Summation with Auren Hoffman

Auren Hoffman

Non-obvious ideas that move the world. Auren Hoffman hosts leaders across tech, business, markets, and government.

Summation is the permanent home for the relentlessly curious.

Auren is CEO of NQB8, GP at Flex Capital, Chairman of Dialog; former CEO of SafeGraph and LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP).

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20 episodes
Updated Tuesday

Episodes20

Newest first

Tuesday · 56 min
OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji: measuring the greatest technology of our time
Ronnie Chatterji is the Chief Economist at OpenAI, where he leads research on how AI reshapes growth, jobs, and the economy. He is also an economics professor at Duke. He was previously the White House CHIPS coordinator implementing the $52B CHIPS Act, and before that the chief economist at the US Department of Commerce. In this episode of Summation, Ronnie and Auren discuss: The three things people actually do with ChatGPT The 10x jump in people handing their work to AI Why the next big leap in AI is adoption and not capability The case that AI could cause a population boom You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ronnie Chatterji on X at @RonnieChatterji
July 21 · 1 hr 6 min
Anthropic’s Felix Rieseberg: why AI wins a Nobel before a Pulitzer
Felix Rieseberg leads engineering for Claude Cowork and Claude Code Desktop at Anthropic. Before that he led desktop and web infrastructure at Notion and built software at Stripe, Slack, and Microsoft. In this episode of Summation, Felix and Auren discuss: The next AI step function: going from solving a problem to owning a responsibility Why AI will win many Nobel prizes before it wins a single Pulitzer Bringing AI into the physical world, from a $30 coffee-machine display to a Wi-Fi garage opener Why "here's what your team can learn from the Navy SEALs" is bad management advice You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Felix Rieseberg on X at @felixrieseberg
July 14 · 53 min
Fifth Wall CEO Brendan Wallace: the data center land grab and the most stable asset on earth you still can't buy
Brendan Wallace is the Founder, CEO & CIO of Fifth Wall, the largest investment firm focused on technology for the built environment, with ~$3B in capital, the firm is driving the growth of nearly 170 companies, backing category-defining PropTech leaders such as Opendoor, Procore, Blend, Hippo, and Bilt Rewards. It's supported by ~115 of the world's largest real estate owner-operators including CBRE, Hilton, Hines, Marriott, Public Storage, Related, and Starwood. Before Fifth Wall, Brendan was at Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, and he co-founded Identified (sold to Workday) and Cabify. In this episode of Summation, Brendan and Auren discuss: How remote work protected mediocrity for years The data center land grab: powered land, 2037 grid connections, and bring-your-own-solar How land is the most stable asset on earth and there's still no way to buy an index of it Why "capital-intensive businesses are bad for venture" is no longer true You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Brendan Wallace on X at @BrendanFWallace
July 7 · 1 hr
Striveworks CEO Jim Rebesco on drone swarms, AI for warfighters, and the end of air superiority
Jim Rebesco is the co-founder and CEO of Striveworks, an AI ops company deployed across the US Army, Navy, and combatant commands. In April, Striveworks announced a $70M enterprise agreement with the Pentagon, giving nearly a million defense personnel access to its platform. Jim was previously a partner at Virtu Financial, a pioneering high-frequency trading firm. In this episode of Summation, Jim and Auren discuss: why the real question in AI warfare is who pushes the button the case that autonomy favors big nation states, not insurgents why it costs $200,000 to procure anything in the Pentagon what high-frequency trading and war have in common You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jim Rebesco on LinkedIn
June 30 · 1 hr 10 min
Short-seller Carson Block: a fugitive CEO, Libyan spies, and $50B fraud
Carson Block is the founder of Muddy Waters Research, one of the defining activist short-selling firms of the last decade and a half. Since 2010, Muddy Waters has published forensic research exposing accounting fraud at publicly traded companies across China, Europe, and the US and has been right enough times that 11 companies have been delisted as a result. In this episode of Summation, Carson and Auren discuss: why outright fraud is only 20-25% of Muddy Waters' focus the Wirecard saga why high-trust countries like Germany are a paradise for criminals how the thing that killed Enron is still completely legal You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Carson Block on LinkedIn and on X @muddywatersre
June 23 · 49 min
Facet CEO Anders Jones on the biggest heist in finance, how advisors really sell permission, and the great boomer wealth transfer
Anders Jones is the CEO and co-founder of Facet, a fintech company built to bring high-quality, flat-fee financial advice to an underserved market: the mass affluent. Facet has raised over $250M and manages more than $7B. Anders has seen the real finances of tens of thousands of households. In this episode of Summation, Anders and Auren discuss: why the percentage-of-assets fee is the greatest heist in finance the retention data showing people stick 3x longer when you help them act, not just advise the horizontal wealth transfer to spouses that nobody is planning for why most companies should never raise venture capital You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Anders Jones on LinkedIn
June 16 · 1 hr 3 min
Charles Duhigg on the writing AI can't touch, what GLP-1s really do to your brain, and the serendipity tax
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better, and Supercommunicators. His work focuses on the science of habits, productivity, decision-making, and human connection. In this episode of Summation, Charles and Auren discuss: why producing the words is only 10% of an author's job, and the 90% AI can't do what GLP-1s actually do to the brain the serendipity tax: why you pay for five dead-end dinners to get the one that changes your life the three skills that separate supercommunicators from everyone else You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Charles Duhigg on X at @cduhigg
June 9 · 46 min
SignalFire CEO Chris Farmer on why venture funds now last 20 years and the hiring boom behind the layoffs
Chris Farmer is the founder and CEO of SignalFire, an early stage venture firm managing over $3 billion. In this episode of Summation, Chris and Auren discuss: why the time to return 1x has stretched to 9+ years and funds are lasting 20 years the engineering hiring boom hiding behind the layoff headlines the five functions of a VC firm and the one place data helps the least why almost all conventional career advice is now bad You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Chris Farmer on X at @chriswfarmer
June 2 · 39 min
GTMnow Podcast | Your First VC Meeting Will Be Agent-to-Agent
This episode is a rebroadcast of Auren's appearance on the GTMnow podcast --------------------------------------------------- Auren Hoffman (Flex Capital) joins the GTMnow podcast to share some of the most contrarian takes in tech today, from why AI moats are gone, to why your next VC meeting will be with a bot, to why AI is secretly going to trigger a baby boom. In this episode: Why Auren runs 500+ AI agents to source deals, and what that means for founders raising capital The "agent-to-agent" meeting prediction: by end of 2026, first VC conversations will be fully automated Why every software moat has been "blown up" and what Salesforce, LinkedIn & DocuSign need to do to survive The OpenAI x The Hustle acquisition breakdown: why it's the smartest (and cheapest) distribution play in AI Why missing a great deal is 10x more painful than making a bad one, Auren's honest VC mistake framework The baby boom thesis: why AI, IVF, self-driving cars & cheaper energy could reverse the fertility decline Why companies won't sign yearly SaaS contracts anymore, and what that means for every B2B founder Auren Hoffman is the founder of NQB8, Flex Capital, SafeGraph, and LiveRamp. He's an early backer of Replit, Perplexity, Rippling, Vercel, Coinbase, Chime, and AppLovin. Max’s socials: https://x.com/hackitmax https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/ Auren’s socials: https://x.com/auren https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/ https://auren.substack.com/ GTMnow: https://gtmnow.com
May 26 · 50 min
Serval CEO Jake Stauch: talent is the only moat left, hiring founders as FDEs, and building a $1B company with your wife and a newborn
Jake Stauch is the co-founder and CEO of Serval, the AI-native enterprise service management platform. Serval was founded in 2024 and has already raised over $125M across rounds led by Redpoint and Sequoia at a $1B+ valuation. Before Serval, Jake spent five years on the product team at Verkada and earlier founded NeuroPlus, a brain-sensing hardware company that made video games for kids with ADHD. In this episode of Summation, Jake and Auren discuss: Why Anthropic has added more ARR in the past few months than ServiceNow has in the past 20 years The "forward deployed engineer" hire and why he recruits future founders instead of solutions engineers Why talent density is the only remaining moat in the age of AI The Silicon Valley collusion around not poaching each other's employees You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Jake Stauch on X at @jakeserval
May 19 · 1 hr
Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko on why curiosity is AI’s scarcest resource
Dmitry Shevelenko is Chief Business Officer at Perplexity. He previously co-founded Tortoise, a robotics and commerce automation startup and held business development roles at Uber, LinkedIn, and Meta. He also serves on the board of Lazard. In this episode of Summation, Dmitry and Auren discuss: Why CEOs and executives are Perplexity Computer’s biggest power users and what that says about who wins the AI era Scaling Perplexity past $500M ARR with only 34% headcount growth The $34.5B Chrome bid and the TikTok bid before it Why AI's biggest constraint right now is adoption and not capability You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Dmitry Shevelenko on X at @dmitry140
May 12 · 1 hr 2 min
Fundrise CEO Ben Miller: VCX, Roaring Kitty's revenge, and AI killing the office
Ben Miller is the co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, an alternative asset management platform that gives individual investors access to private real estate, private credit, and venture capital. In March 2026, he listed the Fundrise Innovation Fund on the NYSE under the ticker VCX, one of the first publicly traded venture capital funds. VCX gives retail investors direct exposure to private companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and SpaceX. The fund manages over $650 million and has over 100,000 individual investors. Ben is a returning Summation guest. In this episode of Summation, Ben and Auren discuss: Why VCX traded up 700% on day one while Bill Ackman's fund traded down the next week Why ETFs fall apart for private markets and closed-end funds are the right structure How AI will reshape real estate by 2031 and which markets get hit hardest The hidden truth that SoHo, Wynwood, and Miami Beach were all built by the same person You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ben Miller on X at @benmillerise
May 5 · 1 hr 5 min
Six-time CIA Station Chief Ralph Goff on the new doctrine of war
Ralph Goff is a 35-year veteran of the CIA, having served as a six-time Chief of Station across Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. During his career, he also held the roles of Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia and Chief of the CIA's National Resources Division. Since leaving government, he advises on national security issues and speaks publicly on intelligence, geopolitics, and great power competition. In this episode of Summation, Ralph and Auren discuss: Why blackmail almost never works in espionage and ideology still does Who is actually dying for Putin Why China is the biggest winner of the Ukraine war How technological surveillance transformed CIA tradecraft You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Ralph Goff on Linkedin
April 28 · 57 min
Glenn Youngkin on governing like a CEO, the AI power crisis, and why every operator should run for office
Glenn Youngkin was the 74th Governor of Virginia. Before politics, he spent nearly 25 years at The Carlyle Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, where he rose to co-CEO. During his four-year term, Virginia generated $10B in surplus revenue, delivered $9B in tax relief, attracted $156B in capital investment, and became one of the first states in the country to mandate cell-phone-free classrooms. In this episode of Summation, Glenn and Auren discuss: Why every Virginia state agency got OKRs and how it transformed a 110,000-person government Why decommissioning baseload power was one of the dumbest decisions ever made How Loudoun County gets more than 25% of its tax base from data centers How a startup used AI to cut more Virginia regulations in 7 months than 3 years of manual work You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Glenn Youngkin on X at @GlennYoungkin
April 21 · 58 min
Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on why trades are AI-proof, the trillion-dollar home services market, and why software stopped being a capital asset
Marco Zappacosta is the co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, the home services marketplace he started in 2008. Thumbtack connects homeowners to 300,000+ local service professionals, with nearly 100M projects started on the platform. In this episode of Summation, Marco and Auren discuss: Why home services is bigger than groceries but barely any is booked online How AI collapsed Thumbtack's product pod sizes Why Silicon Valley underrates leadership and overrates management The single trait to screen every executive hire for You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Marco Zappacosta on X at @mlz
April 14 · 58 min
Eric Ries on why "bad governance" outperforms, the case against shareholder primacy, and AI's Chernobyl moment
Eric Ries created the Lean Startup methodology and authored the bestselling book of the same name, which has sold over a million copies. He's also the founder and executive chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, the co-founder of Answer AI (an AI R&D lab), and the author of the upcoming book Incorruptible, releasing May 26th. In this episode of Summation, Eric and Auren discuss: why "bad governance" companies have outperformed "good governance" since 2008 financial gravity - the invisible force that bends companies away from their mission the foundation-controlled blueprint behind Novo Nordisk, IKEA, and Zeiss why vibe coding is headed for its Chernobyl moment You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Eric Ries on X at @ericries
April 7 · 1 hr 1 min
Fmr. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on NATO, nuclear energy, and how to disagree without blood
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg became Germany's youngest Minister of Defense in history, and previously served as Minister of Economics and Technology. He is the chairman and founder of Spitzberg Partners, an investment and advisory firm, a bestselling author, and co-founder of Open Minds Media, where he produces films and podcasts. He co-hosts one of Germany's most popular podcasts. In this episode of Summation, KT and Auren discuss: Why Germany's defense spending hovered at 1% of GDP for decades and what finally forced a change The nuclear exit decision that was driven by a single state election and backfired spectacularly How Rheinmetall surpassed Volkswagen in market cap and what it signals about Europe's industrial reorientation Why Germany's total stock market cap is less than a single US company like Nvidia You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on Linkedin.
March 31 · 58 min
Fmr Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on chips, China, and lessons from Andy Grove
Pat Gelsinger is the former CEO of Intel and longtime Silicon Valley leader. He joins Auren to unpack the forces reshaping technology, geopolitics and leadership. After more than 30 years at Intel (including serving as its first CTO) and nearly a decade as CEO of VMware, Pat now sits at the intersection of deep tech and purpose-driven innovation as executive chair and head of technology at Gloo and general partner at Playground Global. In this episode of Summation, Pat and Auren discuss: Why the US now imports more from Taiwan than from China -- and what that means for national security The case for a U.S. sovereign wealth fund to counter China’s tech investments in semiconductors, energy, and rare earth minerals What happened when Intel gave $70B back to shareholders instead of building fabs, and why tech companies need technologist CEOs Andy Grove's 35-year mentoring relationship with Pat, starting with a cold call that changed his career You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Pat Gelsinger on X at @PGelsinger
March 24 · 48 min
Vlad Tenev and Tudor Achim on mathematical superintelligence, why math is harder than code for LLMs, and the end of buggy software
Vlad Tenev (Robinhood co-founder/CEO) and Tudor Achim (former helm.ai CTO) are the founders of Harmonic, an AI lab pioneering the path toward mathematical superintelligence. Together, they developed Aristotle, a model that eliminates hallucinations by reasoning in Lean code rather than natural language. By shifting from probabilistic guesses to formal logic, Aristotle produces 100% verified mathematical outputs. The model recently demonstrated its breakthrough capabilities by achieving gold-medal performance at the International Math Olympiad. In this episode of Summation, Vlad, Tudor, and Auren discuss: Why AI models struggled at math for so long How Aristotle helped 10x the total corpus of formally verified Erdos problems in just a few months Why formal verification will make all software dramatically safer How the first Millennium Prize problem will be solved by 2027-2028 You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren, Vlad Tenev on X at @vladtenev, and Tudor Achim on X at @tachim
March 17 · 55 min
Retired 4-star General John Allen on Iran, AI hyperwar, and Taiwan’s future
John Allen is a retired four-star Marine Corps general who commanded 150,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan and built a 65-nation coalition as Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition Against ISIS. After retiring from the military, he led the Brookings Institution as its president. He co-invented the term "hyperwar," holds five AI patents, and co-authored Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence. He currently serves as a strategic advisor to Microsoft. In this episode of Summation, John and Auren discuss: Why Ukraine's battlefield is accelerating the autonomous weapons timeline faster than any defense department predicted The single assumption that doomed Afghanistan and why 2,500 troops could have changed everything What nobody is asking about the US operation in Iran How China's one-child military could be the most underappreciated deterrent against a Taiwan invasion You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and John R. Allen on LinkedIn