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Bloomberg Talks

Sequoia Partner Konstantine Buhler Talks Agentic AI

07 Oct 2025

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 18.756 Michelle Hussein

Hello and welcome. This is The Michelle Hussein Show. I'm Michelle Hussein. I speak with people like Elon Musk. I think I've done enough. And Shonda Rhimes. That's so cute. This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation to help make sense of the world.

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19.257 - 27.267 Michelle Hussein

So please join me, listen and subscribe to The Michelle Hussein Show from Bloomberg Weekend, wherever you get your podcasts.

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27.367 - 29.43 Tim Stenevek

You certainly ask interesting questions.

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32.87 - 37.518 Unknown

Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.

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38.439 - 47.374 Francine Lacqua

Hello. I'm so excited to speak to Konstantin. And of course, it's all about AI. He also had a great conversation with Jensen Huang of NVIDIA. Konstantin, thank you for joining us.

47.655 - 48.436 Konstantine Buhler

Thank you, Francine.

48.456 - 54.827 Francine Lacqua

Everyone's talking about AI. Everyone's talking about also this deal between open AI and AMD. Your first thoughts?

55.516 - 74.696 Konstantine Buhler

Well, it's an exciting new partnership. We were with Jensen Huang this morning, and the relationship between NVIDIA and OpenAI goes back a long way. In fact, we were talking about how their very first AI factory, the DGX1, was delivered to OpenAI back in 2016 to Elon Musk actually at the Sequoia offices.

75.297 - 80.983 Konstantine Buhler

And so it's just a reminder that all of this AI revolution is powered by really impressive hardware.

Chapter 2: What is the significance of the AMD and OpenAI partnership?

174.031 - 176.074 Francine Lacqua

So how do you back the right company?

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176.155 - 197.556 Konstantine Buhler

So we always look at the team at the end of the day, especially for early stage investing. We're looking for the founders that are going to endure and persist through ups and downs. And we know that AI is going to have its moments of excitement, but also moments of difficulty. And we look at the long duration and in long duration, we think it's undervalued still.

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197.755 - 208.491 Francine Lacqua

What are the other impacts that actually this could have on the economy? But also, you know, there's so much spent. How are you sure that whatever you spend on AI, you get the returns in a reasonable timeframe?

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208.606 - 230.985 Konstantine Buhler

Sure, so we're here at the Citadel Securities Conference with a lot of leading investors, and they're all talking about what's the return on that AI, and that's what 2026 is gonna be all about. How do we actually see that return? And there's a few engines that are gonna power that. The first is new monetization strategies. To date, most of the monetization of AI has been subscription revenue.

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230.965 - 251.067 Konstantine Buhler

You pay for a subscription and you get a product. Well, there's a couple more ways that companies are now monetizing. One is through usage. So the more you use the product, the more you pay, kind of like a real service. The other is actually through e-commerce. So last week, OpenAI announced that you can actually complete entire purchases on ChatGPT.

251.047 - 271.286 Konstantine Buhler

So you can actually do research for the product you want to buy and buy it through Shopify or Etsy completely on the AI platform. That's something we're excited about. We wrote a thesis that this is going to become an important way to do commerce, and we believe that will continue to be. The other one is new modalities. So everybody has used AI for text-based modalities.

271.746 - 292.703 Konstantine Buhler

You talk to the AI and it responds to you in text. We've seen voice hit the mainstream. Voice has gotten so good that with companies like Sierra, which is a portfolio company that does customer support, You can have entire conversations with AI flawlessly or companies like Listen Labs does market research incredibly well with voice.

293.203 - 304.763 Konstantine Buhler

And then in 2026, we'll see video start to really take center stage. We obviously have seen Sora and Nano Banana and those perform incredibly well. It's just the beginning for them.

305.08 - 312.3 Francine Lacqua

Talk to me a little bit about the partnership that you have with Citadel Securities. I mean this was a large amount of money from Sequoia and Citadel.

Chapter 3: How does agentic AI differ from traditional AI?

312.34 - 315.529 Francine Lacqua

Is this a blueprint of more of these kind of agreements?

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315.61 - 334.678 Konstantine Buhler

Of course. So we were the first outside investors in Citadel Securities in 2021. We're proud to have invested a billion dollars in the business. And a lot of the reason we invested in the company was the technology platform that they operate on and have built. And this technology platform has changed an entire industry.

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335.219 - 360.113 Konstantine Buhler

So if you think back 30, 40 years, the way that securities were traded was really in-person services. Two people would find a price and then transact in person. And they, especially Ken, had a vision of the future in which you're going to actually be able to discover that price using algorithms, predictive algorithms, and then actually be able to complete that digitally.

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360.093 - 383.527 Konstantine Buhler

And we've actually seen that become the way the vast majority of equities are now traded digitally. And it's just the beginning. So only 8% of fixed income is traded digitally. There's another 92% to go. We see big expanding markets. And frankly, it also reminds us of the AI revolution and the agentic revolution, where it starts off manual, and then you get AI to make a prediction.

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383.868 - 386.151 Konstantine Buhler

And then like an agent, you actually complete it digitally.

Chapter 4: What real-world applications of agentic AI are being discussed?

386.131 - 395.291 Francine Lacqua

But, Konstantin, I mean, this is basically an industry being disrupted, right? Is there still one industry that we haven't thought about that you're looking at that will be significantly disrupted?

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395.712 - 420.693 Konstantine Buhler

There always is an industry for disruption, but also for innovation. We want to make people's lives better. I think an industry that... could have a lot of innovation and would help everyone is healthcare. Why do I say that? Well, there's a lot of spend in healthcare. It's incredibly important, and we're not all getting the services that we could. So my wife is a surgeon in healthcare.

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421.073 - 441.528 Konstantine Buhler

She has, from her health system, hundreds of patients that could come through and get those procedures. She still spends a lot of time writing notes and actually doing tasks that an AI can help with. In fact, now an AI is helping. So her health system, she uses open evidence, which is now used by 40% of physicians. She uses a bridge, which does transcription.

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442.25 - 452.031 Konstantine Buhler

And that actually helps her complete that busy work faster so she can spend more time with patients. So I'm very hopeful that one of the areas that AI helps with is health care.

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452.078 - 457.005 Francine Lacqua

Constantine, thank you so much for your time today. That's Constantine Buller there from Sequoia.

457.025 - 462.433 Carol Masser

I'm Carol Masser. And I'm Tim Stenevek, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast.

462.473 - 467.14 Tim Stenevek

Now, every day we are bringing you reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead.

467.2 - 471.606 Carol Masser

We've got insight on the people, the companies and trends that are shaping today's complex economy.

471.586 - 486.168 Tim Stenevek

That's right, Tim. We're all over global business, finance, tech news, all as it is happening in real time. And we've got complete coverage of the U.S. market close. Got to say, basically, if it impacts financial markets, if it impacts companies, if it's impacting trends and narratives that are out there, we are on it.

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