Su, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, Arthur Mensch of Mistral AI, Sir Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, Marc Benioff from Salesforce, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.A whole smattering of billionaires, with a Nobel laureate mixed in too. So, what have they all told us about the AI rollout and what it really means? This is the first of a two-part Christmas extravaganza, where we look back at the world of AI covered on the pod with more than a year's worth of big-tech leaders returning to help us distinguish the potential of AI from the reality. (Just don’t mention the B-word!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who has power in the tech world now – governments, big tech, or the investors writing the cheques? Danny and Katie are joined by Harry Stebbings, founder of 20VC, on how venture capital shapes what gets built, who wins the AI race, and what 2026 could bring.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is Artificial General Intelligence? How close are we to achieving it? And who exactly is building it? Danny and Katie look at the global race for artificial general intelligence and speak with Surge AI CEO Edwin Chen, whose company uses human experts to train frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. He believes only human expertise will get AI to the next level.Image credit: Surge AI Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does AI truly mean for productivity, growth, and innovation? Tech giants IBM are well placed to assess the impact of AI and what it takes for an organisation to transform to being AI-first. In this bonus episode - made in partnership with IBM - two of its leading strategists, Leon Butler, Chief Executive, IBM UK and Ireland, and Dr. Juan Bernabe Moreno, Director IBM Research in Europe, sat down with Katie to talk about what businesses are making of the opportunities and the challenges of AI.This bonus episode of The Times Tech Podcast is made in partnership with IBM. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny talks to Dara Ladjevardian, Co-founder of Delphi - a company that creates digital AI versions of.. well, you, so can you can be you, more often..! Answering queries, talking to your mom and making your own podcast.. if only! Katie meanwhile is considering the Bank of England's warning of a potential AI bubble being deepened by the use of debt to help underpin $5 trillion of investment to build this AI future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The British Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has delivered her now annual Budget Statement - a sort of economic State of the United Kingdom address to parliament. And in it she promised to work with founders and investors to make the UK an "even more attractive place" to grow their business - "if you build here, Britain will back you!" So is Danny likely to join entrepreneurs in San Francisco and Dubai for the flight back to London? To help them decide, Katie brought in special guest, Alex Depledge, a serial tech entrepreneur and the first Entrepreneurship Advisor to the Treasury, who has worked closely with Rachel Reeves.Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nvidia says AI demand is “off the charts”, and Jeff Bezos has launched a new $6.2 billion AI start-up, but Google’s Sundar Pichai is warning that no company will be safe if the bubble bursts. So what’s really going on? Bubble or no bubble? Danny and Katie dig into the numbers and speak to venture capitalist Suranga Chandratillake from Balderton Capital about how to spot the real bets from the hype and where the next frontier lies.Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Could today’s teenagers be the last to sit a driving test? Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott look at the rise of self-driving cars, from Waymo’s cars in San Francisco to new UK laws on autonomous vehicles. They also hear from Lyft CEO David Risher who explain why your kids may never need to drive and what that means for cities, carmakers and the rest of us.Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katie meets Jensen Huang and Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun at No.10 as Nvidia hits a $5 trillion valuation. Plus, Danny and Katie discuss OpenAI’s $38 billion AWS deal and the Sam Altman–Satya Nadella interview, exploring what it all means for AI’s power, compute and future. And Katie reveals the tech-inspired Collins' Word of the Year – any guesses?Clips: BG2 Pod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny road tests a new kind of relationship – an always-listening AI pendant that eavesdrops in on your conversations and then texts you so it too can be part of your life story! 22-year-old inventor, Avi Schiffmann, calls it a “living digital being.” Is this the future of companionship, or a step too far? And Katie and Danny discuss OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit business – what it changes for Microsoft, and whether an IPO is now on the cards.Senior Producer: Priyanka DeladiaEditor: Stephen TitheringtonImage: The Sunday Times Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott reunite in London to unpack the biggest takeaways from The Times Tech Summit 2025 – from the race to power AI’s energy demands, to News Corp CEO Robert Thomson’s fight to make tech firms pay for content, and former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s warning that Britain has become a “vassal state” in global tech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As OpenAI’s chip spree rolls on, Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott ask the question – are we already in an AI bubble? And they hear from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince about AI content wars and making LLM's pay for the content they use. Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny and Katie are joined by Rose Wang, COO of BlueSky, the decentralised social network born out of Twitter, to discuss how it’s rewriting the rules of social media, why it’s turning down ad money, and whether an open, user-curated model can rival the giants. And they look at OpenAI’s six gigawatt chip deal with AMD, the growing warnings of an AI bubble and Donald Trump’s TikTok return.Image: The Times Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny and Katie look at California’s new AI safety law, OpenAI’s in-chat checkout, and the rise of AI “actors”, and how it all depends on one thing – data centres, the hidden plumbing of the internet. They’re joined by Adaire Fox-Martin, CEO of Equinix, which runs the giant facilities where the world’s data lives, to explain how the company is racing to keep up with demand and why it plans to add as much capacity in the next five years as it did in the past 27. But with soaring energy use and limited space, can the industry keep pace?Image: Jack Taylor/The Times Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this bonus edition of the Times Tech Podcast we have teamed up with Smart Energy GB for a look at what smart meters can do for small businesses. There is more to tech than AI, and sometimes the most important tech developments are about getting the basics right. Katie Prescott has been talking to one small business in the North of England, and to an academic expert who has been studying what we now know about how energy use and running any small business go hand in hand.This is a paid for edition in partnership with Smart Energy GB. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny and Katie are joined by Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone to dive into the company’s journey — from its rise as an internet pioneer to its reinvention in the age of AI, as he shares details of his plans for the 30-year-old tech brand, and what the relationship needs to be between AI and Yahoo's content. Plus, Danny and Katie unpack the latest in AI’s breakneck growth, including Nvidia’s $100 billion deal with OpenAI. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is Britain in a "Goldilocks" moment for AI? US President Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain brought more than pomp and ceremony. American tech giants pledged £31 billion in AI and data centre investment, from Nvidia’s 120,000 processors to Microsoft’s GDP-boosting promises. Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott unpack what the new UK-US “tech prosperity deal” really means, and speak with one of the investors – CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator and CBO Mike Mattacola about their £1.5 billion UK expansion.Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott sit down with Loveable AI CEO Anton Osika, fresh off a $200m raise at a $1.8bn valuation. They dig into “vibe coding,” and why he thinks Loveable could be the “last piece of software” for building websites and apps. Plus, Danny gets tips for his masterpiece game – Meatball Mania.Image: Jack Hill/The Times Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny and Katie tackle Google's antitrust win, TikTok job cuts and a new Stanford research on how AI is reshaping entry-level roles. Plus, Katie speaks to Steve Hare, CEO of Sage, the FTSE 100 accounting software company, to discuss AI’s impact on hiring, the limits of “copilot” tools, and why Britain needs more homegrown tech champions so he can have 'some friends'.Image: GettyFurther listening: Perplexity CEO on Chrome, AI and challenging the tech giantsAn AI-induced recession on the horizon? Klarna's CEO thinks so Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.