Compound Interest from Semafor Business

AI is coming for lawyers. Are they ready?

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:32:00 -0000

Big law firms have run the same playbook for 50 years: hire armies of young lawyers, bill their hours at steep rates, and funnel the money up to the partners. AI is about to upend that model. It can already do much of the grunt work that associates cut their teeth on and is coming for the sacred cow of Big Law — the billable hour. This week on Compound Interest, Liz and Rohan sit down with Rachel Proffitt, partner and CEO of the Silicon Valley-based Cooley, to talk about what the rainmakers of the future look like, the rise of AI-native law firms, and the paranoia sweeping the industry.

This season of Compound Interest is in partnership with Amazon Business. Amazon Business is a trusted partner that transforms business buying by combining Amazon's vast selection, competitive pricing, and fast delivery with added tools and insights to help businesses simplify purchasing, manage spend, and buy smarter.

Is the World Cup a raw deal for host cities? FIFA’s New York frontman disagrees.

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0000

The World Cup prints money — an estimated $10 billion this year. FIFA keeps almost all of it. The business case for the host cities shouldering much of the costs, however, isn’t so clear.

New York-New Jersey Host Committee CEO Alex Lasry joins Liz and Rohan this week to break down what’s really in it for New York (and, ahem, New Jersey), why he thinks you can’t put a price on the opportunity, and the hypothetical logistical nightmare that keeps him up at night.

He also reflects on his family’s time owning the Milwaukee Bucks to make the case for public funding of stadiums, and argues that more sports owners should prioritize the fan experience over the bottom line.

Image Credit: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach/Shannon Stapleton/Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

Silicon Valley’s go-to fixer on AI’s unfixable problem

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0000

One of Silicon Valley’s top political fixers, Bradley Tusk, built a career helping startups like Uber and FanDuel brawl their way to legitimacy — in his words, “legalize disruptive sh*t.” His message to AI companies: You have no idea what’s coming. This season of Compound Interest is in partnership with Amazon Business. This episode is commercial content produced by Semafor Global Studio with Amazon Business.

Wall Street fell in love with your life insurance. Should you be worried?

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Anant Bhalla had a front-row seat to Wall Street's takeover of the life insurance industry, which turned a sleepy corner of American finance into a multitrillion-dollar investment engine. Now, even he’s worried it’s gone too far.

He talks to Liz and Rohan about “zombie” insurers, ratings shopping, and where the next big blowup will happen.

This season of Compound Interest is in partnership with Amazon Business. Amazon Business is a trusted partner that transforms business buying by combining Amazon's vast selection, competitive pricing, and fast delivery with added tools and insights to help businesses simplify purchasing, manage spend, and buy smarter.

How Amazon Business made business buying smart by rebuilding its consumer platform for companies

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0000

In this special episode of Compound Interest, Semafor’s Chief Commercial Officer Rachel Oppenheim sits down with Todd Heimes, Vice President and General Manager at our season sponsor, Amazon Business. Todd and Rachel sit down to discuss how Amazon Business is reshaping how organizations buy.

Heimes has been scaling Amazon since he started there in 1999, and has been growing Amazon Business since it started in 2016. His goal is to help organizations of all sizes save time and money by making business buying smarter, easier, and more strategic. Heimes discusses how the solution cuts the friction of age-old systems through immense selection, fast delivery, and a foundation built on customer obsession and earned trust.

This season of Compound Interest is in partnership with Amazon Business. This episode is commercial content produced by Semafor Global Studio with Amazon Business.

Klarna’s Sebastian Siemiatkowski on agentic commerce, credit cards, and financing everything

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Klarna, best known as a buy now, pay later giant, came of age during the e-commerce boom. But as AI takes over everything, including our shopping, Liz and Rohan ask Sebastian about what an agentic commerce future means for his business, if Klarna will eventually become a bank, the truth about his AI customer service experiment, whether people should really be financing their DoorDash orders, and much more.

Anthony Pompliano thinks you're smarter than your financial advisor

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Bitcoin evangelist Anthony Pompliano has reinvented himself as the champion of a new kind of investor: digitally native, high-net-worth, and deeply skeptical of Wall Street expertise. He joins Liz and Rohan to talk about his AI-powered CFO product, why he thinks independent investors outperform the pros, what's left in crypto worth caring about, and the uncomfortable politics of the Trump family's meme coin.

Vail CEO Rob Katz knows what you think of his business — and he thinks he can fix it

Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 -0000

If you ski or snowboard, you probably have an opinion of Rob Katz’s business. The Vail Resorts CEO joins Liz and Rohan on Compound Interest to talk about the criticisms of crowding, lift lines, and pricing of the season pass that changed winter sports forever.

Katz also explains why the company doesn’t hedge weather, how the industry’s high-end clientele complicates customer relations, why he isn’t hearing Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince’s bid to buy Park City, and the impacts of climate change on his business.

Joe Weisenthal on the business of business media and why AI won’t replace podcasters

Tue, 19 May 2026 19:07:00 -0000

Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast has been at the forefront of a new kind of business media for more than a decade. Co-host Joe Weisenthal joins Liz and Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith to talk about how the business of business media has evolved throughout his career and how he and Tracy Alloway approach making a podcast that gets into the weeds of supply chains for an audience that ranges from high schoolers to Wall Street executives.

They also talk about why the website formerly known as Twitter is still the place to be for finance and tech watchers — but why Substack’s drive to monetize expert amateurism has made it worse — and why he’s optimistic that the age of AI may actually be good for journalism … or at least podcasts.

Who wants to own big law?

Wed, 13 May 2026 16:17:00 -0000

Chris Bogart spent years at Cravath before building Burford Capital into the world's largest litigation finance firm — turning lawsuits into investible assets. Liz and Rohan dig into the financialization of corporate fights, Burford’s $16 billion beef with Argentina, and what it would take to finally let private equity buy a piece of Big Law.

Wonder’s Marc Lore on vibe-coding restaurants, drone delivery, and his third act as the IPO guy

Tue, 05 May 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Marc Lore built Diapers.com, sold it to Amazon. Built Jet.com, sold it to Walmart. Now he’s trying something different: taking Wonder — his vertically integrated food-delivery startup — all the way to a public offering.

Semafor Deputy Editor-in-Chief Shelly Banjo joins Liz to dig into how he’s betting that robots, influencers, and AI-directed meal plans can finally crack the code on profitable food delivery, what e-commerce taught him about attacking fat margins with automation, and why he’s also quietly searching for desert land to build a city from scratch.

Image: Reuters/Mike Blake

Mark Cuban on his pharma fight, Dallas Mavs regrets, and the PE-ification of sports

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Mark Cuban is on a mission to rid the US health care system of the middlemen he blames for soaring costs. Liz and Rohan dive into his approach with Cost Plus Drugs, which aims to disrupt the little-known middlemen driving up prescription drug prices. He also discussed soaring valuations in sports, his own regrets around the Dallas Mavericks sale, and offers a surprising assessment of TrumpRX.

Photo Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Cloning woolly mammoths is cool. Can it be profitable?

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Colossal, the biotech startup working on de-extincting the woolly mammoth and the dodo, thinks it can make trillions of dollars — almost none of it from consumer-facing products. Liz and Rohan dive into it all with CEO Ben Lamm, who has already spun out four businesses as he’s built the bioscience business with a focus on serving governments and nations looking to build drought-resistant plants, plastic-munching microbes, and much more (some of it classified!)

America’s best energy trader on fixing higher ed and the dangers of prediction markets

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0000

John Arnold — one of the greatest energy traders of his generation — turned his sights on philanthropy nearly two decades ago, applying the same ROI-driven focus that made him billions to charitable giving. He walks Liz and Rohan through his vision for fixing higher ed, the problem with sports betting and prediction markets, and the Trump-driven chaos in the energy markets.

Why Oura’s CEO is embracing Washington regulation

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Oura, whose rings are the favored accessory of finance bros and Silicon Valley longevity-maxxers, is doing something unusual in tech: Running toward a heavily regulated market. CEO Tom Hale explains why the company’s future is in the clinical world, plus what he thinks wins the wearables war and what it’s like doing business with the Pentagon right now.

This season of Compound Interest is in partnership with Amazon Business. Amazon Business is a trusted partner that transforms business buying by combining Amazon's vast selection, competitive pricing, and fast delivery with added tools and insights to help businesses simplify purchasing, manage spend, and buy smarter.

Can tiny homes — and tiny-home mortgages — solve the housing crisis?

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0000

America needs millions more homes. Private-equity firms, red-tape nightmares, and homebuilders’ profit motive are all to blame. One startup, an offshoot from Airbnb, has a solution: fully-built, crane-plopped tiny homes in your backyard. Liz and Rohan dive into how Samara is trying to redefine what housing looks like, and whether it’s the start of a new asset class for Wall Street.

Why KKR wants your, yes your, money

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Private equity and private credit was long a perk for the rich and well-connected. But now Wall Street’s investment giants are pitching their products to everyday Americans, who have piled in — and are now piling out in a panic. Is this democratizing finance or a recipe for disaster? Liz and Rohan dive into that and much more with Alisa Wood, the KKR executive leading their retail charge.

The investor behind a16z’s America First push on dealing with the Pentagon ‘where bits meet atoms’

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0000

David Ulevitch leads Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund, a $1.776 billion pot dedicated to defense, energy, public safety, and other national priorities. We talked about whether those industries deserve their conservative coding, why venture capital — with its roots in capital-light code — has a right to win in heavy industry, and why he doesn’t want the “moral liability” of deciding how the Pentagon uses the weapons Silicon Valley is building.

Compound Interest from Semafor Business is supported by Amazon Business.

Bilt’s Ankur Jain on solving the 'four-banana problem' and gamifying how, and where, we live

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Bilt Rewards launched in 2019 with a simple idea. If you can get credit-card rewards for buying a round of drinks, why can’t you get them for paying your rent? After a shambolic and short-lived partnership with Wells Fargo, the company is back with bigger ambitions: to be the platform powering 12% of the economy — housing services — plus a big chunk of what people spend on dining, workouts, healthcare, and other local services. It’s a little Amex, a little Shopify, and a little Square, and a test of a big question we’ve had about business today: Why does every company want to be a membership club? Liz and Rohan talk to Bilt CEO Ankur Jain to find out.

Compound Interest from Semafor Business is supported by Amazon Business.

Dara Khosrowshahi on robotaxi ‘mission control’ and Uber’s next billion-dollar business

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Uber changed the way people work and the way they move. Now CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is trying to figure out what role people play in his business, as AI and autonomous vehicles change the economics of transportation and impossibly, make it easier for people — or things — to get from Point A to Point B.

He talks with Semafor about his AI-driven robotaxi mission control, what self-driving cars will look like, how we’ll interact with Uber ten years from now, his own forays into vibe-coding apps — and what it means for companies everywhere.

NOTE: Khosrowshahi, who was born in Iran, reveals in this interview what he told Donald Trump, in person, about his views on the regime. We recorded with Dara last week, before the US launched its attack.

Compound Interest from Semafor Business is supported by Amazon Business.

Introducing: Compound Interest from Semafor Business

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:05:00 -0000

Business is changing in subtle and seismic ways. Every Tuesday starting March 3, Compound Interest from Semafor Business will pair journalists Liz Hoffman and Rohan Goswami with the operators, experts, and innovators behind the world’s most consequential companies, to decode why big parts of the economy work the way they do.

Compound Interest from Semafor Business is presented by Amazon Business.