Bold Names

Bold Names

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

December 26, 2025 32 mins
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 old and dependent in their later years. Beyond healthcare, Cardenas sees robots as essential to U.S. economic growth and national security with applications across industries. Even with the latest advances in artificial...
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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 Reserve Bank of Cleveland, to discuss the state of the U.S economy, interest rates and the central bank itself. Hammack shares her views on what she’s hearing from businesses in her district and what that could mean for ...
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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 and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the explosive growth of AI and the complexities of the U.S.-China trade war. Then, Mims and Higgins flip the script to interview each other about the technological bre...
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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 and Tim Higgins to discuss how the company plans to compete in a mobile-first gaming world. We talk about keeping the “soul” of game development as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into businesses, the su...
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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 driver turned executive, Brown leads a global racing organization worth hundreds of millions of dollars. We talk about the pressure and focus required to run a winning Formula One team, and what racing has taught Brown...
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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 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to discuss everything from chips to chatbots, how Kratsios thinks AI should be regulated, and whether or not the AI boom might be a bubble. To watch the video ...
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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 Higgins on Bold Names to explain how a handful of tech platforms conquered the economy and why he fears Silicon Valley could become “inefficient, bloated, and bested by foreign competitors,” if the country doesn’t re...
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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 CEO of GE Vernova, says his company can deliver. On this episode of Bold Names, Strazik joins the WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins to talk about leading GE’s energy spin-off through its blockbuster first year, ho...
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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 firms, including Alphabet’s Waymo and Chinese robotaxi company WeRide. But as the robotaxi market heats up, can Uber stay in the race? On the latest episode of Bold Names, Uber’s Chief Product Officer, Sachin Kansal, spea...
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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 largest payment networks in the world wants to become even bigger. On this episode of Bold Names, Rajat Taneja, Visa’s president of technology, joins WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins to discuss how the company is emb...
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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, he says, those products lost their edge. On the latest episode of Bold Names, Pei joins WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins to explain why he believes his electronics company, Nothing, which is valued at $1.3 billio...
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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 fund the build-out, tech companies are taking on huge amounts of debt, raising concerns of a possible bubble. On the latest episode of the Bold Names podcast, Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who...
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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 dominance is under threat. Generative artificial intelligence tools like Open AI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity are changing how people find information. On the latest episode of the Bold Names podcast, Liz Reid, VP, head of Go...
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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 a founding partner at Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm. On this week’s episode of Bold Names, she speaks to WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins about why she says the U.S. needs to “run...
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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 old and dependent in their later years. Beyond healthcare, Cardenas sees robots as essential to U.S. economic growth and national security with applications across industries. Even with the latest advances in artificial...
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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 book "Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future," author and China expert Dan Wang, frames the key differences between the two superpowers. He argues that China can be understood as an "engineering state" that buil...
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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 business, as well as its consulting services. All of this has led to a surge in the company's share price. Now, IBM is betting that quantum computing will be the next big thing. But will Big Blue succeed against rivals like...
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September 5, 2025 3 mins
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 Names returns with new episodes on Fridays starting September 12 on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Let us know what you think of the show. Email us at BoldNames@wsj.com Sign up for the WSJ's free Techn...
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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 streaming wars. Check out highlights from some of their favorite interviews. Plus, Tim and Christopher look back on what made these conversations memorable and share their own insights on guests including Anduril founde...
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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 Mars. Lunar Outpost is one of three companies competing to build a space truck for NASA's Artemis missions. Founder and CEO Justin Cyrus is betting there will be a commercial rush to tap into the moon’s resources, includi...
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