The Reboot Chronicles with Dean DeBiase

Inside every AI data center, behind every GPU cluster, underneath every rack of compute and storage, there is a connection problem. For decades that problem was solved with copper. Copper cables connected computer storage to switching, and the system worked well enough. Then AI arrived and the speeds required to move data across those connections exceeded what copper physics can handle. The answer is fiber optics and the lasers tha...

Every medical device implanted in a patient, every cell phone produced at launch scale, every vaccine vial filled at twelve hundred units per minute exists because of industrial automation. It is the invisible infrastructure behind modern manufacturing, and it is one of the fastest growing sectors in the global economy. Darragh de Stonndún has spent his entire career at the center of it. After leaving Ireland in 1998 in pursuit of ...

Every drone, autonomous vehicle, AI agent, and smart device running in the world today depends on silicon. And the software that enables that silicon to be designed, verified, and manufactured at scale is the domain of Synopsys. With nearly 28,000 employees and a clear path toward becoming a 10 billion dollar company, Synopsys has spent nearly four decades building the electronic design automation tools that chip companies cannot o...

The systems built around work, retirement, and aging were designed for a world where people lived to their seventies. That world no longer exists. A 70 year old today has the same mental and physical acuity as a 53 year old in the year 2000. The fastest growing group of new entrepreneurs in the United States and across Europe are first time founders over 50, who are three times more likely to succeed than their younger counterparts...

Identity has become the most critical perimeter in enterprise security, and no company is more focused on that reality than Okta. As President and Chief Operating Officer, Eric Kelleher has helped steer Okta through multiple reboots, from solving the functional problem of employee access management in the early cloud era, to repositioning the company as a core security platform, to now tackling what may be the most consequential ch...

Twenty-three years ago, Peter Hughes found himself frustrated by the inconsistency in asset management and fund administration reporting across providers. Large clients received great service, smaller and newer asset managers, the ones who needed fast, reliable reporting most urgently, were left behind. So, Hughes built something different. Today, Apex is a multi-billion dollar financial services platform with 3.6 trillion dollars ...

Charles D. Smith spent his career as one of the NBA's premier shot blockers and an Olympian, but the transformation that defined his second act required something far more difficult than anything he faced on the court. After retiring from professional basketball, Smith spent seven years in therapy rebuilding how he thought, communicated, and led, a process he describes not as a transition but as a full transformation. Today, Smith ...

The conversation around artificial intelligence has shifted. It is no longer a question of what AI can do, it is a question of where it belongs inside an organization and how to integrate it into the fundamental operating system of a business. Brian Bryson, principal technology analyst at MIT Technology Review, has been tracking that shift closely, and his conclusion is clear: AI is no longer a technology problem. It is a change ma...

Eric Schimpf left the Army on a Friday and walked into Merrill Lynch as a trainee on the following Monday morning. With no transition period, no legacy track, no shortcuts, just two suits, three ties, and a rusted-out Jeep he was encouraged to park several blocks away from the office. Thirty-two years later, Schimpf is president of Merrill Wealth Management, overseeing 25,000 associates, 1.7 million clients, and one of the stronges...

The technology research and advisory industry is being rebuilt from the ground up, and Daniel Newman is leading that charge from the inside. As CEO of Futurum, Newman has spent the last several years transforming what was once a traditional media and analysis firm into a real-time AI-powered intelligence platform serving technology buyers, enterprise investors, and the world's largest technology providers. As a seven-time bestselli...

Few journalists have spent more time inside the power centers of American finance than Justin Baer. As a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal, Baer has covered the biggest banks, brokers, and asset managers in the world, from the post-2008 regulatory battles to the pandemic economic shocks that rewrote the rules of investing almost overnight. His reporting has taken him inside Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Pimco, and dozens of...

Few executives bring the range of perspective that Mari Cross carries into the C-suite. As Chief Customer Officer at Infor, a roughly $3.5 billion enterprise software company with 17,000 employees, 2,000 partners, and 60,000 clients across 175 countries, Cross leads customer success, value engineering, and transformation teams spanning some of the most complex industries in the world.  From discrete and process manufacturing t...

Few people have spent more time inside the minds of the world's most powerful leaders than Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. As Senior Associate Dean and Lester Crown Professor at Yale School of Management and Founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, Sonnenfeld has advised five US presidents and thousands of chief executives navigating crisis, succession, geopolitical shocks, and the ever-shifting expectations of corporate governance...

The future of journalism is being reimagined real time, with rising stars like Morgan Brennan leading the way. As anchor of CNBC's Morning Call and host of Manifest Space podcast, Brennan brings a rare combination of editorial instinct, policy fluency, and operator-level curiosity to one of the most consequential shifts in modern media history. Having covered defense and emerging space economies for CNBC and produced shows with wor...

The global financial system is being rebuilt from the ground up, and Heath Tarbert is helping lead that effort As President of Circle, the company behind USDC, the world's second largest regulated stablecoin, Tarbert brings a rare combination of regulatory authority, legal prowess, and market experience to one of the most consequential shifts in modern finance. Having served as Chairman of the CFTC, Assistant Secretary of the US Tr...

Eric Winter didn't take one path. He took all of them.  At once. The actor, best known as the no-nonsense Sergeant Tim Bradford on ABC's smash hit The Rookie, was once a pre-med student at UCLA on track to become a doctor. Then nearly a paramedic with the LA Fire Department, then a model, a soap opera actor, parallel paths until something clicked. While producing TV movies, pitching shows, and spinning up a podcast, another st...

Jamie Siminoff had bet everything; his savings, his family's security, and his reputation, on reinventing a device from the 1800s. At the time, he had no salary, almost no cash, and a company on the edge of bankruptcy. He had been rejected on Shark Tank with only days of runway left, not to mention a court-enforced restraining order from ADT effectively halting sales. He had $187,000 in the bank to barely cover operating expenses a...

The warning signs were there, but the fall was still dramatic. A telecom powerhouse that once traded at $50 had slipped to nearly a dollar, burdened by debt, declining revenue, and a legacy architecture that couldn’t keep pace with the data-driven world emerging around it. Internally, the mission narrowed to survival — renew contracts, slow the erosion, hold the line. But survival mode doesn’t win in an AI-acceler...

Most global technology companies start as tight-knit engineering teams, but only a few manage to scale into organizations of tens of thousands without facing moments that fundamentally reshape how they operate. Growth at that level is about navigating inflection points that test a company’s identity, resilience, and ability to adapt. Rapid expansion, unexpected crises, and shifting market forces all play a role, and in today&...