Why The AI Bubble Isn’t Dot-Com 2.0 with David Steinberg, Zeta Global Founder & CEO

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Oct 28, 2026

David Steinberg, entrepreneur and Zeta Global co-founder and CEO, explores AI-native marketing, proprietary data, and the rise of enterprise intelligence. He discusses Athena OS, custom chips, agentic commerce, and Zeta’s Palantir partnership. The conversation examines software valuations, frontier versus open models, personalization agents, and why today’s AI boom may differ from the dot-com era.

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INSIGHT

AI Winners Rebuild Their Application Layer

AI winners will embed intelligence and proprietary data into applications, not merely automate existing workflows.
Zeta re-architected its platform with 400 engineers beginning in 2017, sacrificing near-term EBITDA for an AI-native foundation.

ANECDOTE

ChatGPT Validated Zeta’s Early AI Bet

Zeta’s AI investment looked like science fiction until ChatGPT turned AI into a boardroom priority.
Revenue grew from $283 million at its 2021 IPO to more than $1.8 billion, while clients reportedly achieved 600–700% marketing returns.

ANECDOTE

Marketing Intelligence Exposed Inventory Gaps

Zeta’s demand signals revealed different regional preferences, helping a retailer understand where customers wanted skirts, pants, or dresses.
That success created an inventory problem, leading Zeta to extend marketing intelligence into supply chains and finance.

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Dan Nathan hosts David Steinberg, CEO and founder of Zeta Global, for a wide-ranging conversation recorded after Zeta Live in New York, where Steinberg says the event drove $10 of business for every dollar spent last year and expects 12–14x this year. Steinberg explains Zeta’s 2017 decision to re-architect its platform with proprietary data and AI native to the application layer, a bet he says paid off after ChatGPT made AI a boardroom priority; he cites growth from $283M trailing revenue at the 2021 IPO to about $1.8B this year and strong ROI metrics for clients. He describes intent-driven marketing built on a large opted-in data cloud, expansion into Dynamic Enterprise Intelligence, and the launch of Athena evolving into Athena OS for enterprise-wide use cases. They discuss announcements including making Athena headless and integrated with major models, a custom chip strategy, recent acquisitions like SensorAI for agentic commerce, and a partnership with Palantir Foundry tied to speed, ontology, data sovereignty, and Zeta Gov/FedRAMP. The conversation also covers public-market repricing, valuation multiples, key SaaS KPIs, and the outlook for frontier vs open models and an emerging agentic internet.

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