Technology

Sources with Alex Heath

Sources features candid conversations with the leaders shaping what’s next in AI and the broader tech industry. Host Alex Heath has covered Silicon Valley as a journalist for more than a decade. He talks with founders, CEOs, and technologists about the news of the moment, the bets they’re making, and what they see coming next.

Latest Episodes:

Factory CEO on why AGI is already here Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

Matan Grinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Factory, a $5 billion AI coding startup building Droid agents to automate the engineering process. He tells me how AI is changing the job of a software engineer and why Factory is betting on a future with many competing models.

We get into how it balances model performance with token costs and why he thinks companies should avoid depending on one AI provider.We also discuss why he thinks AGI is already here, how Factory hires its own engineers, his view of the open-versus-closed AI debate, competition with companies like Cognition, and when companies should outsource to AI rather than build in-house.

Thanks to the show’s premiere sponsors: Atlassian, Granola, and Mercury.

Satya Nadella on Microsoft's agent bet and AI’s trust problem Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella thinks AI agents will create a market “orders of magnitude” bigger than the cloud.

I recently sat down with him in Seattle for the unveiling of the new Copilot.

We discuss Autopilot, Microsoft's new OpenClaw-based agent that can work on your behalf, and why he thinks newer AI models are finally capable of delivering on more of Copilot’s promise.

Nadella also has a blunt assessment of the AI industry: “We are way too self-obsessed.” I ask him why the industry has struggled to explain its benefits and what it will take to earn people’s trust. We get into his concerns about agents acting deceptively, when a safety problem should stop a release, and why he doesn’t want AI oversight to become a “cartel-like arrangement.”

We also discuss Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, the models Microsoft is building itself, and why Nadella wants investors to think about its apps, agents, and infrastructure as one connected business. He explains how he uses AI to track Microsoft’s capital spending, shares his vision for “unmetered intelligence” on Windows, and gives an update on Xbox’s path back to growth.

Thanks to the show's premier sponsors: Mercury, Granola, and Atlassian.

Marc Benioff on the AI boom, SaaSpocalypse, and future of Slack Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and I discuss his framemogging at Dreamforce, the state of the SaaSpocalypse, and how Slack is more important than ever in the age of AI.

We also discuss the resurgence of San Francisco, his role in the recent acquisition of Hugging Face, the wealth being created by the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, and what he thinks the industry can learn from the social media era.

Thanks to the show's premier sponsors: Granola, Atlassian, and Mercury.

Baseten’s CEO on why every company will want to own its AI Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

Tuhin Srivastava is the CEO and co-founder of Baseten, an AI cloud startup recently valued at $13 billion. He tells me why every company will want to own its AI and what’s driving the explosion in demand for inference.

We discuss the rise of agents using browsers and virtual machines to get things done and Baseten’s acquisition of Blaxel to power that shift.

We also talk about the data center backlash, why companies are embracing Chinese open models, his plans for Baseten’s new research lab, and why he thinks inference becomes the only market left after AGI.

Thanks to the show's premier sponsors: Atlassian, Granola, and Mercury.

Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

As Meta releases Muse, Mark Zuckerberg tells me why he thinks a personal AI agent that works for you around the clock will make you money.

He explains how Meta plans to make that business work and why he thinks keeping the most powerful AI models in the hands of a few companies is dangerous.

We also discuss the growing backlash against data centers, Meta’s recent youth safety settlement, and the privacy scare over its smart glasses. And he shares what went wrong with Llama 4, how he rebuilt Meta’s AI lab, and what’s coming next.

Thanks to the show's premier sponsors: Granola, Atlassian, and Mercury.

Sam Altman on OpenAI’s next model and the AI backlash Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

After an unreleased OpenAI model recently escaped its sandbox and hacked Hugging Face, Sam Altman tells me why the company is slowing down frontier research. We also discuss Astra, OpenAI’s next-generation family of models, which is coming soon.

We talk about the growing backlash against AI. He explains why a faster path to recursively self-improving AI could push an OpenAI IPO further out.

And he shares more about the coming consumer hardware he’s developing with Jony Ive, including the privacy questions around an ambient AI device and the first hints at the form factors they’re building.

This conversation was recently filmed in two parts and in collaboration with TIME.

Thanks to the show's premier sponsors: Atlassian, Granola, and Mercury.

Trailer: Sam Altman on the Sources Podcast Aug 31, 2026

Show notes

In the launch episode of the Sources Podcast, Alex Heath sits down with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to discuss the future of OpenAI, from its next-generation Astra models to the growing importance of AI safety, the AI backlash, robots, and hitting AGI.

Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth Jul 30, 2026

Show notes

Alex and Ellis sit down with Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, to talk about what it actually looks like to be the most AI-pilled company that isn't a frontier lab. They get into how Dan uses ChatGPT Voice to read Heidegger at 6am, why he accidentally spent 2 billion tokens overnight, and why he thinks OpenAI just pulled off something that almost never happens in tech. They also discuss what the new Siri could do to ChatGPT, and whether that's the Instagram Stories moment for the assistant market, why the developers building at the edge today are a 12-month preview of what every knowledge worker will be doing next, and what "after automation" means for people whose job is to have original ideas. Then Alex and Ellis reflect on one year of Access, why they're winding the show down, and what's next for both of them.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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This AI will push back if you're rude to it Jul 16, 2026

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Ellis sits down with Quinten Farmer, founder of Tolan, the AI companion doing over $20M in annual revenue by being a genuinely good friend, not a yes machine. They get into why Tolan's little aliens accidentally became beloved by moms 35 to 45, how Tolans stick up for themselves when users are mean to it, and why Quinten dropped "companion" as a word entirely. They also talk about why he went premium-only at $25 a month when Character.AI and ChatGPT couldn't afford to go free, how 78% of Tolan users say it improved a real-world relationship, and what it looks like to build the calmest startup culture in tech from an island off the coast of Seattle.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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The AI writing app fighting AI slop Jul 09, 2026

Show notes

Alex and Ellis sit down with Jon Steinback, founder of Marker, the AI writing tool that refuses to write for you. They get into why Google Docs hasn't changed in 20 years, how most AI writing tools are quietly making you a worse thinker, and what Marker does differently: an editor that asks questions instead of generating answers. They also dig into Alex's own AI writing workflow and whether outsourcing too much is slowly turning him into a slop version of himself, why voice input might replace typing for the next generation, and why the co-founder of Google Docs called Marker the first real advancement in writing software in years.
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ACCESS is produced in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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