CEOInterviews.AI
Start App
Try: AI strategy tariffs earnings guidance layoffs interest rates growth

David Steinberg

Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Zeta Global Holdings Corp.

Search every verified David Steinberg interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. David Steinberg, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global, made several public appearances in September and October 2026, primarily centered on the company's annual Zeta Live conference in New York City. At the event, Zeta announced AthenaOS, an operating system platform, and proprietary Athena inference models. Steinberg stated that AthenaOS will be offered as a SaaS subscription and described it as the company's first direct AI monetization. He also discussed a partnership with a third-party manufacturer to develop a microchip, stating that the partner would fund the capital and that it would not affect Zeta's free cash flow. Steinberg reported that Zeta Live attendance grew from 1,200 to over 3,000 people year-over-year. In interviews, Steinberg discussed Zeta's positioning as an "intelligent AI infrastructure company" and highlighted its proprietary data cloud, which he said includes over 550 million opted-in global consumers. He attributed the company's performance, including 20 consecutive quarters of beating and raising guidance, to its team and data advantages. Steinberg also appeared in a conversation with Palantir CEO Dr. Alex Karp, where they discussed their companies' partnership and the importance of data sovereignty and speed in enterprise AI. He further commented on broader market topics, including Nvidia's partnerships and the potential for a future merger between SpaceX and Tesla, which he said he believed had an over 80% chance of occurring by the end of next year.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“Let me tell you why we did it the way we did it. Because first of all, we don't want people to think we're going to take all of our cash flow and start putting it into a chip. So, that's We We in fact grew our free cash flow last quarter at 73%. We expect to continue to grow our free cash flow at a very very very high percentage, just to be clear. So, the way we're doing it is we found Well, we can't say found, but w”

“Let me start by saying I think people are blown away by the numbers and the accuracy of our models. Because remember something. The frontier models effectively have limited to no access to deterministic data. Our models have access to deterministic data on 550 million people globally opted. The differentiator in the future between AI and intelligence is going to be the proprietary data you feed into them. And it's fu”

“I think first people think we're an advertising company, which which we've never really been. We were a marketing technology company. 60% of our revenue is subscription. 40% is utilization. You know what they call utilization this week? Tokens. Yeah. Right. I mean, we don't call it that with 120% net dollar retention, right? I I mean, you you gold standard is 100 net retention. We're we were at 120 last year. You cou”

“Let me make this very clear just to be clear. We're working on a microchip with a third party manufacturer who's going to put up all of the money to make the chip. This is not going to affect our free cash flow. I know that's created some confusion in the marketplace. When you look at our business last quarter, we grew topline by 44%. Free of EBIDA by 56%, free cash flow by 73%. Yeah, I think we're going to continue ”

“The way to think about it is that up until now our data center business has been almost entirely GPUs. Vera is our CPU, and you know what's really exciting is that Vera opens a brand new 200 billion TAM for NVIDIA, a market we have never addressed before, and every major hyperscaler is partnering with us to get it deployed, and that's huge for the company because for the first time we have a second engine of that sca”

“I believe data is going to be the differentiator because even if you have only four companies that do this and no other platforms ever work, which is highly improbable, but let's go with that for a minute. They can only create so much or ingest so much data. And when you get into synthetic data, you can't build deterministic profiles on individuals with synthetic data. Hey, it's probably illegal. And I wouldn't want ”

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 →