Tech Disruptors

AI is moving beyond software and into the physical operations that power industries like energy, manufacturing, logistics and aerospace. Avathon CEO Pervinder Johar joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Woo Jin Ho on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss how the company is using AI to reduce downtime, improve efficiency and support operating decisions. The conversation also explores physical AI and robotics, the shift from prediction toward autonomous action, customer deployments, market potential and how Avathon plans to scale over the next five years.

“There is a national imperative to win across all those lines of effort,” says retired Adm.Chris Grady, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Grady joins Bloomberg Intelligence senior defense weapons analyst Wayne Sanders on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss quantum capabilities, including sensing, computing and magnetometry. The conversation also covers nuclear-power generation for contested logistics, robotics and advanced manufacturing for the next generation of warfare and the private-capital partnerships needed to support the ecosystem.

“I think one of the things that people have gotten wrong, especially Wall Street, is that they confused intelligence with execution,” Bhavin Shah, Senior Vice President of the Employee Experience Group at ServiceNow and co-founder of Moveworks, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Technology Analyst Anurag Rana. In this episode, they discuss how ServiceNow is turning EmployeeWorks into an enterprise front door, with universal and specialized assistants orchestrating work across HR, IT, CRM, ERP and other systems rather than simply generating answers. Shah explains how combining probabilistic AI with deterministic workflows, flexible model selection and enterprise controls can deliver durable ROI thro...

AI agents are rapidly reshaping product discovery and shopping, but earning consumer trust in payments is a critical barrier to fully autonomous commerce. In this episode of Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tech Disruptors podcast, Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, joins BI fintech and payments analyst Diksha Gera to discuss what needs to be solved before agentic commerce can move from product discovery to transactions at scale. They explore how merchants distinguish legitimate agents from bots, how consumers set and verify an agent’s authority to spend, who carries liability when an autonomous transaction goes wrong and whether e...

“Ultimately it comes down to the simple question of how do you leverage AI to transform and rethink your business in an AI world vs. just applying AI to what you already do today,” Bruce Ross, group head of artificial intelligence at Royal Bank of Canada, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analysts Paul Gulberg and Anurag Rana. In this episode, the group discusses how RBC’s decade-long investment in proprietary models, data infrastructure and AI talent is translating into measurable returns across credit, software development, fraud prevention and client engagement. Ross explains how intelligent model routing, more than 50,000 internal agents and a growing...

Cornelis Networks is bringing its high-performance computing heritage into AI as larger clusters put growing pressure on the network connecting accelerators. The company, which has its roots in Intel’s former Omni-Path business, is expanding from scale-out into scale-up networking with its Active Compute Fabric. CEO Lisa Spelman joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Woo Jin Ho on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss why bandwidth alone may not solve AI infrastructure bottlenecks, the move from 400G to 800G and 1.6T, how networking can improve token economics, and how Cornelis sees its position evolving alongside Ethernet, InfiniBand and incr...

Just how big a threat is AI to software-as-a-service providers, and what changes will it bring to the broader industry? Silver Lake Managing Partner Joe Osnoss sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mandeep Singh to discuss the “SaaSpocalypse” and the firm’s exposure to AI, data centers and other major technology themes. The conversation also explores how AI is reshaping software business models, competitive positioning and margin profiles of Silver Lake’s portfolio companies. Osnoss shares his perspective on where long-term value may emerge amid a shift in the technology stack.

“The focus of the market and the industry is to make compute infrastructure in its own right a financeable asset class,” says Rich Myers, Morgan Stanley’s global head of structured products and private capital markets. Myers joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Alexandra Davidov and Rob Schiffman on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss how capital markets are evolving to fund the AI infrastructure build-out. He explains why a deeper secondary market for GPUs and compute systems could eventually allow investors to underwrite their residual value, rather than relying on today’s largely fully amortizing structures. The conversation al...

Agentic AI and autonomous threats are changing the cyber-resilience landscape and today, data protection and data security have converged. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani joins Bloomberg Intelligence technology analyst Derek Mogull to explore Commvault’s shift from traditional backup toward unified data security, identity resilience and recovery. They discuss how enterprises are preparing for rapidly proliferating non-human identities and AI-driven data growth and why recovery is becoming a core element of cyber defense. The conversation also examines Commvault’s SaaS momentum, recent acquisitions and strategy for protecting increasingly complex hybrid and multi-cloud envi...

Zillow Chief Technology Officer and founding team member David Beitel joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nicole D’Souza on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping the home-buying journey. The conversation explores how Zillow is extending AI across home search, mortgages and financing, agent tools and rich-media listings. They also discuss the company’s approach to fair-housing safeguards and the balance between AI and human expertise. Beitel highlights Zillow’s new AI Mode, saying customers who use it spend three times as much time on the site, conduct three times as many searches, view twice...

“The scope of what I call the great AI reindustrialization is something that we’ve never witnessed,” says Haim Zaltzman, partner and global vice chair of Latham & Watkins’ Emerging Companies & Growth Practice. Zaltzman joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Alexandra Davidov and Rob Schiffman on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss how the AI-infrastructure boom is reshaping financing markets. They explore how lenders are underwriting graphics processing units (GPUs), data centers and power; why residual-value guarantees and other forms of credit support remain critical; and how private and structured capital are evolving as the market matures. The conversation also exami...

Jfrog CEO Shlomi Ben Haim sits down with Mandeep Singh, Bloomberg Intelligence’s global head of technology research, ahead of their swampUP 2026 event. The evolving software supply chain, driven by AI-agent deployments, MCP servers, and reusable skills, is emerging as a major trend that could reshape the broader DevOps market. They also discuss the security vulnerabilities with increasing model capabilities and the OpenAI-Hugging cyber incident. 

Vast Data is extending its AI Operating System to tackle data security in AI workloads, one of the key obstacles to broader enterprise adoption. CEO Renen Hallak returns to the Tech Disruptors podcast, joining Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Woo Jin Ho to discuss the challenges enterprises face in the AI era, why they need greater control over how models interact with sensitive data and how confidential computing can help bridge that gap. The conversation also explores the emerging need for model management, the role of data and infrastructure in agentic AI, the evolving vendor ecosystem and how Vast sees its posi...

What happens when every fintech starts to look like a bank — and every bank starts to look like a fintech? As payments apps, neobanks and traditional banks converge around the same expanding suite of financial products, simply having more features is becoming less of a differentiator. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, OnePay CEO Omer Ismail joins Bloomberg Intelligence global fintech and payments analyst Diksha Gera to examine where the next competitive moats in consumer finance may actually emerge: distribution, economics, data and trust. They discuss whether Walmart’s enormous physical and digital reach can change the cost and...

Amazon.com is turning the logistics network it built for itself into an end-to-end supply-chain platform for other companies. In this Talking Transports podcast, Amazon Supply Chain Services Head Peter Larsen joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior transportation and logistics analyst Lee Klaskow to discuss how ASCS is expanding across ocean and air freight, trucking, intermodal, fulfillment and parcel. Larsen says parcel is “cooking with gas,” while international markets offer significant growth potential. He explains how Amazon’s scale, more than 1 million robots and AI-powered inventory placement can give customers greater visibility and resilience. They also discuss rising trucking costs, Amazon’s shi...

Quantum computing is approaching an inflection point, with dozens of companies and multiple modalities racing to be first to reach broad commercialization. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Xanadu founder and CEO Dr. Christian Weedbrook joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jake Silverman to discuss how photonics could be used to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computing in the near future and how it differs from other approaches. They also discuss how enterprises view quantum computing today, potential applications and Xanadu’s plans to scale its quantum-computing hardware.

“Just because you’re the biggest spender doesn’t mean you’re going to deliver the biggest value,” Chris Hennesey, Enterprise Finance Strategist and Executive in Residence at AWS, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Technology Analyst Anurag Rana. In this episode, the pair discuss how enterprises are grappling with rising AI costs, from forecasting token consumption and eliminating waste to choosing the right mix of frontier, open-weight and smaller models. Hennesey explains why caching, intelligent model routing and tighter cost attribution can improve AI economics, while companies increasingly need to connect productivity gains to measurable business outcomes and ultimately the P&L.

With the latest energy shock pushing UK inflation higher while economic growth remains subdued, investors are questioning whether markets have priced too much Bank of England tightening. Jack Meaning, UK chief economist at Barclays, joins Bloomberg Intelligence chief US interest rate strategist Ira Jersey to discuss that and more on this Macro Matters edition of the FICC Focus podcast. Meaning explains why Barclays expects inflation to climb above 3% in the second half of 2026 but sees little evidence of the wage or second-round effects that would make the increase durable. The two discuss why keeping Bank Rate at 3.75% already represents a m...

“Hopefully in three or four years, we will be on 50% of all the devices on the planet,” Ramin Hasani, co-founder and CEO of Liquid AI and a machine-learning scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, the pair discuss how Liquid AI’s alternative to transformer architecture could make foundation models dramatically more efficient, allowing specialized intelligence to run directly on cars, phones, laptops and other edge devices rather than relying on data centers. Hasani explains how Liquid AI is working with com...

“The hardest challenge in enterprise agent deployment is not generating them; it’s the accountability,” Kristin Milchanowski, chief AI and quantum officer at BMO Financial Group, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior analysts Paul Gulberg and Anurag Rana. In this episode, the group discusses BMO’s AI profit target of $1 billion by 2030, how the bank is embedding AI into core workflows and why agentic systems still require strong human oversight, governance and measurable benchmarks. Milchanowski explains how BMO is designing for model change with a hybrid infrastructure, exploring small language models for focused workflows, and prioritizing measurable business value over token consumpt...

Reducing inefficiencies across financial services, automating workflows and maximizing available cash flow for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is central to BILL’s mission. On this episode of Tech Disruptors, the company’s chief product officer, Mike Cieri, joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel to discuss the creation of a future financial platform that covers payments, spending and expenses, accounts payable, financial planning and analysis and more. He explains how BILL is leveraging AI across its portfolio, which serves close to 500,000 SMBs, and talks about the fragmented payments landscape, customer priorities and the company’s transaction agents.

“The bottleneck isn’t really having ideas; the bottleneck is execution,” Gautier Cloix, CEO of H Company, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Technology Analyst Anurag Rana. “What we do is basically [make] execution infinite so we can focus on intention and ideas and strategy.” In this episode of Tech Disruptors, the pair discuss how computer-use agents can operate enterprise software through existing user interfaces, enabling companies to automate workflows without first rebuilding, migrating or integrating their technology stacks. Cloix also explains why H Company combines specialized, lower-cost models with forward-deployed engineers to target measurable ROI, turning legacy software into an asset and...

Faster AI code generation is increasing the need for governance, security and control across the software-development life cycle, says Bill Staples, GitLab’s CEO. Staples joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss GitLab’s position as a cloud- and model-neutral orchestration layer for coding agents, as well as the shift from seat-based subscriptions toward a hybrid model that includes consumption pricing for agentic workloads.

Faster AI code generation is increasing the need for governance, security and control across the software-development life cycle, says Bill Staples, GitLab’s CEO. Staples joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss GitLab’s position as a cloud- and model-neutral orchestration layer for coding agents, as well as the shift from seat-based subscriptions toward a hybrid model that includes consumption pricing for agentic workloads.

“Ninety percent of all of our proofs of concept convert to long-term contracts because the ROI case is so clear,” Clay Bavor, co-founder of Sierra, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. The pair discuss the evolution from single-interaction service bots to long-horizon agents that can reason across weeks or months, coordinate conversations across multiple channels and pursue high-value outcomes such as mortgage origination, customer retention and sales. Bavor explains why the context layer could become a critical source of competitive advantage, enabling agents to build memory from each customer interaction and use those insights to deliver increasingly pers...

AI is reshaping enterprise technology spending, expanding infrastructure demand beyond graphics processing units into servers, storage and networking while raising new questions about cloud economics and on-premises deployments. TD SYNNEX CEO Patrick Zammit joins Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Woo Jin Ho on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss enterprise demand, supply-chain dynamics, AI adoption and why the next phase of AI could broaden the opportunity across the technology stack.

“60% of the bank's code is AI generated,” Leigh-Ann Russell, Chief Information Officer and Global Head of Engineering at BNY, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analysts Paul Gulberg and Anurag Rana. In this episode, the group discusses how BNY built Eliza as a model-agnostic AI platform and governance layer to expand access to AI while maintaining control over data, spending and risk. Russell explains how AI is increasing engineering capacity, supporting digital employees and cybersecurity, and helping BNY modernize systems and prepare for always-on financial markets.

Okta President and COO Eric Kelleher discusses the growing importance of agent identity security as open-source models narrow the gap with frontier LLMs. Kelleher joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss how Okta is adapting to the rise of agentic identities and the industry’s shift from a seat-based to a token-consumption business model.

Workday is transforming “from Workday.com to Workday.ai,” Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana in this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast. They discuss how cognitive computing is reshaping enterprise software, why deterministic systems such as payroll remain essential and how AI agents could transform recruiting, travel, expenses and employee services. Kazmaier explains how Workday is combining trusted HR and finance data, outcome-based pricing and a fleet of specialized models to deliver accurate automation while reducing deployment complexity and expanding further into the midmarket.

The application software industry is facing a mega restructuring with the arrival of AI agents in enterprise workflows. On this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, HubSpot Chief Product and Technology Officer Duncan Lennox discusses AI’s effect on marketing, sales and service applications. He joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel to explore how HubSpot is leveraging AI across its software portfolio for small and medium-sized businesses. Duncan dives into the company’s proprietary data stack, the changing landscape for customer relationship management, AI’s impact on software buying, managing LLM inference costs, HubSpot’s new agent-builder solution and more.

Artificial intelligence is moving beyond chatbots and into the cab, helping trucking fleets improve safety, efficiency and asset utilization. In this special crossover episode of Talking Transports and Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tech Disruptors podcast, Samsara co-founder and CEO Sanjit Biswas joins BI senior transportation and logistics analyst Lee Klaskow and senior software analyst Niraj Patel to discuss how AI is transforming physical operations. Biswas explains how Samsara’s platform combines Internet-of-Things devices, AI-powered cameras, telematics and workflow software to help transportation companies optimize routing, automate maintenance, improve shipment visibility and reduce risk. He also discusses why proprietary operational data is b...

Co-CEO of Solidigm Xin Guo joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Jake Silverman on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss how AI is reshaping data-center storage as NAND flash-memory prices continue their unprecedented rise. They explore the technologies driving greater solid-state-drive adoption, including KV cache, which stores AI models’ working memory during inference, and why the shift to agentic AI could lift NAND content to as much as 25 exabytes (25 million terabytes) per gigawatt of deployed compute. The conversation also examines how longer-term supply contracts may reshape memory cyclicality, creating a different industry cycle over time.

“We literally have CEOs on public earnings calls saying that their revenue is lower than it would have been because they couldn’t serve all of the demand that they have,” says Adam Selipsky, co-founder and CEO of Helix Digital Infrastructure and former AWS CEO. In this episode of Tech Disruptors, Selipsky and co-founder Waldemar Szlezak, global head of Digital Infrastructure at KKR, speak with Bloomberg Intelligence associate director of research Alexandra Davidov and senior technology analyst Anurag Rana to discuss how Helix is addressing the bottleneck in physical AI scaffolding. They explain why traditional, uncoordinated data-center projects fail, how strategic pa...

“For what we call our essential services, that’s what supports critical infrastructure, we have to be able to apply a change within 24 hours. Now, think about the implications of that to how you build and deliver, build, package, deliver software,” says Lori Beer, JPMorgan Chase global CIO. In this episode of Tech Disruptors, Beer and Alison Williams, Bloomberg Intelligence director of research, global strategy, explore the double-edged sword of AI in cybersecurity, from offensive model threats to automated vulnerability detection. Beer outlines the bank’s proactive posture, the importance of open-source hygiene, and how AI-driven speed is transforming defenses...

“The searches that you’re doing on Claude require the consumption of energy and at some point the system should hit a breaking point,” says George Bilicic, Lazard vice chairman of investment banking and global head of power, energy and infrastructure. Bilicic joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Alexandra Davidov and Rob Barnett on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss why AI and data-center demand are reshaping the outlook for utilities, power markets and infrastructure investment. They also explore why the next phase of the build-out will require more than simply adding generation wherever demand appears. The conversation covers f...

“One of the things that’s been universally true ... is the human desire to travel is really strong. It’s very consistent,” says James Waters, chief business officer of Booking.com. Waters joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nicole D’Souza on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss the outlook for global travel demand. They also explore the effect of macroeconomic and geopolitical trends on the industry and how Booking.com is using AI to enhance trip planning, customer service and marketing. The conversation examines the company’s competitive positioning, loyalty strategy and growth in alternative accommodations and experiences, a...

The chip design industry continues to push the frontier of semiconductor power, performance and area. On this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Synopsys Vice President of AI and Machine Learning Thomas Andersen discusses the evolution of the company’s AI portfolio. He joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel to explain how Synopsys progressed from leveraging AI through reinforcement learning across design, verification and test workflows to introducing AgentEngineer, a multi-agent AI-orchestrated workflow. Andersen also discusses the intersection of simulation and electronic design automation (EDA), the role of humans in the loop for chip design, AI’s current shortcomings, the...

In this episode IOWN Global Forum board members Chris Wright (Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Engineering, Red Hat) and Jefferson Wang (Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, Cloud, Accenture) talk through the accelerating shift towards photonics-based networks and how this next-generation technology can help unlock the full potential of the AI economy.

Replacing electrical-based connectivity with optics promises to drastically increase processing speeds, reduce latency, and lower power consumption for high-demand AI, cloud computing, and financial networks.

Uniphore CEO Umesh Sachdev joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss his company’s platform for developing ontologies compared with the use of forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) by hyperscalers and frontier large-language-model companies. He explores Uniphore’s approach to leveraging small language models for use cases such as claims and billing, as well as the trade-offs with frontier models used for cybersecurity and coding agents.

“So, there are plenty of failure points, and when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of something, something will eventually fail,” Peter Salanki, co-founder and CTO of CoreWeave, tells Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Technology Analyst Anurag Rana. “Instead of throwing out half the potential capacity, we say that we expect some of these to fail. Then we build systems, automation and processes around handling those failures gracefully.” In this episode of Tech Disruptors, the pair discuss why AI infrastructure requires a fundamentally different architecture to traditional CPU-based cloud. Salanki also explains how CoreWeave is addressing training, inference and agentic workloads wh...