The CEO Signal

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby wants to build what he calls the “undisputed flag carrier of the United States.” He argues that airlines are not commodities and that greater scale could benefit customers, but acknowledges a fundamental obstacle to consolidation: “We can’t get it done without a willing partner, and we don’t have one.” In this episode of The CEO Signal, Kirby discusses the decade-long push to transform United and how he thinks about the bets required to do it. A former card counter who says senior executives should play high-stakes poker with their own money, Kirby warns against assuming the answer is in the spreadsheet. “The important thing,” he says, is to understand and question the assumptions. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the conversation also looks back at United’s aircraft strategy during Covid. As competitors retired widebody aircraft and shrank their fleets, United moved in the opposite direction. Kirby believed the risk-reward had shifted: “We don’t actually have to be totally right,” he told the board. “We just have to not be totally wrong.” Kirby also explains why building employee pride means eliminating the things employees have to apologize for, and why a CEO’s job is “not to work hard. It’s to think hard.” The CEO Signal is Semafor's interview platform for conversations with the global CEOs whose decisions are shaping the future of the new world economy. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the show explores the moments of judgment that define leadership. Penny Pritzker is the founder and chairman of PSP Partners and served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2013 to 2017. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is CEO Editor at Semafor and a former Financial Times journalist who has spent decades covering global companies and corporate leadership.

Jon Gray, chief operating officer of the $1.3 trillion asset manager Blackstone, says one of the firm’s distinguishing habits is to “go big” when it finds a theme it believes in. But he also says successful convictions need to be challenged, particularly as Blackstone invests heavily around artificial intelligence. “You keep pressing against what you’re doing to confirm that you haven’t just sort of fallen in love,” he says. In this episode of The CEO Signal, Gray describes investing as “pattern recognition”: finding “good neighborhoods,” and connecting the dots before others do. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the conversation also explores how Blackstone makes investment decisions at scale and why Gray worries strong systems can “stamp out the entrepreneurial spirit.”  Gray also addresses the current debate around private credit. He says lower returns as rates fall and spreads tighten would be a “totally reasonable criticism,” while rejecting claims that the asset class is creating systemic risk or heading for collapse as “not very logical.” The CEO Signal is Semafor's interview platform for conversations with the global CEOs whose decisions are shaping the future of the new world economy. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the show explores the moments of judgment that define leadership. Penny Pritzker is the founder and chairman of PSP Partners and served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2013 to 2017. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is CEO Editor at Semafor and a former Financial Times journalist who has spent decades covering global companies and corporate leadership.

Netflix co-founder and former CEO Reed Hastings says AI could unleash a new wave of “creative destruction” as companies use rapidly improving technology not just to cut costs, but to challenge competitors and build new businesses. In this episode of The CEO Signal, Hastings notes that AI has been getting “roughly twice as good every year” and says CEOs should think of it as the equivalent of doubling their workforce. He also explains why it’s not the paranoid who survive  “it’s really the people who have judgment” — leaders who can distinguish the threats and opportunities that truly matter. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the conversation also explores the culture Hastings built at Netflix, why he's taken on the "really hard" challenge of turning around a Utah ski resort, and how he knew when it was time to step away and let Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters lead without him. The CEO Signal is Semafor's interview platform for conversations with the global CEOs whose decisions are shaping the future of the new world economy. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the show explores the moments of judgment that define leadership. Penny Pritzker is the founder and chairman of PSP Partners and served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2013 to 2017. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is CEO Editor at Semafor and a former Financial Times journalist who has spent decades covering global companies and corporate leadership.

Affirm founder and CEO Max Levchin built his company to behave like your “smarter older sister”: helping customers make better decisions rather than profiting from their mistakes. In this episode of The CEO Signal, he explains how that philosophy shaped Affirm and why it may become even more important as AI transforms consumer finance. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the conversation explores how Levchin has translated that philosophy into Affirm’s products, culture and decision-making as the company has grown. He also explains how his identity as an “immigrant engineer” shapes his leadership, and why he studies dystopian science fiction to help prevent the AI future he is “working very hard to prevent.” The CEO Signal is Semafor's interview platform for conversations with the global CEOs whose decisions are shaping the future of the new world economy. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the show explores the moments of judgment that define leadership. Penny Pritzker is the founder and chairman of PSP Partners and served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2013 to 2017. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is CEO Editor at Semafor and a former Financial Times journalist who has spent decades covering global companies and corporate leadership.

Patrice Louvet says Ralph Lauren left about $1 billion in revenue on the table as it pulled back from places where, “frankly, we weren’t proud of being.” When he became CEO in 2017, the company had stretched its brand too far. His challenge was to restore the brand without compromising the creative “magic” that made Ralph Lauren distinctive. After nearly three decades at Procter & Gamble, Louvet came from a world of data, structure and business logic. At Ralph Lauren, he had to learn when the numbers should lead and when they should follow the magic. Defining the company as being in the “dreams business” became the foundation for deciding where the brand belonged, what it should stop doing and how it could grow without losing what made it special. Today, Ralph Lauren has no shortage of opportunities to expand — including into hotels, Louvet says. The challenge is no longer finding new avenues for growth, but knowing which ones to pursue without repeating the gradual dilution that weakened the brand before. For Louvet, that comes down to a deceptively simple principle: knowing what you can do is not the same as knowing what you should do. About the Show The CEO Signal is Semafor's interview platform for conversations with the global CEOs whose decisions are shaping the future of the new world economy. Hosted by Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the show explores the moments of judgment that define leadership. Penny Pritzker is the founder and chairman of PSP Partners and served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2013 to 2017. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is CEO Editor at Semafor and a former Financial Times journalist who has spent decades covering global companies and corporate leadership.