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David Steinberg

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

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 late 2026 to discuss the company's product developments and financial performance. At Zeta Live '26, held at New York City's Lincoln Center, Steinberg announced the evolution of the company's Athena intelligent agent into Athena OS, a full operating system platform, and the introduction of proprietary Athena inference models. He stated that the models are 65% more efficient and 12% more accurate than foundation models, developed in partnership with Nvidia and Fireworks, and noted that the company would not feed its proprietary data into third-party models. Steinberg also said the event attracted over 3,000 attendees, up from 1,200 the prior year, and that the company aimed to generate $12 to $14 in revenue for every dollar spent on the conference, up from $10 last year. In interviews, Steinberg discussed Zeta's positioning as an "intelligent AI infrastructure company" and its data assets, which he said include over 550 million opted-in global consumers and 5.2 million publishers. He cited recent financial results, including 44% top-line growth, 56% EBITDA growth, and 73% free cash flow growth in the last quarter, as well as a 120% net dollar retention rate. Steinberg also mentioned a microchip development project with a third-party manufacturer, stating it would not affect free cash flow. In a conversation with Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Steinberg discussed the companies' partnership and shared views on the importance of speed and data sovereignty in enterprise AI. He also commented on broader market topics, including a prediction that SpaceX and Tesla would merge within the next year, and described Nvidia as a major winner in the AI sector.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“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 ”

“Well, let me be very clear this is just having an exceptional team this is not me. I mean if you look at what Steve Gerber and his operating group have built, they have built just a team that wants to win. And you know, it's funny because what you don't see in these reports is some quarters we're so far ahead that it's sort of your coast to the finish line and some quarters you're playing from behind. And in all quar”

“Our average client is getting a 283% return on technology spend with Zeta. And for every dollar they spend with us in marketing, we return between 6 and 700% return on marketing spend. That's a certified number by Forrester. That's not us just saying that. So, when an enterprise chooses us, they're winning on technology return on investment. They're generally able to reduce their head count pretty meaningfully, and w”

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