Bold Names
The Wall Street Journal
297 episodes
WSJ’s Bold Names brings you conversations with the leaders of the bold-named companies featured in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Hosts Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims speak to CEOs and business leaders in interviews that challenge conventional wisdom and take you inside the decisions being made in the C-suite and beyond.
Episodes page 1 of 6
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McDonald's CEO on Going Viral, the Big Arch and the Fast-Food Value War
When McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski took a small bite out of a big burger on camera, the internet—and his rivals—pounced. But in an era where CEOs are the face of the brand, is there such a thing as bad publicity? In…
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Roses, Revenue, and Retention: Hinge’s Strategy for a $1 Billion Year
For years, dating app Hinge’s slogan has been “Designed to be Deleted” — a bold mission for a company on track to hit $1 billion in annual revenue in the coming years. In this episode of Bold Names, WSJ’s Tim Higgins…
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The Five Step 'Algorithm' Driving Tesla’s Success
What is the trick behind the Elon Musk school of management? In this episode of Bold Names, host Tim Higgins sits down with Jon McNeill, the former president of Tesla and current GM board member, to deconstruct the…
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Southwest’s $1 Billion Pivot: CEO Bob Jordan on Bag Fees And Other Changes
Southwest Airlines was built on three pillars: low fares, friendly service, and a quirky "sit anywhere" policy. But in a post-pandemic market, the rules are changing. On the latest episode of the Bold Names podcast,…
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The SEAL Turned CEO: Brandon Tseng on the AI-Powered Future of War
Former Navy SEAL and Shield AI co-founder Brandon Tseng is building the autonomous drones that are redefining global defense.This week on Bold Names, WSJ’s Tim Higgins sits down with Tseng to discuss how Shield AI’s…
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The AI Agent in Your Pocket: Qualcomm’s CEO on the Future of Mobile
The smartphone is everywhere, but its next evolution won’t look like the apps we use today. In this episode of Bold Names, WSJ’s Tim Higgins sits down with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon to discuss the seismic shift from…
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Can Zillow’s 'Super App' Fix a Broken Housing Market?
"Depressed." That’s how Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman describes the current state of the U.S. housing market. With sales hitting 30-year lows and a deficit of nearly 5 million homes, the American dream of homeownership…
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Why Cigna’s CEO Is Confident We Can Fix American Healthcare
How do we fix the American healthcare system? On this episode of Bold Names, we ask David Cordani, the chairman and CEO of one of America’s biggest health insurers – the Cigna Group. He says rising healthcare costs are…
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Encore: Can IBM Beat Microsoft and Google in the Quantum Computing Race?
IBM has made a comeback in the past six years under the leadership of CEO Arvind Krishna. That's thanks to success in its hybrid cloud business and consulting services. But even as the company is reinventing itself…
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‘We Sell Scarcity:’ How Lamborghini Continues to Stay So Cool
Lamborghinis dominate pop culture – from rap lyrics to blockbuster movies – but the reality is few people actually own them. Every year, the luxury carmaker delivers around 10,000 vehicles worldwide. Lamborghini CEO…
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How SAP's CEO Is Remaking the European Tech Giant For The Age Of AI
In 2020, SAP CEO Christian Klein decided to shift the 50-year-old German software giant entirely to the cloud. The immediate result? The stock price dropped 20% in a single day. Fast-forward to today: SAP is one of the…
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How Athletic Brewing Sells Beer for a Post-Alcohol Generation
When Bill Shufelt left Wall Street to make non-alcoholic beer, most people thought he was crazy. At the time, the category made up less than 1% of U.S. beer sales and was widely seen as a joke. But nearly a decade…
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How Corning Is Using Trump’s Tariffs To Its Advantage
Corning is everywhere: from the fiber optic cables powering the internet to the Gorilla Glass on your iPhone. Now, the 175-year-old company is making domestic manufacturing profitable. In this week’s episode of Bold…
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Affirm’s Max Levchin: Why ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Beats Credit Cards
Is "buy now, pay later" a debt trap or the future of finance? Affirm CEO Max Levchin says the real problem is the credit card in your wallet. On this week’s episode of Bold Names, Levchin joins WSJ’s Tim Higgins to…
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Even More Bold Names in 2026
Bold Names is gearing up to be bigger and bolder than ever in 2026. Get ready for another year of the best minds in business and tech going deep on the latest industry moves. From the C-suite of tech companies like…
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Encore: This CEO Says Humanoid Robots Are The "Space Race" of Our Time
Who will take care of you in old age? Jeff Cardenas, the CEO and co-founder of Apptronik, says the answer is robots. The startup founder set out to build a smart, dexterous robot after watching his grandfathers grow…
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SPECIAL WSJ’s Take On the Week: How This Fed Hawk Views the Economy, Inflation, AI and Jobs
As a special bonus, we’re bringing you an episode of WSJ’s Take On the Week. Co-host Telis Demos and guest host WSJ Chief Economics Correspondent Nick Timiraos are joined by Beth Hammack, president of the Federal…
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The Boldest Ideas of 2025 — And What’s in Store for 2026
In this special episode, Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims revisit some of their favorite moments from the first year of Bold Names. We look back on conversations with guests including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman…
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Inside PlayStation's Plans to Lead a $200 Billion Industry
Gaming is a $200 billion industry that dwarfs Hollywood — and PlayStation is at the center of it all. On this week’s episode of Bold Names, Sony Interactive Entertainment SVP Eric Lempel joins WSJ’s Christopher Mims…
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McLaren CEO Zak Brown On F1 And Business Strategy At 200 Miles Per Hour
What business lessons are forged at 200 miles per hour? On this week’s Bold Names, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown joins Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins to talk about his new book, “Seven Tenths of a Second.” A racecar…
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SPECIAL WSJ Tech Live: The Man Leading Trump’s AI Charge Against China (The Journal Podcast)
This week, we’re bringing you an episode of The Journal, produced by Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. In this episode, recorded at WSJ’s Tech Live, host Jessica Mendoza sits down with Michael Kratsios, Director of…
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Biden’s Antitrust Architect on How Big Tech Threatens U.S. Prosperity
Are we becoming a nation mined for our money, data, and attention? Author and legal scholar Tim Wu certainly thinks so. A key architect of President Joe Biden’s antitrust policy, Wu joins WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim…
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The World’s Tech Giants Are Running Out of Power. This CEO Plans to Deliver.
Electricity demand is exploding, fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence and an unprecedented wave of data center construction. Some experts warn the U.S. grid won’t be able to handle it. But Scott Strazik, the…
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How Uber Plans to Win the Self-Driving Car Race
Driverless cars are no longer in the realm of science fiction. Nearly a decade after abandoning its own self-driving car unit, Uber is taking a hybrid approach, partnering with more than a dozen autonomous vehicle…
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Inside Visa’s Tech-Charged Future: From Crypto to AI
Every second, tens of thousands of transactions cross Visa’s global network. Last year alone, the company processed more than $13 trillion in purchases – nearly triple the size of Japan’s economy. Now, one of the…
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This Tech Founder's $1.3 Billion Company Is Taking On Apple and Samsung
Can a startup beat Apple and Samsung on their own turf? Carl Pei, the founder and CEO of Nothing, is betting on it. Growing up in Sweden, Pei was captivated by American gadgets like Apple’s first iPod. But over time,…
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Why This Investor Says the AI Boom Isn’t the Next Dot-Com Crash
The artificial intelligence boom has sparked one of the costliest building sprees in history. By 2028, investment in chips, servers and data centers could hit nearly $3 trillion, according to Morgan Stanley. To help…
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The Google Exec Reinventing Search in the AI Era
Every day, billions of searches flow through Google, making it not just the world’s most popular search engine, but one of history’s most valuable products. Yet for the first time in nearly 30 years, the company’s…
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Condoleezza Rice on Beating China in the Tech Race: 'Run Hard and Run Fast'
Condoleezza Rice’s experience navigating geopolitical tensions and uncertainty gives her a background few people have. The former secretary of state currently leads the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is…
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The Google-Backed Startup Taking on Elon Musk in Humanoid Robotics
Who will take care of you in old age? Jeff Cardenas, the CEO and co-founder of Apptronik, says the answer is robots. The startup founder set out to build a smart, dexterous robot after watching his grandfathers grow…
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How the U.S. Stacks Up to China’s ‘Engineering State’
The relationship between the U.S. and China is typically framed as competitive and even adversarial. Each superpower brings strengths and weaknesses to how it approaches its society, business and growth. In his new…
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Why IBM's CEO Thinks His Company Can Crack Quantum Computing
After spending much of the 2010s in the doldrums, IBM has made something of a comeback in the past five years under the leadership of CEO Arvind Krishna. That's thanks to a lot of the success in its hybrid cloud…
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Bold Names Is Back
Every day, Wall Street Journal journalists talk with the most powerful, influential and interesting people. WSJ columnists Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins are bringing some of those conversations directly to you. Bold…
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From AI and Defense Tech, to Tariffs and the New Streaming Wars: The Best of Bold Names
WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins take a trip into the Bold Names podcast archives. They’ve covered everything from artificial intelligence and humanoid robots, to the online sports betting industry and the new…
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Space Trucks: One Startup’s Plan to Get the U.S. Back on the Moon
Longtime space rivals Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are vying to reach outer space with their giant rockets. Meanwhile, an ecosystem of other space-related startups are racing to be ready to set up shop on the moon and…
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How Tubi Is Coming for Netflix and YouTube in the New Streaming Wars
Tubi is a free ad-supported streaming service that's gaining ground on big players like Netflix and Amazon. It has the largest content library of any streaming platform, full of obscure gems and films by up and comers,…
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Are AI Agents the Future of Business? Salesforce Is Betting $8 Billion on It
Informatica isn’t a household name, but it plays a crucial role in helping companies like Toyota and Unilever manage and organize vast amounts of data. As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, that data is…
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Encore: Could Amazon’s Zoox Beat Tesla and Waymo in the Robotaxi Race?
With Elon Musk’s Tesla piloting its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas and Waymo expanding, it’s the perfect time to revisit our interview with Zoox CEO Aicha Evans. She went deep with WSJ’s Tim Higgins and Christopher…
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Tariffs, EVs and China: A CEO Insider’s View of the Car Business
For months, the complex global auto industry has grappled with the added challenge of navigating the Trump administration’s trade war. That gives Swamy Kotagiri, the CEO of Magna International, a first-hand perspective…
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Why José Andrés Says We Need Leaders Who Believe in ‘Longer Tables’
José Andrés knows what it’s like to work under pressure. From managing the chaos of restaurant kitchens, to running a global business empire, to helping feed people in disaster zones, the celebrity chef doesn’t like to…
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How Microsoft’s AI Chief Defines ‘Humanist Super Intelligence’
Few people developing artificial intelligence have as much experience in the field as Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. He co-founded DeepMind, helped Google develop its large language models and designed AI chatbots…
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Booz Allen CEO on Silicon Valley’s Turn to Defense Tech: ‘We Need Everybody.’
Horacio Rozanski says he is obsessed with speed. As the CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton, a company that helps government agencies leverage the latest advances in technology used by the private sector, he has insight into…
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This CEO Says Global Trade Is Broken. What Comes Next?
Evan Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Altana, one of a few companies that have a global view and insight into the world’s supply chains. Think LinkedIn, but with the ability to track every step of a product’s…
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This Company Has a Plan to Beat Neuralink at the Brain-Computer Interface Game
What if you could control computers with just a thought? Precision Neuroscience is one of several companies working to make that a reality. Michael Mager is the co-founder and CEO of the brain-computer interface…
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Venture Capitalist Sarah Guo’s Surprising Bet on Unsexy AI
What's next for artificial intelligence beyond autonomous agents and next-gen language models? Sarah Guo, the founder of venture capital firm Conviction, is a rising star among Silicon Valley investors. She says the…
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How Zipline’s Drones Are Taking Off in the U.S. and Rivaling Amazon
After flying 100 million miles and making over 1.4 million deliveries using autonomous drones, Zipline CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo Cliffton is looking to transform how same-day delivery works in the U.S. His…
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70,000 Bets a Minute: How FanDuel’s Parent Is Winning at Sports Gambling
Peter Jackson, the CEO of Flutter Entertainment, leads a global sports betting empire. With the U.S.-based FanDuel as its crown jewel, he has a prime view of one of the fastest-growing and most profitable entertainment…
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What This Former USAID Head Had to Say About Elon Musk and DOGE
Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and former head of USAID, has spent his career on the frontlines of the fight against global poverty. That gives him unique insight into the rapidly changing world of…
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Coming Soon: Bold Names Season Three
Every day, Wall Street Journal reporters talk with the most powerful, influential and interesting people. On the next season of WSJ’s Bold Names podcast, columnists Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims are bringing some of…
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‘Businesses Don’t Like Uncertainty’: How Cisco Is Navigating AI and Trump 2.0
Few people sit at the nexus of business and politics like Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. As head of a company that makes much of the infrastructure underlying the internet and artificial intelligence systems, and as chairman…
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