Modern CTO How Yahoo is Taming the Modern Digital Wilderness with Lee Zen, CTO
Oct 20, 2025
Lee Zen, the CTO at Yahoo, shares insights into the company's evolution in the digital landscape after 30 years. He discusses how Yahoo is using AI and cloud technology to enhance user experience and navigate the complexities of the internet. Lee emphasizes the importance of authenticity and transparency in tech leadership, along with innovative AI features like email summaries and fantasy sports tools. He also highlights the mix of modern and legacy systems at Yahoo and the cultural shifts required for successful AI integration.
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Modernizing The Original Mission
- Yahoo's mission remains to help people navigate an exponentially wilder digital wilderness.
- Lee Zen says they now use AI and cloud to modernize that mission across mail, news, finance, and weather.
Advertising-Funded Yet Privacy-Focused
- Yahoo remains primarily advertising-funded while offering subscriptions for premium features.
- They prioritize relevant, privacy-conscious ads to keep the web open and accessible.
Shift Workloads To Cloud Native
- Move workloads to cloud-native platforms to unlock development and iteration velocity.
- Use managed services to avoid hardware delays and accelerate feature delivery.