A2Z Fintech

About A2Z Fintech

Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala have spent over 25 years in fintech across Banks, BigTech, and Startups. This is a podcast of them riffing on payments, fintech and everything in between.

Publisher

Aman Narain & Zubin Vandrevala

Category

business · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 May 2025

Latest episode

5 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

46 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   5 Oct 2026

   AI Bubble: a16z Says No. So Who's Left Holding It?

   Click here to watch a video of this episode. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkzBu3hb9dk) Andreessen Horowitz has published 90 slides arguing that AI is not a bubble, one month after closing a $1.1 billion fund for AI hardware. On slide 88, holographic Pokémon cards are up 110% since January 2024, against 72% for the Nasdaq. The real question is not whether there is an AI bubble, but who is holding it when the next buyer pauses. On 30 September, a16z's Growth team, led by David George, published State of Markets II. The deck makes a serious case: tech delivered about 76% of the S&P 500's earnings growth this year, and valuations fell while profits rose. The twist is in the financing. Meta's Hyperion data centre sits in a vehicle 80% owned by Blue Owl's funds, the Chicago Fed puts large US banks' committed AI-related lines at about a quarter of their core capital, and the AI bubble debate has quietly moved from shareholders to banks, insurers and pension funds. Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala boil the deck down to five mega trends and ten takeaways for financial services, score every argument, and walk through, day by day, what happens if the AI bubble bursts. Key takeaways: 1. a16z is right about the companies and silent on who pays for them: in one quarter Alphabet and Amazon booked about $150 billion of paper gains on private AI stakes, roughly 12% of S&P 500 earnings on Goldman's estimate. 2. Finance has become the balance sheet of AI: Meta's Hyperion data centre sits in a vehicle 80% owned by Blue Owl's funds, with about $27 billion of bonds behind it and Meta as the tenant. 3. The Chicago Fed puts large US banks' drawn AI-related loans at about 9% of Tier 1 capital and committed lines at about 25%. The gap is what nobody sees until a bad week. 4. AI efficiency is real and gets competed away. The saving goes to the customer, and part of the AI budget comes straight out of headcount. 5. If the AI bubble bursts, pensions and insurers face a markdown rather than a wipe-out. The danger is that every loss arrives in the same week. Topics covered: - Why a16z's deck deserves both respect and a disclaimer: the umbrella seller's weather forecast - Five mega trends, argued both ways and scored: earnings, capex, atoms, cheap intelligence, private markets - The merry-go-round between cloud giants, AI labs and lenders - Linda in Loudoun County, and what data centres do to a household electricity bill - How Meta rents its own Hyperion data centre, and why Steve Eisman reaches for Enron - Graham's pension: one capex cycle in four wrappers - Chip-backed loans, data-centre securitisations and a CDO question from London in 2000 - Fintech funding splitting in two: Stripe and Revolut, then everyone else - Agentic payments: machines paying machines before consumers do - What happens to pensions and life insurance if the AI bubble bursts, and the likelier plateau - Four dated predictions, to be checked on 6 October 2027 Chapters: (00:00) - Cold open: Pokémon cards beat the Nasdaq (00:53) - San Francisco to Vegas: Metallica, then Money20/20 (01:39) - Singapore: fintech, fatherhood and F1 (02:16) - A confession: the one thing we got wrong (02:56) - Meeker, Evans and a16z's 90 slides (03:29) - Disclaimer (03:49) - A weather forecast from a man selling umbrellas (04:37) - Five mega trends, ten takeaways, one cauldron (05:15) - Mega trend 1: profits are outrunning prices (05:55) - A snake eating its own tail: $99bn of paper gains (06:53) - Mega trend 2: $780 billion of capex, on credit (07:58) - The merry-go-round and the three witches (09:06) - Mega trend 3: "Atoms are so back" (09:48) - Linda in Loudoun County: the $14 to $37 bill (10:40) - The GPUs arrive on time. The grid does not (11:07) - Mega trend 4: Jevons paradox and cheap intelligence (12:09) - The AI budget is your headcount (12:27) - Mega trend 5: unicorns outweigh the Russell 2000 (13:26) - Prof Z: how Meta rents its own $27bn data centre (14:38) - Eisman, Enron and where the risk ends up (15:05) - Part two: Graham in Surrey, Priya in Pune (15:54) - Takeaway 1: finance is the balance sheet of AI (16:42) - Takeaway 2: one bet in four wrappers (17:27) - Takeaway 3: a six-year loan on a chip (18:21) - London, 2000: "Nobody loses. Everybody wins." (20:13) - Takeaway 4: private markets, sold late to retail (21:03) - Takeaway 5: the fees are in power, not silicon (21:48) - Takeaway 6: fintech funding splits in two (22:29) - Takeaway 7: the bank's card ledger as macro data (23:04) - Takeaway 8: AI savings get competed away (24:18) - Takeaway 9: machines paying machines (25:08) - Takeaway 10: the assistant is the new shelf (25:45) - If the AI bubble bursts: seven days, day by day (27:57) - The adult in the room: correction, then hangover (28:34) - What happens to your pension if it bursts? (28:54) - Closing wagers: Anthropic or OpenAI to list first? (30:02) - The mic drop: the slide a16z didn't write Referenced in this episode: a16z, State of Markets II (30 September 2026); a16z's $1.1 billion AI hardware fund (28 August 2026); Goldman Sachs on Q2 investment gains; Meta Hyperion and Blue Owl; Moody's on $662 billion of leases not yet commenced; Chicago Fed on AI tail risk for banks; JLARC Virginia on household bills; the VoxEU study of about 1,200 utility territories; the Bank of England FPC record (30 September 2026); Mary Meeker's Internet Trends; Benedict Evans's annual presentation; Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1. Related episodes: Why the AI Bubble Won't Burst (Even If They Say It Will); S2E28 — Revolut-ion; Could a Kitchen Table in Ohio Decide AI's Future in November?; S2E17 — SpaceX's $2 Trillion IPO vs the AI Listing Race; S2E16 — Polymarket, Kalshi and the $1B Bet on Who Knew First. Hosted by: Creators & Guests Aman Narain (https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/aman-narain) - Host Zubin Vandrevala (https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/zubin-vandrevala) - Host Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala is your payments provocateur. Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us. For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice. Transcript: Click here to view the episode transcript. (https://share.transistor.fm/s/86cdcfb4/transcript)

2. 

   28 Sept 2026

   S2E28 — Is This the Start of a Revolut-ion? Inside the Rise of Nik Storonsky's $115bn Bank

   Click here to watch a video of this episode. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ9FfVmpWHg) Revolut is valued at $115 billion, holds more than £50 billion of customer money, and lends out about £2 billion of it. What does a bank that refuses to lend actually do with a deposit, and what happens when the man who built it is the only part that cannot be automated? In September Nik Storonsky won conditional approval from the OCC to form Revolut Bank US, sat down with the Banque de France in a black suit and a red tie, and watched two data breaches reach Revolut customers inside a fortnight. The founder who spent years being publicly rude about regulators is now dressing for them, and for the investors who will price a Revolut listing at up to $200 billion. Aman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala trace Storonsky from Dolgoprudny and the Lehman trading floor to the Revolut of today, and ask whether he has built anything that works when he is not in the room. Key takeaways: 1. Revolut's scar is Lehman, not Moscow: it lends under 5p of every deposit pound, where Nubank lends roughly 58p. 2. Nubank, Revolut and SoFi run the same flywheel but answer one question differently: a deposit is for credit, for float, or for software. 3. Removing credit risk bought rate risk. When rates fall the float shrinks, as Wise has already shown. 4. Citi, HSBC and Standard Chartered retreating as Revolut advances is one spreadsheet read from opposite ends. 5. Storonsky took judgment out of lending, hiring and investing, and kept all of it in one room: his own. Topics covered: - Dolgoprudny, the 1998 default, Phystech and the Lehman floor on 15 September 2008 - A sub-5% loan-to-deposit ratio, the contested 40-50% return on equity, and the ECB's 4.5% capital add-on - Nubank, Revolut and SoFi: one flywheel, three ladders - Mexico's 15% savings rate, and the rate risk inside the float - Forty direct reports, Karma scores and five risk chiefs in seven years - Revolut Pay, Spanish ATMs, a £500,000 private bank, Revolut People and AIR - John Reed's Citi, success transfer, and the incumbents' retreat from retail - Ports versus platforms, and why Durbin may tax the US charter - The case against: fines, a secret ECB freeze, two breaches and sanctions - The IPO test, and two closing wagers Chapters: (00:00) - Cold open: Nik Storonsky's suit, Washington, April 2026 (01:09) - A risk episode, and the suit is the tell (01:39) - Zuckerberg's hoodie, and a tie for the central bank (02:42) - Disclaimer (03:31) - Dolgoprudny, 1984: a company town for physicists (04:54) - Two currency collapses before he turned fourteen (05:42) - The childhood hypothesis versus the trader's arbitrage (06:19) - Phystech: raw brain power, then character, then craft (06:59) - Lehman, 25 Bank Street, 15 September 2008 (08:12) - Credit Suisse, and his one rule on complex risk (08:56) - Six pence in every pound: the bank that won't lend (09:41) - The 40-50% return on equity claim, audited (10:24) - Zero risk weights and the ECB's 4.5% add-on (11:35) - Nubank vs Revolut: same flywheel, opposite ladders (13:27) - SoFi's third ladder: renting out the crown jewels (14:02) - What is a deposit for? Credit, float or software (14:50) - Mexico's 15% savings rate is a marketing budget (16:06) - The float's weather problem: rate cuts and Wise (17:02) - Inside the building: forty direct reports (17:43) - Jensen Huang's sixty, and the span-of-control question (19:36) - Karma: compliance priced into the bonus (21:06) - Hiring as a live exam, and millionaires in Krakow (22:08) - Five chief risk officers in seven years (22:34) - A different clock speed: 80 million customers (23:46) - Revolut Pay: an ad network with a checkout attached (25:01) - He built ATMs: Barcelona, Madrid, Milan (26:14) - Branches as billboards, and a £500,000 private bank (26:38) - Revolut People: the HR department became a product (27:35) - AIR: when super-app clutter becomes a moat (29:39) - The day the assistant moves money (29:56) - QuantumLight: taking judgment out of capital (31:04) - Risk doesn't vanish, it conserves (31:15) - Canary Wharf: Reuters, HSBC and Lehman in one view (32:20) - The oldest ambition in banking: to be everywhere (32:52) - John Reed, 1977: Citi builds its own ATMs (34:22) - Success transfer: Citigold, forty years early (35:17) - Nostalgia is not a strategy: the incumbents retreat (36:45) - Forty countries live, a hundred targeted (37:41) - Same spreadsheet, read from opposite ends (38:50) - They banked ports, he banks a platform (40:08) - Durbin: the US charter that may cost interchange (40:54) - A wager: will Revolut exit a country before 100? (41:58) - The founder's stake and the Jamie Dimon comparison (43:39) - Project Shasta: borrowing against his own shares (44:34) - Not the next Dimon: the next Elon (45:30) - Counting the parallels, from first principles to pay (47:26) - X.com, 1999: the everything bank Musk lost (48:17) - The case against: prosecution and defence (49:04) - Count one: fines and a secret ECB freeze (50:09) - Count two: 700 passports and a fake Italian request (53:02) - A second breach: DriveWealth (54:14) - Jackie Stewart: brakes let you go faster (55:05) - Count three: sanctions, and his father's designation (57:08) - The real test is a stock exchange (57:41) - On Wise's multiple, Revolut is a $27 billion company (59:02) - Ireland: four in five adults, but not the salary (01:00:00) - Closing wagers: credit in America or twenty directs? (01:00:47) - Has he built anything that works without him? (01:02:41) - Kitesurfing: the one variable he can't control Referenced in this episode: Revolut 2025 annual report; Revolut $115bn secondary share sale (July 2026); OCC conditional approval for Revolut Bank US (3 September 2026); ECB restrictions on new EEA products (from July 2025); fraudulent government data requests and the DriveWealth breach (September 2026); Storonsky in conversation with David Rubenstein (April 2026); the FT's Patrick Jenkins in Paris; Citi's 2021 consumer exits; John Reed and Citi's 1977 ATM network; Elon Musk's X.com (1999). Related episodes: Nubank and the Purple Revolution; Wedge, Ladder, Driver; S2E20 — The Real Price of PayPal. Hosted by: Creators & Guests Aman Narain (https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/aman-narain) - Host Zubin Vandrevala (https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/zubin-vandrevala) - Host Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala is your payments provocateur. Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us. For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice. Transcript: Click here to view the episode transcript. (https://share.transistor.fm/s/49ad8545/transcript)

3. 

   18 Sept 2026

   $2 Trillion U-Turn: Did AI Just Grow a Conscience?

   Click here to watch a video of this episode. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEfdfichrxM) In seventy-two hours the AI industry asked to slow down, OpenAI shelved a trillion-dollar listing, and the President called the whole thing a hoax on speakerphone. Everyone called it the week AI flip-flopped; nobody did, and one supplier gets paid either way. On Saturday 12 September, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published We Must Pace the Frontier, a call for an AI slowdown in how fast frontier models gain capability. Within hours Elon Musk replied "Dario is right" and Sam Altman told Fortune there would be no OpenAI IPO this year. By Monday, President Trump had called AI fears a hoax and phoned Jensen Huang live at the All-In Summit. The twist: the call for an AI slowdown came in the same quarter Anthropic booked $11.5 billion of revenue and positive adjusted operating profit. Aman Narain, solo this week while Zubin Vandrevala is in London, breaks down who actually wants an AI slowdown, who only says so, and who gets paid whichever way it goes. Key takeaways: 1. Almost nobody changed position this week. What changed is which kind of doom each player chose to say out loud. 2. Read the capex, the PAC cheques and the IPO calendar: what AI leaders say moves weekly, what they spend does not. 3. The call for an AI slowdown arrived in the quarter Anthropic proved the frontier pays. 4. Pacing is not stopping. In a boom Nvidia sells the training, in a slowdown it sells the testing, and inference carries on regardless. 5. The doom that decides the US midterms is not extinction. It is the electricity bill of a voter who lives near a data centre. Topics covered: - Five things in fourteen days: escaped agents, a resignation, Nvidia buying Hugging Face, the essay, the speakerphone - A four-box map: AGI believers and sceptics, accelerators and restrainers, and the two people who move - Three dooms and two booms: extinction, displacement and deflation against capability and capital - Say versus pay: Sam Altman's four positions in eleven years - David Sacks's cartel charge, Jensen Huang's inspectors, and 100 gigawatts of physics - The circular trade: Nvidia's equity in its customers, and the Lucent precedent - Why an AI slowdown does not shrink Nvidia's order book - Data centres, power bills and the midterms - China: invoked everywhere, included nowhere - Four calls for 2026, including where Anthropic's IPO prices - Closing wagers: prophet or cynic? Chapters: (00:00) - Cold open: $2 trillion changes its mind (01:06) - Disclaimer (01:21) - Five things, fourteen days: agents slip the harness (01:48) - 150 million views and "Jacob is correct" (02:58) - Nvidia buys the platform that got attacked (03:15) - From Machines of Loving Grace to Pace the Frontier (04:22) - "Dario is right": Musk, Altman and a shelved IPO (04:46) - Whoever wins AI wins: the President on speakerphone (05:20) - The map: three dooms, two booms (06:29) - Who sits where, and the two who move (07:33) - Say versus pay: Altman's four positions (08:37) - $11.5 billion: pacing arrives the day it pays (09:52) - Going around the table: Sacks calls it a cartel (10:45) - Inspectors with staff badges (11:29) - 100 gigawatts: why the frontier was slowing anyway (12:01) - The circular trade: Nvidia's $50 billion loop (12:38) - We've seen this film: Lucent, Nortel, $8.1 billion (13:12) - Same machine, quieter number: the capex clock (13:44) - Two invoices from the same supplier (14:26) - The doom that votes: a retired teacher in Ohio (16:17) - China: invoked everywhere, included nowhere (18:21) - Four calls: Anthropic lists, OpenAI waits (18:58) - Damodaran's $1.2 trillion hurdle (19:34) - Concorde versus the 747 (19:57) - The midterms: her bill is the ballot paper (21:16) - Closing wagers: prophet or cynic? (23:01) - Doom is a language, capex is a fact (23:45) - Kierkegaard and the dizziness of freedom Referenced in this episode: Dario Amodei, We Must Pace the Frontier; Dario Amodei, Machines of Loving Grace; Jacob Coxon's resignation and Evan Hubinger's reply; Nvidia's $12.93bn agreement to acquire Hugging Face; Sam Altman's Fortune interview; the All-In Summit call between President Trump and Jensen Huang; Anthropic and OpenAI Q2 2026 results as reported by the FT, CNBC and WSJ; Aswath Damodaran on Anthropic's valuation; Annenberg Public Policy Center polling on data centres; Lucent and Nortel vendor financing; Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety. Related episodes: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI: The $2tn IPO Boom; Google I/O 2026: Sundar Pichai's 25-Year AI Long Game; S2E24 on Google's AI leadership reshuffle. Hosted by: Creators & Guests Aman Narain (https://www.a2zfintech.com/people/aman-narain) - Host Aman Narain writes at amanwhoblogs.substack.com. Zubin Vandrevala, your payments provocateur, sat this one out in London. Enjoying A2Z Fintech? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It is the single biggest signal to the Apple algorithm and how new listeners in our world find us. For information and entertainment only. Not financial advice. Transcript:

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