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Howie Liu

CEO & Co-Founder, Airtable

Search every verified Howie Liu interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Howie Liu, CEO and co-founder of Airtable, recently discussed his transition to leading Hyperagent, a company that spun out of Airtable following the latter's acquisition by Bending Spoons for $1.285 billion. In a July 2026 interview on the Navigators podcast, Liu stated that Hyperagent is focused on agent-first software and that he helped build its MVP himself. He described a philosophy of keeping agent harnesses minimal and allowing models to operate with open-ended flexibility, and he said that software engineers should use agents daily to generate the bulk of their code. In a keynote at the 2026 AI Engineer World's Fair, Liu outlined a vision for "hiring employable agents," describing AI agents as evolving from chatbots into always-on systems that can work autonomously overnight. He gave an example of a landscaper using a fleet of agents to triage leads, survey properties, and prepare client proposals, while noting that humans still intervene for high-impact actions like binding quotes. Liu argued that orchestrating agents effectively will become "table stakes for survival" for companies, and he quoted Jensen Huang's remark that it will not be AI taking jobs but people using AI who take jobs or businesses.

Recent appearances

  • Why Howie Liu exited Airtable to go all in on Hyperagent

    August 05, 2026 · 📺 Browserbase

    Yesterday, Airtable got acquired for $1.285B by Bending Spoons. What people don't know is that Hyperagent spun out into it's own company. Howie Liu is doubling down on Agent-first software, and helped build the MVP himself. On this episode of Navigators, filmed just last month, we sat down to talk about how the Airtable team is rebuilding itself around agents through Hyperagent, why the product form factor has to structurally change with every leap in model capability, and the lean, agent-first companies being born out of all of it. 00:00 Why every model leap forces the product to change sha…

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  • Airtable CEO reveals how the 1% leverages AI | Howie Liu

    July 30, 2026 · 📺 Silicon Valley Girl en Español

    Ready to revolutionize your productivity with AI agents? In this video we tell you how agents can help you create content, make better decisions, and even optimize your travels or purchases. Discover creative and practical use cases, and learn how to start from scratch. Subscribe so you don't miss more AI tips and tell us in the comments which part surprised you the most. #IA #Tecnología #Productividad #Emprendimiento #Futuro 👉 This channel is made in collaboration with / @siliconvalleygirl 0:00 - Introduction and vision about AI agents 1:56 - Evolution and maturity of agents 4:40 - The…

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  • Hiring Employable Agents: Howie Liu on the Next Form Factor of AI

    July 28, 2026 · 📺 Hyperagent

    Hyperagent CEO Howie Liu traces how AI agents evolved from chatbots into always-on systems that work overnight. In his keynote from the 2026 AI Engineer World's Fair in San Francisco, howie explains why orchestrating them is becoming a matter of survival for every company. - Start building: https://hyperagent.com Coming from OpenClaw? Migrate and grab $500 in credit (limited time): https://hyperagent.com/anonymous Browse the marketplace: https://hyperagent.com/marketplace - Chapters: 0:00 — Intro: Hiring Employable Agents 2:01 — The AI form-factor spectrum: completions to chatbots 3:10 — F…

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  • Airtable CEO Live Demo

    June 03, 2026 · 📺 Silicon Valley Girl Clips

    📺 Watch the full episode here - и ссылка на полное интервью с канала SVG Today's podcast guest is Howie Liu ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel -    / @siliconvalleygirl   Links: 📩 Follow my Newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com... 🔗 My Instagram:   / siliconvalleygirl   📌 My Companies & Products: https://Marinamogilko.co 📹 Video brainstorming, research, and project planning - all in one place - https://partner.spotterstudio.com/ide... 💻 Resources that helps my team and me grow the business: Email & SMS Marketing Automation - https://your.omnisend.com/marina AI app to work wi…

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  • Airtable CEO: This Is What the Top 1% Do With AI | Howie Liu

    May 27, 2026 · 📺 Silicon Valley Girl

    📌 Launch your dream business with the best designs the world has to offer — Design.com: https://go.design.com/cd5msoz Howie Liu co-founded Airtable — used by over 80% of Fortune 100 companies. Now he's building HyperAgent. He asked me: if you could hire as many people as you want for almost zero cost, what roles would you fill first? I didn't have an answer. We covered the two skills that will make you superhuman in the agent era, how to build a virtual twin of yourself so you stop being the bottleneck in your own company, and why builders are going to win the next few years. He also showed m…

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  • Howie Liu On How To Future-Proof Your Company

    April 27, 2026 · 📺 Forbes

    Follow ⁠Forbes Under30⁠ (https://feeds.megaphone.fm/FSML662432...) Recorded LIVE from the 2026 30 Under 30 Summit in Phoenix, AZ. Airtable democratized software by letting anyone build a database. When AI shock up software, founder Howie Liu relaunched Airtable as an AI-native app platform. The visionary founder and CEO shares inside lessons about AI-proofing your tech and the art of the pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices (https://megaphone.fm/adchoices)

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  • Inside Airtable’s AI Reinvention: How To Future-Proof Your Company In Rapidly Changing Times

    April 21, 2026 · 📺 Forbes

    Airtable democratized software by letting anyone build a database. When AI shock up software, founder Howie Liu relaunched Airtable as an AI-native app platform. The visionary founder and CEO shares inside lessons about AI-proofing your tech and the art of the pivot. Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?s... Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to…

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  • Airtable's Howie Liu on What Founders Get Wrong About Building Product

    January 06, 2026 · 📺 Village Global

    Airtable founder and CEO Howie Liu spent 2.5 years building before launching – and only talked to about a dozen customers in that time. In this clip, he explains why that approach made sense for a platform company, and how founders can validate ideas without drowning in customer discovery. 0:00 — Why Airtable is a platform, not a collaboration tool 0:19 — Spending 2.5 years building before launch 0:43 — Why V1 looked like a spreadsheet 1:03 — "What if a founder pitched you on a 3-year build?" 1:22 — What has to be true to justify building slowly 1:45 — The SpaceX analogy: conviction in the…

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  • Vibe Marketing Breaks the Speed Limit | Howie Liu | BRXND NYC 2025

    October 16, 2025 · 📺 BRXND

    Six-month campaigns now ship in six minutes. Marketing teams deploy agents that handle the production marathon—endless ...

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  • Airtable’s AI Reboot with CEO Howie Liu

    September 08, 2025 · 📺 Kleiner Perkins

    Can a no-code giant reinvent itself in the AI-native era? This week on Grit, Airtable CEO Howie Liu shares what it means to ...

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  • How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

    August 31, 2025 · 📺 Lenny's Podcast

    Howie Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable, the no-code platform valued at around $12 billion. After a viral tweet declared ...

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  • The $11 Billion Lesson Airtable’s CEO Learned from His Mother

    August 20, 2025 · 📺 HD IN HD

    Airtable CEO Howie Liu shares how his mother's relentless work ethic shaped his mindset and became the foundation for building ...

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Notable quotes

“Every software engineer should be using agents every single day, every minute. In fact, like if they're not using agents to generate the bulk of their code they're by definition like not getting nearly enough leverage right as they could.”

“I think we'll also see much more entrepreneurship. I think the era of a single person building a great company, whether it's the $1 billion revenue company that was forecast with AI, or it could just be, it doesn't have to be $1 billion in revenue to still be successful, right? But I think many more people are going to be able to launch their own ideas and build a business, whether it's an online retail business. Tha”

“I don't think so at all. I think I think we're we're in a we're in a world where every single assumption about not just SAS and like tech, but like how companies are run period, what the economy looks like, what the workforce looks like is completely being disrupted and will look very different not 5 years from now, 10 years from now, but like a year or two years from now.”

“We've raised 1.4 billion. We've kept a billion plus on the balance sheet and we now generate over a 100 million per year of free cash flow. So, we can self-fund effectively.”

“I think timing is everything. Like either at the very beginning, like before you've kind of grounded out or like right when you're about to hit a corner or you're starting to see some inflection, timing is everything.”

“We've raised 1.4 billion. We've kept a billion plus on the balance sheet. And we now generate over 100 million per year of free cash flow so we can self-fund effectively.”

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →