logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2025
24m 25s

Making money from AI: Searching for a ‘k...

Financial Times
About this episode

Is generative AI over-valued? At the heart of the generative AI boom has been the premise that a ‘killer app’ for AI will make investors a return on their capital. But it’s unclear how those use cases will actually make money for businesses that deploy them. Plus - is the problem a lack of AI take-up among employees? We hear from Joe Richardson, head of operations at Octopus Energy, Jim Covello, head of global equity research at Goldman Sachs and George Lee, co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute for a debate about the investment case for AI; Victor Riparbelli, chief executive of AI video start-up Synthesia, Amjad Masad, chief executive of coding start-up Replit, and Claudia Harris, chief executive at tech training company Makers.


Free to read:

UK artificial intelligence start-up Synthesia hits $2bn valuation

AI-powered coding pulls in almost $1bn of funding to claim ‘killer app’ status


This season of Tech Tonic is presented by Madhumita Murgia, and produced by Josh Gabert-Doyon. Edwin Lane is the senior producer and Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Sound design by Breen Turner, Samantha Giovinco and Joe Salcedo, with original music from Metaphor Music. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next
Yesterday
Mission to Mars: Elon Musk's 'Starship' Enterprise
Elon Musk wants humans to settle on Mars, and his rocket company SpaceX is spending billions of dollars on developing the spacecraft to take us there. The ‘Starship’ is being designed to take astronauts back to the moon, and eventually, on to the red planet. But why is Musk so ob ... Show More
29m 34s
Oct 1
Coming soon: Mission to Mars
US President Donald Trump has pledged to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars”, China could send its first crewed mission to Mars within a decade, and Elon Musk wants people to actually settle on Mars, transforming the human race into an interplanetary species. In a ne ... Show More
1m 40s
Sep 30
Vote for Tech Tonic in the Signal Awards!
Tech Tonic has been nominated for a Signal Award in the Technology category! It's a Listener Choice award, which means we need your help. Vote for us to win here. We appreciate your support.And while you're at it, vote for some other FT podcasts that have also been nominated. The ... Show More
49s
Recommended Episodes
Dec 2024
AI is a money pit — here’s why investors don’t mind
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 Tul ... Show More
33m 59s
May 2025
Is Every Company Now an AI Company?
The buzz is deafening—every company is now an AI company...or are they? Knownwell CMO Courtney Baker is joined by CEO David DeWolf and Chief Product and Technology Officer Mohan Rao to unpack whether the AI revolution is as widespread as the hype suggests. They explore what it re ... Show More
34m 5s
Aug 2024
Recursion CEO Chris Gibson on Accelerating the Biopharmaceutical Industry With AI - Ep. 230
Techbio is a field combining data, technology and biology to enhance scientific processes — and AI has the potential to supercharge the biopharmaceutical industry further. In this episode of NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz speaks with Chris Gibson, cofounder and CEO of Rec ... Show More
37m 55s
Aug 2024
AI Friends, deepfake foes, and which Tiger Global partner is leaving now
On today's Friday news roundup, we just had to talk about AI hardware taking on a new shape with Friend’s $99 necklace. The pendant gives you an AI friend to talk to and…that’s about it. Friend’s pitch is that its wearable can help combat loneliness, but other AI hardware product ... Show More
31m 12s
Jun 2024
#218 Designing AI Applications with Robb Wilson, Co-Founder & CEO at Onereach.ai
All the hype around generative AI means that every software maker seems to be stuffing chat interfaces into their products whenever they can. For the most part, the jury is still out on whether this is a good idea or not. However, design goes deeper than just the user interface, ... Show More
46m 36s
Feb 2024
The AI Advantage: Redrawing the Map of Business Success
What makes harnessing the power of AI in the near term all but an imperative for executives? How is the disruption artificial intelligence is bringing about different from the digital transformation we've seen impact so many industries in the last several decades? This episode of ... Show More
32m 55s
Sep 2024
AI's tween years, who's taking over climate tech, and the latest for Fearless Fund
What could be more frightening than Friday the 13th? How about a realization that AI is in its awkward tween stage? At least, it was for the TC Equity pod crew, which this week included hosts Devin Coldewey and Kirsten Korosec along with TC reporters Tim de Chant and Dominic Mado ... Show More
34m 10s
Jul 20
Anthropic co-founder on quitting OpenAI, AGI predictions, $100M talent wars, 20% unemployment, and the nightmare scenarios keeping him up at night | Ben Mann
Benjamin Mann is a co-founder of Anthropic, an AI startup dedicated to building aligned, safety-first AI systems. Prior to Anthropic, Ben was one of the architects of GPT-3 at OpenAI. He left OpenAI driven by the mission to ensure that AI benefits humanity. In this episode, Ben o ... Show More
1h 14m
Apr 2025
#226 Garry Tan: How Y Combinator Turns Ambitious Misfits Into Billion-Dollar Founders
Most accelerators fund ideas. Y Combinator funds founders—and transforms them. With a 1% acceptance rate and alumni behind 60% of the past decade’s unicorns, YC knows what separates the founders who break through from those who burn out. It's not the flashiest résumé or the bolde ... Show More
2h 23m
Aug 31
How we restructured Airtable’s entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)
Howie Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable, the no-code platform valued at around $12 billion. After a viral tweet declared “Airtable is dead” based on incorrect data, Howie led a radical transformation: reorganizing the entire company around AI, becoming an “IC CEO” who cod ... Show More
1h 40m