AI investment is massive, but AI profits are not — and yet investors 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. 

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Meta’s 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, Bluesky’s growth has absolutely skyrocketed to more than 20 million users, and it's starting to put real competitive pressure on Threads at the feature level. As Bluesky really ramps up, it seemed like a great time to engage with some of the core questions behind its design and see if Jay and her team can keep it up.

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23872913

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Aman’s been CEO since 2019, and he’s 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 massive strain on the very foundations of the open web. So I started out by asking Aman the question I’ve asked so many other guests on Decoder in the past year: What is the point of a website in 2024?

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24069405

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Travis Larchuck and Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For nearly 20 years now, the web has been Google’s platform; we’ve 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, that’s suddenly not stable anymore. The number one question I have for anyone building things on someone else’s platform is: What are you going to do when that platform changes the rules?

Links: 

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it’s Nilay — Decoder is on a short break this week. We’ll be back with a special live interview episode on Monday of next week, and then regular programming will resume in December. I’m very excited for what we have coming up on the schedule. 

But while we’re out, we’d 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 America: How and when should you start saving for retirement — and will it even matter in a future of big, often scary uncertainties about work in the age of AI and the climate crisis? 

Links: 

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’re 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 we’ll 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-elect’s inner circle. But what does the world’s richest person really want in return?

And how is the CEO of an electric car company, an outspoken advocate for combating climate change, going to square his support for Trump and a Republican policy agenda centered on climate change denial? Verge transportation editor Andy Hawkins joins me this week to make sense of it all, and to figure out how Elon and Tesla may still benefit, even if Trump's climate policy reversals and tariffs lay waste to the auto industry.

Links: 

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 what’s happening to the music industry because it’s a preview into what will happen to every other creative industry five years later. My chat with Harvey really drove the point home: AI, diversity, streaming distribution... it's all here, and all the tensions that come with.

Links: 

Transcript: 

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we’re 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 they’re 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 with two experts on the subject: Stephan Meier, a professor of business strategy at Columbia Business School, and Jessica Kriegel, the chief strategy officer at workplace culture consultancy Culture Partners. We dive into what’s been happening to the nature of work today, and whether Amazon, which just announced a major return to the office five days a week, is part of a bigger trend. 

Links:

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m 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 you’ve 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 GM’s decision to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from most of its cars, especially EVs. 

I’ve 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 into the weeds here on what this looks like, the major trade-offs, and why he thinks it’s ultimately the right path for GM. 

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24049622

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 long and complex history of the government regulating speech on broadcast platforms like radio and television — and that history dovetails into many of the problems we have regulating tech companies and social platforms today. Verge senior tech and policy editor Adi Robertson joins me to dive in.

Links: 

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices