Netflix’s Warner Bros. Play to Beat YouTube, Ex-OpenAI Head of Sales on Selling AI | Jan 21, 2026

0:13Welcome, everyone, to The Information's TI TV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Wednesday, January 21st. We're going to kick off the show with Netflix's quarterly results. We will talk about what we learned about the state of the advertising business. We're also talking to Acrew Capital's newest general partner who is coming from OpenAI where she was previously head of sales. And the information is still in Davos. Our editor-in-chief, Jessica Lesson, sat down with Handshake CEO Garrett Lord and venture capitalist Zach Bogue. We'll play some of those conversations for you shortly. We're also digging deep into context graphs with our friends at Foundation Capital.

0:52It is a term that Silicon Valley is buzzing about right now. And finally, it is Wednesday, which means we are unpacking this week's finance column. The theme this week, why price inflation is central to the data center build out story. It's going to be a busy show. So let's get right on into things. Netflix reported its quarterly results last night. The company projected its revenue will decelerate this year to 12 to 14 percent, down from 16 percent last year. But the company finally gave us a picture of the size of its advertising business. To break it all down, I want to bring on LightShed partners Rich Greenfield.

1:28Rich, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

1:31Rich Greenfield:Thanks for having me. It's been a big and busy last couple of weeks for Netflix. Busy for Netflix, busy for Paramount, busy for Warner Brothers. I want to talk about all of it with you. Let's start with the quarterly results last night. So$1.5 billion in ads last year, was that better than you expected? Was it in line? How did you feel about it? I mean, this is still very early days for Netflix. I mean, they didn't have advertising three years ago. They didn't believe in advertising three years ago. And so, you know, look, it takes time. I think what, you know, what I think we're all looking for right now, if you have an ad account, I don't know whether you are ad free or ad, Akash.

2:09Rich Greenfield:I have the ads. Okay, so you have the ads. And so what you'll notice is that the ads actually are really boring. It looks like ads on. No, no. I mean, just to be honest, it looks like ads on any other television platform. And I think what the if you think and listen to what they're talking about, whether it's Ted Sarandos or Amy Reinhardt, who runs advertising for them, the goal is for advertising to look and feel different. You know, the beauty of Netflix is that it isn't like a traditional programming layout, like where every Tuesday you have this and you watch, you know, from eight to 11 with a programming grid.

2:44Rich Greenfield:And so the advertising can also be different. And I think you're going to see them start to do more storytelling, where as you're binging a series, you know, maybe watching, you know, 50 episodes of something, the advertising is actually going to understand that you're binging. And rather than seeing the same ad over and over again, you're going to see a story that's told throughout the advertising. And so I think it takes time for them to, you know, initially it was just, hey, let's just get this stood up. Let's replicate what everyone else does. They have done that at scale, working with lots of partners like Amazon, like Trade Desk for a traditional ad business.

3:21Rich Greenfield:I think 2026 is where advertising on Netflix begins to look a lot more interesting. And that's why one of the reasons I think you're going to see advertising double yet again to be over a$3 billion business. So it doubles this year, you're saying? At least. At least. So long term then, because I know you follow the ad space broadly, with all of these platforms, OpenAI, et cetera, introducing their ads plays, how do you think that then bodes for Netflix's advertising business? Do you think it eats into it at all at any point? Remember, I don't think you can really compare storytelling. You know, if you're a brand, any brand, and I'm sure information deals with lots of them for your ad business and sponsorship, and you think about, like, what you're trying to do, you're trying to tell stories.

4:09Rich Greenfield:And there really is nothing that tells stories like, you know, watching long-form video ads. That's why TV has been as powerful, and especially sports on TV has been as powerful as it has been for the ad industry. If you think about where Netflix is competing, and I would say this is not just Netflix, this is Netflix and Amazon as the real, because both of them have really come into the TV ad space in a big way over the course of the last three years with multi-billion dollar businesses. If you think about where they're eating from, remember, linear TV is still a$65 billion advertising business.

4:45Rich Greenfield:That$65 billion is moving faster and faster over to streaming. And Netflix and Amazon are big beneficiaries. And that's why you're seeing, you know, double digit declines across the linear TV, especially the cable linear TV universe. Those businesses are in a whole lot of pain and it's going to get worse and worse in 26. And so I don't think this is about fighting with meta. This is really, you know, the real opportunity here is to take. Taking share from the from the for the linear. For sure. Linear. For years. For years to come. So, OK, so so if that's the opportunity in ads, then let's shift to the other side of the house.

5:26The the traditional subscriptions business. And then, you know, I do want to get your thoughts here on the Warner Brothers deal. I guess maybe if we start there, just give me a thumbs up, thumbs down. You like this deal for Netflix?

5:39Rich Greenfield:This is a pretty bold deal for Netflix. I mean, this is really looking at the opportunity. I mean, look, they are growing subs. Subs were up about 8 % last year, you know, over 325 million subscribers, certainly not the, you know, 16 % growth we saw the year before. And that was just an absolutely explosive year. But I think as you look at growth, they are looking at this. I think, you know, honestly, this is very similar. if you aggregated the three big Disney acquisitions. Think about what Disney did under Bob Iger. They bought Lucas, they bought Marvel, and they bought Pixar. Those were three big IP acquisitions.

6:16Rich Greenfield:I think for Netflix, this is looking at Warner Brothers and thinking about, like, think about the content. You get DC Comics, you get Harry Potter, you get, you know, Game of Thrones. You get so many big franchises and an incredibly deep TV library to mine and to work with. And so I think it's very, you know, when you think about the long term for Netflix and sure, the stock's under pressure right now. People are worried. Do they have to pay more? And, you know, how do you know? Are they doing this because engagement is suffering? But if you think about this over a five year period, this is a huge long term positive for Netflix.

6:51Rich Greenfield:if they can pull this off, even if they pay a little bit more than where they are right now, this company is generating$11 billion of free cash flow. They can afford this. And I think they can really do amazing things if they're able to acquire this library of content. And you think it gets through regulators? I do. I mean, when you think about, I mean, the thing that I think most people miss is that Netflix is still smaller. You know, if you look just purely at streaming. Sure. Netflix is, you know, if we look at subscription streaming, Netflix is the largest. If you look at all of streaming, obviously YouTube and YouTube's doing lots of things.

7:28Rich Greenfield:I mean, you can watch Sunday Ticket now on YouTube. You can watch NFL games on YouTube now. But but leaving that aside, the reality is Disney is bigger. You know, if you put all of Disney's assets together, they actually represent more TV time spent than Netflix today. Same with NBC. And so while Peacock is smaller, while Disney Plus is small, the aggregate amount of TV time spent is actually larger than Netflix. And even if you add in HBO to Netflix, you're still smaller than Disney. And so I think from a regulatory standpoint, it's going to be very hard to not look at TV holistically. I mean, you can watch the NFL, right, on ABC, ESPN.

8:07Rich Greenfield:You can watch a couple of games on Netflix. I mean, trying to draw distinctions and say the business is only streaming paid streaming TV seems like an incredibly narrow definition that I can't imagine standing up in court when they're all fighting over the same programming and the same eyeballs. So then how do you feel about this notion that by making this acquisition, they are clearly getting deeper into this media market that is clearly under pressure broadly? They're also playing with diversification in gaming and video podcasts. I mean, the question I have for you is the opportunity cost of doing this acquisition.

8:49I mean, the other approach they could do is go way deeper into diversifying into media verticals that are faster growing and, you know, have a little bit more of a tailwind behind them. Do you not think that might not be a better approach to look for growth there?

9:04Rich Greenfield:I mean, look, everything has an opportunity cost. And there is absolutely no doubt that, you know, you could look at this and say, hey, I mean, why are they not buying Epic Games or why are they not buying Roblox? Right. Like you could certainly look at this and say, what are the opportunity costs of things that are being passed or foregone? You know, in terms of investing, I find that, you know, it's they've been trying to get into games. I think games is not an easy thing to get into for them. You know, they've tried to get into now the more casual TV based family games. That seems to be working better.

9:39Rich Greenfield:They'll obviously have the Warner Brothers Game Studio. Maybe that creates a launching pad to go deeper into gaming. But I think when you look at what Netflix is, Netflix is bread and butter, right? It is TV and really owning time spent, video time spent. And they're fighting, you know, like the battle they're fighting. They're fighting with YouTube. YouTube is right. Like you're fighting YouTube, right? And YouTube is getting stronger and stronger. I mean, look at the growth. I mean, you at The Information spend a lot of time on the creator economy. Jessica and your team has been early to looking at how the growth of that with conferences.

10:14Rich Greenfield:And you think about like sort of what's happened there. And you look at Netflix, they're now trying to bring in more and more creators. You know, you look at, you know, they just got Mark Rober, the science guy. And like, they're bringing in more and more people and doing podcasting, which is sort of a creator economy-like business and working more with them. I think Netflix recognizes the threat and how competitive this space is. And they're trying to win long term and they're trying to fight a company that has, you know, even greater scale in Google, YouTube. And they see this as a central acquisition to help them accelerate and further, you know, catch up in terms of overall engagement to where Google is.

10:54Rich Greenfield:And so I think from that standpoint, sure, there are other things they can do. I don't think this is a break the bank acquisition. I mean, if you think about the size and scale of Netflix, they can digest this. They're at a size where they can do this and it doesn't destroy the balance sheet. It doesn't put them in financial jeopardy. And I think if you look at sort of what they do best, you know, think about this. Amazon, they spent eight billion dollars to buy the, you know, to buy MGM. James Bond, they had to pay an extra billion to get access to making James Bonds. But when they need to get the James Bond library watched, who do they turn to?

11:30Rich Greenfield:Netflix. You can watch all the James Bond films on Netflix because that is what they do best. Netflix is great at really shining a light on catalog and getting it watched. It's why NBC Universal did a deal with them. It's why Sony did a deal with them. And I think that opportunity to increase viewership of all of this content that's sitting not being watched in that Warner Brothers library is a huge opportunity for Netflix. Great. Well, Rich, I want to thank you for coming on. It It was an exciting quarter, and I trust there's more excitement to come. That is Rich Greenfield, the co-founder and analyst at Light Shed Partners here on TITV.

12:09Okay. Acru Capital has a new general partner. Elisa Rosenthal is joining the venture capital firm from OpenAI, where she was previously head of sales. She was also OpenAI's first commercial hire, growing enterprise revenue from$10 million to$10 billion. I want to bring on Alisa to tell us about this next phase of her journey. Alisa, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Thank you. Happy to be here. Congrats on the new role. We've had Lauren Kolodny on the show previously, so we know Acrew Capital well here at TITV. What are you going to be focused on at Acrew? Yeah, you know, AI has really matured into a platform, and I'm focused on the AI-native companies reshaping enterprise through durable infrastructure, developer tools, and applications built on this massive platform shift.

13:00And I saw firsthand at OpenAI on the front lines, really the gap between model capability and enterprise reality. And I'm excited to invest in the emerging app layer addressing this gap. Okay. So you're going to focus on apps. I want to talk a little bit about your area of expertise, which is sales. It's what you led at OpenAI in large part. The broad question I have for you is how do AI sales differ from traditional enterprise software SaaS sales, which I think is a world that you lived in before AI. So you know both these stories. How is it different selling AI? Yeah, you know, I think I had the opportunity to build the first really AI native Salesforce.

13:45And that meant changing the way we sell. It also means that buyers are changing the way they make purchases. So some examples of this, you know, when you sell chat GPT, and I think when you sell any AI product, you're not just selling a tool, you're selling an entirely new way of working. It's a new technology. People are nervous about it. They're fearful. And you're something of an ambassador of AI. And it was really interesting. I had to tell my sales reps, you know, you're not just selling a tool. You are a thought leader in AI and you have to be bought in. You have to understand it. You have to use it.

14:19And that meant it changed the type of salesperson I hired. You know, when I first started at OpenAI, I really looked for people who were excellent at their craft, who really mastered sales. And by the end of my few years at OpenAI, I was looking for people that had leveraged AI to be excellent at their craft. So people who were not necessarily as great as the talk, well, they have to be good at the talking, but they also have to be good at at using the tools to inform the talking, essentially. Exactly. They have to be good at both. And the more adept you are at the tooling and the more you use it in your day-to-day jobs, the more authentic you are at selling it, and the more you can help people who are using it for the first time with real examples and real opportunities to make an impact in how they're working.

15:02So now, on the pitch of all this, we've had some folks on the show who are involved in advising enterprises that are buying AI software, companies that are looking to buy Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft, et cetera. And one of the comments that they've made on the show here is that they wish that sales teams would have a little more transparency around, hey, you might not get the ROI as quickly as you think. You might need to experiment with this for three, six, nine, 12 months even. And, you know, it might not be as immediate as old school enterprise software in some ways. As you think about that reality and how teams get ROI out of AI, how do you incorporate that messaging?

15:52Or how did you incorporate it into sales teams? How do you advise companies to be honest with it and then ultimately convince people to still take a chance on you? Yeah, so two things I'll say there. The first one is that I think trust and authenticity matters more than it ever has before. You hear people saying sales is going away, sales will be completely automated. And I really think that's not the case because exactly what we've hit upon, buyers are being inundated with AI products. They don't understand what's real, what's not. And at the end of the day, they're making this decision largely based on who they trust and who they find authentic.

16:26So I think that's point one. Point two is I think we're at an interesting moment in the evolution of this app layer where it's mostly general purpose tools that aren't necessarily custom fit for certain types of companies, certain industries, certain workflows. So the solution is to throw forward deployed engineering at it. And that, I think, is why the integration period is so long right now. You have really a general purpose agent that you are, quote unquote, training on your workflows, on your data. And it takes a while to get that agent to be able to perform the way you want it to. I think in the future, and what I'm really excited about, is I think we'll start to see more sort of specific applications.

17:07And by the way, I use the term application very broadly. I think the form factor of applications might change. They might be background agents. They might live in your operating system. But that aside, I think these agents will have more custom context out of the box. They'll be more specific. They'll be tailored to very specific and unique use cases. and they will work more right out of the box without a ton of customization and tailoring and forward-deployed engineering. As you think about all the conversations that you had with customers in your previous role, I'm wondering if there is one conversation that comes to mind that really embodies the challenges of getting enterprises to adopt AI and really what's top of mind for them.

17:52You know, what I'll say was very interesting at OpenAI was we learned a lot from our customers. You know, it's most companies, you have a problem, you set out to solve it and you build a solution. At OpenAI, we did research. The research yielded new capabilities. And then we would figure out how do we productize them and commercialize them, which is a very different way of going to market. it. And so what this meant is we had to be very close to our customers and understand, you know, how they were using our products so we could package that up and sell it accordingly. And, you know, one example is we had a tool called Code Interpreter, and it was pretty much using Python.

18:31And we thought it was a coding tool. The first customer that started using it very broadly was a private equity fund. And we called them, we said, what the heck are you guys doing with this tool? And they actually came to our office and they showed us how they were using Code Interpreter to perform due diligence, run Black-Scholes analysis, do heavy mathematical quantitative research in ChatGPT. So we actually ended up rebranding Code Interpreter as data analysis and really repackaging it and post-training it in a way that was much better at data. And so that meant we were learning from our buyers and our customers, which I think is a very different mindset for a sales organization and a product organization.

19:09Last question for you. We've been talking about ads a lot this week as not just OpenAI, but all these platforms look more towards ads. I know you were mostly involved in the enterprise side of the house. And so maybe slightly different, but still sales is sales at the end of the day. What do you think there's a clear opportunity in selling ads and building out that market? What do you think is the biggest hurdle that these sales teams might face in selling these advertising products to retailers and e-commerce players? I think the biggest challenge for OpenAI in this model will be keeping the trust of users.

19:49You know, we've talked about trust a lot today. People are naturally skeptical and cynical about this technology. They're nervous about it. So I think for OpenAI to convince advertisers to join the platform, to convince the public to engage with these advertisements, they have to be really careful to do it in a way that is subtle, that doesn't feel like the results are being skewed by advertising, that they're results that are genuine and that the advertisement is related but not changing the results. And that's going to be a hard needle to thread. But what about selling it to the retailers? I mean, the buyers of the ads?

20:23What sort of challenges do you think they'll see there? I mean, in the same way, they have to convince retailers that the users are going to engage with the ads and feel bought into the new experience and continue to use the application. Right. Great. Well, Elisa, congrats on the new role. We are very excited for you and look forward to having you on more as you make some noteworthy investments over at Acrew Capital. That is Elisa Rosenthal, the new general partner at Acrew Capital here on TI TV. Okay, the information's Jessica lesson is still on the ground in Davos. In partnership with the World Economic Forum, Jessica spoke with Handshake co-founder and CEO Garrett Lord.

21:05Handshake has traditionally operated a marketplace for corporate employers to find new talent, but they have now positioned themselves at the center of the AI staffing opportunity where big AI model developers are trying to get their hands on as many human professionals as possible to help them hone their models. Jessica and Garrett discussed that transition the company's making and also where Garrett sees hiring going in the AI era. Here are a few highlights from that conversation.

21:39If you think about model progress, like a lot of the gains that have been made so far are in very verifiable domains, like answers where you can guarantee get kind of the correct right answer. But if you think about a lot of professional domains, for example, like investment banking or invest making, like what is the right answer is very subjective. Right. And so you really need human beings to design what are called verifiers or rewards that help models understand what good looks like. And the reason they do that is obviously for this topic called reinforcement learning, where if you can teach the model what the right answer is, the model will try many different paths and get to the right answer.

22:20And so luckily, I think for humans, like a lot of the world is still very unvirifiable. Like maybe you as the editor and CEO of the information, like what is a good article is very subjective and it depends on human expertise. And so that's what we're very good at doing is hiring tens of thousands of the most qualified people in every discipline and domain and then bringing them into a very structured environment, teaching them about AI, how to break the models and how to design data that helps the frontier climb. Mm-hmm. So as you're pushing into this area, others are too. Scale got a number of big headlines when its founder decamped to meta, but is still a business that operates in this space.

23:01What do you see in terms of competition and how can Handshake compete? So obviously, you know, we have many amazing competitors in this space. And kudos to the entire, you know, many of our competitors that operate today. where we really see our lane is in this kind of decade of institutional trust that we've built with 22 million people. And so we're able to, you know, our core business was recruiting, building trust, acquiring people, helping them find jobs, helping them learn information for jobs. And so on top of this kind of decade of trust across 1600 universities in the country, we've really been able to leverage that to turn around more quickly than our competition.

23:42The labs, I think at its core, they care about three things. They care about like the speed, which you can turn around. They care about the quality of the data. Really, quality is paramount. Like, if you're really powering the data that's helping models to help climb. So quality matters a ton. Speed, quality, and then volume. The ability to get to heavy, heavy volumes. They don't care about cost. They do care about cost. Okay, you just left that one out. But yeah. Cost, I think, is a good fourth one. Yeah. And our network really provides us, like, this incredible strategic advantage of being able to turn around more quickly, get to high volumes than our competition.

24:13And that's why, you know, in eight months, We've climbed up high hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. And the business, it feels like we're in early innings of what it could become. If you think about LOMs, it's really you have compute, you have algorithms, and then you have data. And I think on the compute side, compute scaling in a huge way. Algorithms, you continue to have a ton of algorithmic process. And I think in the data side, which is really our business, Like we're still in, we're in a world where like the entire internet's basically been scraped. Like Andre Kaparthi talks about, you know, kind of like exhausting the fossil fuel of what's already been on the internet.