About Daniel Schulman
Dan Schulman, who became CEO of Verizon in late 2025 after a stint as Vice Chairman and Managing Partner at Valor Capital Group, has been discussing the company's turnaround strategy and the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence. He stated that Verizon had lost market share for five consecutive years and that its market capitalization had fallen from first to last in the industry. Schulman described implementing a major restructuring that included laying off approximately 13,000 employees, which he said was necessary to generate cost savings for reinvestment in customer service and infrastructure. He characterized the company's new posture as "playing to win" rather than being a "punching bag."
Schulman has made several predictions about technological timelines, stating that he believes artificial general intelligence (AGI) will arrive within two to four years, quantum computing by 2028, and humanoid robotics shortly after. He described current AI models as "the worst models that we will ever have in our lifetime" and said the pace of technological change is faster than any he has previously observed. Schulman acknowledged that AI will likely lead to job displacement and said Verizon is allocating $20 million toward employee reskilling, while also calling for collaboration between private and public sectors to address workforce disruption. He noted that Verizon is using AI tools, including a model called Mythos, for cybersecurity and network management, and that the company is experimenting with AI agents for customer service.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Daniel Schulman's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
So the good news is you've got quite a robust business. I mean you've got like 15% something like year-over-year revenue growth. Maybe the bad news is that the analysts expect you to keep that up. How are you going to do that?
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Daniel Schulman0:10
Well, I think there's a tremendous amount of secular tailwinds behind digital payments and mobile payments. It's interesting: for the first time ever on Black Friday, more people shopped online and with their mobile phones than shopped in store. So there's a tremendous amount of secular tailwind around the movement of cash to digital and the explosion of mobile phones as well. I mean, you have all the power of a bank branch in the palm of your hand right now. So I think there are tremendous tailwinds behind us. We've got a lot to execute on, but a lot of tailwinds.
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Interviewer0:45
Dan, is there a limit to the number of digital payment platforms that merchants will support?
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Daniel Schulman0:51
Yeah, I think that's a great point. You hear an announcement almost every single week about some other payment form going on. What merchants are really concerned about is not digital payments, but using mobile and software to get closer to their customers. Most people conflate digital payments with tapping your phone at a point of sale, but to me that's just a contactless payment. I think that's just a form factor change. I mean, if it's just a matter of tapping your phone versus swiping a card, that's not very exciting. But if it's a real value proposition change at the point of sale, where for instance you can order ahead, you can skip the line, you can pick up your food, get automatic rewards right on your mobile phone, and split tender to pay for some of the transaction with those rewards, that's a real value proposition change. And I think when that starts to happen, and retailers are looking at that right now, you'll start to see an acceleration of digital payments offline. You're already seeing it online and in-app.
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Interviewer1:52
How much competition are you facing in this space now, increasingly from the traditional providers like Visa, Mastercard, people like that, as well as from the Apples and the Apple Pays and things?
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Daniel Schulman2:04
Yeah, well, there are a tremendous number of announcements. They're predominantly announcements right now. And in an exploding market like digital payments, you're going to expect a lot of competition. But our real competition is not those that you mentioned; it's cash. 85% of the world's transactions are done in cash still, an incredibly inefficient form of currency. And our goal, all of us in the financial system, is to take that inefficient use of cash and turn that into much more efficient ways of digital payments, which go faster, are easier, and cost less for consumers.
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Interviewer2:40
Well, the transition from cash to digital has been happening, will continue to happen, but I want to make sure that we understand: you don't feel any competitive threat from Visa Checkout or Masterpass?
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Daniel Schulman2:49
No, it's not that there isn't competition, because of course there's competition. But for me, the biggest thing is you've got a tremendous amount of secular tailwinds going on, and we have a lot of advantages and assets that we place against any competitors out there. But really, what I tell the company is let's focus on executing our game plan. If we do that, our value proposition is extraordinarily strong, and we're advancing it right now. The real thing is how do you get people to move from using cash to using digital forms of payment. And I think if you have very strong value propositions and a brand that stands for trust and security, that's really what we have to double down on.
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Interviewer3:35
Execution is at the heart of every really good CEO's efforts, but how do you measure whether you're making progress or not? Particularly, are you measuring your competition to see how they're gaining ground?
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Daniel Schulman3:46
Sure, we look at everything.
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Interviewer3:47
So how do you measure? Is it number of transactions? Is it dollars? What are the sorts of numbers you're looking at?
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Daniel Schulman3:52
Yeah, well, you look at number of active subscribers that everyone has, the number of transactions per subscriber, and then for us we look at our revenue growth and our free cash flow. Those are the four key metrics that define our business. But most importantly, we look at what customer needs are out there and do we have a value proposition that's pushing those boundaries. For instance, we just launched a service called OneTouch. OneTouch allows you on a mobile phone, once you register it, to not have to put in your username and password and literally touch a button and you've checked out. It is a significant advancement in checkout, and those kinds of enhancements that can only come when you have the risk algorithms that we do are really what advance us against competition and, most importantly, allow us to satisfy customers.
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Interviewer4:46
Dan, I want to know how you're going to make money with Venmo. Are you going to put ads on Venmo, or are you going to make Venmo available to merchants? Maybe a route to generating some revenue?
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Daniel Schulman4:57
Yeah, so Venmo, as you know, is the way that millennials pay right now. It is growing by over 200% per year. The typical customer opens their Venmo app four or five times a week to look and to do peer-to-peer payments. But as we said in our last earnings call, what we're now going to do is open up Venmo so that people who are using Venmo can pay with it at merchants, and that will allow us to start to monetize that.
