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The Verge

Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today, let’s talk about the looming AI monetization cliff, and whether some of the biggest companies in space can become real, profitable businesses before they careen right off it.

My guest today is Hayden Field, who’s our senior AI reporter here at The Verge. She’s been keeping close tabs on both Anthropic and OpenAI, and how these two companies, both slate to go public this year, tell us a whole lot about the AI industry in 2026. 

Links: 

 The vibes are off at OpenAI | The Verge

 Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude | The Verge

 Why OpenAI killed Sora | The Verge

 OpenAI just bought TBPN | The Verge

 National poll shows voters like AI less than ICE | The Verge

 The spiraling cost of making AI | WSJ

 OpenAI’s Fidji Simo taking leave amid exec shake-up | Wired

 OpenAI raises another $122B at $850B valuation | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The AI industry's existential race for profits

My guest today is Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. Cisco is one of those big companies that everyone has heard of but most of us don’t have to interact with very much; they’re not really a consumer brand. But without Cisco's actual routers and switches and silicon — and the software to make those things work — there’s no internet, no cloud, and no AI. 

But a data center is a really unpleasant neighbor to have, and there’s robust opposition to new data center builds all over the country. So I had to start by asking what feels, strangely, like one of the most urgent questions of the moment: Should we build data centers in space?

Links: 

 Nvidia launches space computing, rocketing AI Into orbit | Nvidia

 Nvidia’s AI dominance expands to networking | CRN

 Amid rising pushback, 2025 data center cancellations surge | Heatmap

 Billionaires want data centers everywhere, including space | The Verge

 How Ciena keeps the internet online | Decoder

 Okta’s CEO is betting big on agent identity | Decoder

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins wants data centers in space

Today, we’re talking about the landmark social media addiction trials that just resulted in two major verdicts against Big Tech — one in California against Meta and Google, and another in New Mexico against just Meta.

These are complicated cases with some huge repercussions for both how these platforms work and the very nature of speech in America. So we’ve brought on two heavy hitters: my friend Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork, as well as Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner, who’s been covering these trials since the beginning. 

Links: 

 Meta & YouTube found negligent in social media addiction trial | The Verge

 Meta misled users about its products’ safety, jury decides | The Verge

 Meta’s legal defeat: a victory for kids, or a loss for everyone | The Verge

 Can you have child safety and Section 230, too? | Platformer

 The terrible cost of infinite scroll | The New York Times

 I watched grieving parents stare down Zuckerberg in court | The Verge

 Section 230 turns 30 as it faces its biggest tests yet | The Verge

 Congress considers blowing up internet law | The Verge

 Sen. Rob Wyden: “Why the internet still needs Section 230” | The Verge

 How America turned against the First Amendment | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A jury says Meta and Google hurt a kid. What now?

My guest today is Okta CEO Todd McKinnon. Okta is a platform that big companies use to manage security and identity across all the many apps and platforms their employees use. Most of us run into it as login management at work.

SaaS companies like Okta are under a lot of pressure in the age of AI, which Todd even said on an earnings call he's "paranoid" about. But you'll also hear Todd say that for Okta specifically, there's also a world of opportunity as the very concept of a digital "identity" has to expand into things that aren't really people. 

Links: 

 CEO ‘paranoid’ as vibe coders stir SaaSpocalypse fears | The Register

 $300B evaporated. The SaaSpocalypse has begun | Forbes

 How AI assistants are moving the security goalposts | Krebs on Security

 What everyone’s missing about AI and development | CRN

 Agents run amok: Identity lessons from Moltbook’s experiment | Okta

 Breakup of IBM is Antitrust goal (1972) | New York Times

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okta's CEO is betting big on AI agent identity

Today, we’re talking about the major antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, and what it might mean for antitrust and competition law in general now that the Trump DOJ has decided to settle its part of the case — even as several states including California, New York, and Texas carry on. 

To break it all down, I’m joined by Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner. Lauren’s our resident court expert, and she’s been chronicling this trial from the beginning.

Links: 

 States’ anti-monopoly case against Live Nation continues | The Verge

 The Live Nation trial restarts with a ‘velvet hammer’ | The Verge

 Live Nation settles government antitrust suit | The Verge

 The Live Nation settlement has industry insiders baffled | The Verge

 Listen to Live Nation CEO’s alleged threats to a concert venue | The Verge

 The threats and bare-knuckle tactics of MAGA’s top antitrust fixer | WSJ

 The Trump admin just gave Live Nation the gift of a lifetime | NYT

 How Live Nation allegedly terrorized the concert industry | The Verge

 The US government is trying to break up Ticketmaster | The Verge (2024)

 Taylor Swift vs. Ronald Reagan: the Ticketmaster story | Decoder (2023)

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everyone hates Ticketmaster. Why'd Trump go easy on them?

Today, I’m talking with Shishir Mehrotra, the CEO of Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly, which is still its flagship product. Back in August, Grammarly shipped a feature called Expert Review, which allowed you to get writing suggestions from AI-cloned “experts,” and recently, reporters at The Verge and other outlets discovered that those experts included me, among many others. 

No one ever asked permission to use our names this way, and a lot of reporters were outraged by this. To Shishir’s credit, he did not cancel our interview and he came on and stuck it out. This conversation got tense at times, and it’s clear we disagree about how extractive AI feels for people. There’s a lot in this one, and I’m excited to hear what you think.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. 

Links:

 Why I’m suing Grammarly | New York Times

 Grammarly will stop using identities without permission | The Verge

 Grammarly to keep using writer identities unless they opt out | The Verge

 Grammarly turned me into an AI editor and I hate it | Platformer

 Grammarly is using our identities without permission | The Verge

 Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman | The Verge

 Grammarly wants to become an ‘AI productivity platform’ | The Verge 

 Viacom v. YouTube, 2007 | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me

Today, let’s talk about the big Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Right now, Paramount head David Ellison is very much acting like he’s over the finish line after outbidding Netflix, which walked away after what seemed like a done deal. 

Back in January, I asked Puck’s Julia Alexander to walk me through Netflix’s reasoning, and today I’m digging into Paramount’s with Rich Greenfield, a media and entertainment analyst and cofounder of research firm LightShed Partners. There’s a lot going on here, including the biggest question I’ve had throughout this entire saga: why would anyone want to buy Warner, which has basically killed every acquirer it’s had for the last quarter century?

Links: 

 David Ellison’s plan to compete with Netflix: Paramount+HBO | Rich Greenfield

 The worst acquisition in history, again | Prof G Media

 David Zaslav gets the last laugh | THR

 Warner Bros. Discovery agrees to Paramount merger | The Verge

 Tech, TV, Movies & News: Ellisons on brink of colossal empire | NYT

 Pete Hegseth says ‘the sooner David Ellison’ buys CNN, ‘the better’ | NYT

 Warner Bros CEO to pocket $887 million from Paramount deal | Reuters

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Paramount's $110 billion Warner Bros. gamble

Jim Lanzone is the CEO of Yahoo. It's basically impossible to sum up Yahoo's story over the last 25 years, but the short version is that once upon a time, Yahoo paid Google to run the search box on its website, and everything immediately went sideways. Jim calls it Yahoo's original sin. 

But after a long series of mergers, spinouts, and a hot, weird minute as part of Verizon Yahoo is once again an independent, privately held company — and it's growing. But can Yahoo really take market share from Google? 

Links: 

 Yahoo sells Engadget to Static Media | The Verge

 Yahoo sells TechCrunch to Regent | The Verge

 Yahoo Finance launches crypto partnership with Coinbase | Yahoo

 Yahoo Scout looks like more web-friendly AI search | The Verge

 Yahoo Finance launches crypto deal with Polymarket | Yahoo Finance

 Yahoo resurrects Artifact inside AI-powered news app | The Verge

 Yahoo Mail adds more AI to simplify desktop email | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on reviving the web's homepage

My guest today is Mike Masnick, the founder and CEO of Techdirt, the excellent and long-running tech policy blog. Mike has been writing about government overreach, privacy in the digital age, and other related topics for decades now, and he’s an expert on how the internet and the surveillance state have grown in interconnected ways over the past two decades.

I wanted to have Mike on the show to discuss the messy, fast-moving situation at Anthropic, the maker of Claude that now finds itself in a very ugly legal battle with the Pentagon. Instead of covering the daily drama, I wanted to dig in specifically on Anthropic's surveillance red line, and the important history and context around digital privacy in the U.S. that shapes how we should think about this going forward. 

Links: 

 AI bros wanted Trump — now they learn what happens when you tell him no | Techdirt

 OpenAI’s ‘red lines’ are written in the NSA’s dictionary | Techdirt

 Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense | The Verge

 Anthropic launches new think tank amid Pentagon fight | The Verge

 How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance | The Verge

 Inside the backlash to the AI war machine | Platformer

 The Pentagon is violating Anthropic's First Amendment rights | FIRE

 Why the Pentagon wants to destroy Anthropic | Ezra Klein / NYT

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic doesn't trust the Pentagon, and neither should you

Hasbro might be a toy company, but CEO Chris Cocks has spent the last several years pushing it more and more into the digital media, gaming, and collectibles space. That makes sense, since adults have money and kids don't. All those IP and licensing deals are working out for Hasbro so far. 

But Hasbro is also facing a lot of risk from instability: in trade and tariffs, in politics and culture, and in the video game market, which seems to be in a more or less permanent state of crisis. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

 Chris Cocks on Decoder (2023) | The Verge

 Hasbro just made a massive ‘Harry Potter’ Announcement | Parade

 Businesses push for tariff refunds as Trump aides hint at fight | New York Times

 We’re finally seeing more of Hasbro’s forgotten space game | PC Gamer

 Xbox in is danger. Will Microsoft save it, or kill it? | Decoder

 OpenAI’s billion-dollar deal puts Mickey Mouse in Sora | The Verge

 A comprehensive timeline of JK Rowling’s descent into transphobia | Them

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The AI industry's existential race for profits

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