Verizon CEO Dan Schulman at Semafor World Economy

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Thank you, Andrew.

[00:00:02]>> So, we're here to discuss the future, the next frontier. Um, you are known for many things. You're serial CEO. Um, just taken on this role at Verizon. Um, you're also known for your love of martial arts and particularly Krab Magar, which I knew very little about.

[00:00:18]So, I did my research. I'm told that it emphasizes rapid neutralization of threats through strikes to vulnerable areas. Has that been useful over the years in your dealings with journalists?

[00:00:29]Dan, >> when they're within range? Yes.

[00:00:33]>> Right. Right. Right. Okay. That's good.

[00:00:34]Good.

[00:00:36]>> Always good to frame a discussion like this. Um so uh let's go to your decision to um to take on this role. You you were on the board of Verizon. Um last year you came off the board and took the CEO role. Um Verizon have been losing customers. You're in tough tough competition um in this market.

[00:00:55]uh and you've had to take some quite tough decisions early on, but in the first quarter of this year, the first um earnings this year, you announced um a pickup in uh subscribers. Now, what was that due to? What have you done in those early months in the role that turned things around?

[00:01:15]>> Uh a lot of prayer mostly. Um so um you know I was a reluctant CEO uh coming in. I was very very happily retired. Um um massively in love with my wife. We were spending time at our ranch in Montana and uh everything seemed actually quite great. Um and uh then you know to your point um yeah we have been losing market share. Um you our market cap had gone from first in the industry to last in the industry.

[00:01:56]Our future PE ratio was the lowest in the industry which is kind of a reflection of what the street thought about our future growth uh potential.

[00:02:06]And we knew we had to make a change. Um the board asked me if I would consider it. Um I said no twice. Um and then you know really out of sense of loyalty um I decided you know Verizon's an iconic American company had so much potential.

[00:02:28]Uh you know I know the industry I because I was on the board I knew the management team pretty well. Uh and so I felt like I might be able to make a difference. So I took the job. I think the first thing was just to be very clear with the company that you know what reality was because there's a lot of pride inside big companies all the time. And you know what I basically said is uh this is going to be very hard to hear but we're losing we're losing customers.

[00:02:58]We're losing confidence. uh we're shrinking and that has to stop. Like there that is not going to be the way going forward. We're going to play to win. Um and we're going to try to reclaim our market leadership and that's going to involve a lot of very tough decisions. We need to invest uh back in our customers. We need to take out a lot of costs to make sure we go do that.

[00:03:22]There are going to be layoffs associated with that. Um, and so I was very blunt, um, very upfront with what had to happen. And to my delight, you know, employees are adults. They understand what's going on. They want to hear that their leader understands what's happening, that there is a vision for how we win uh, in the future. And, um, and then things started ricocheting through the culture. Um I was very strong on that had to change as well. We couldn't be bureaucratic, hierarchical, processoriented, uh risk averse. We had to really explode that part of our culture, embrace other parts of it, but explode that. And um that uh we were not going to seed market share anymore. And by the way, like first quarter, you know, we put on over a million uh net ads. Um I think it really surprised um the street, but it also showed everybody in the company that we're capable of doing that. And success tends to lead to more confidence and hopefully more success uh going forward.

[00:04:43]So, we're off to a good start, but to your point, you know, it involved a lot of hard decisions and a lot of very um honest but somewhat brutal conversations.

[00:04:54]>> People want to be treated like adults.

[00:04:55]If you level with them, they're going to take them on screen.

[00:04:57]>> Yeah.

[00:04:58]>> Um you have also defined that part of the company's problem was it identified itself as a network company. It was not thinking about customers. It was thinking about the network more than it was about its customers. How do you make that shift?

[00:05:12]It's another part of the cultural evolution of the or revolution actually of the of the company. We are very engineering focused. Um you know uh network excellence is at the core uh of Verizon but it's not enough. That's not enough. Like um we probably do have objectively speaking the best network but the differential on that is less than it used to be. And we now need to do all of the basic stuff like when somebody calls us, we got to take care of the problem the first time, right away. We have to treat people like humans, not like accounts. Um, we need to when somebody comes in the store, we need to simplify promotions. We need to simplify our plans and just make it easier for people to do business with us. Um, you know, we have an initiative inside the company. It's called every customer has a name. Um, and that's been like one of our most powerful initiatives. It's like like we should treat everybody like it is a member of our family, a friend, somebody we love because they have a name. They have an issue. They are trying to get something solved. These phones are your most intimate device that you have. You know, unfortunately, you know, when you go out with your wife, they're next to you on the table and they're always like, "Take your phone off the table." I'm like, "Okay." You know, they're like a foot >> Nobody on your phones right now.

[00:06:40]>> They're a foot away from you when you go to sleep, you know, like some people take them into the bathroom. It's crazy.

[00:06:47]It's like like you can never be away.

[00:06:49]And so it's an incredibly important service. And with AI and everything that's happening right now, connectivity, whether you're mobile or at home, through broadband services, through AI infrastructure is more important than ever before. But um >> driving at those customer needs is essential.

[00:07:11]>> I think of it as the top of the pyramid of Maslo's hierarchy of needs now. Um >> unfortunately. Yeah.

[00:07:17]>> Um so does that make it totally economically insensitive or do you see uh I mean you've got a span of business customers and consumers that you're serving. How much sensitivity is there when the economy is in flux?

[00:07:34]Not that much honestly. It is any moment. No, >> we're not. I mean, it's >> probably one of the last things you're going to turn off >> the um so look, our theme is the next frontier. Um how do you define a company like Verizon's role in the AI revolution? What have you what do you have to do to be at the center of this?

[00:07:59]Well, I think for all of us, um, we're living in one of the most exciting times that we can possibly imagine. You know, the way I put it to the company and friends and other I mean, you know, I always wanted to live in the Renaissance age or, you know, how about like when fire was first introduced and you like I can control fire, I can keep myself warm. We we are in an age right now where so many amazing things are going to happen. This is not like any other of these evolutions from the agricultural age to the industrial age to the information technology age. This is fundamentally different. These are technologies that within the next five years are going to redefine every piece of our life. I I'm pretty much a firm believer right now and I've been kind of on the outside of this for a little while that I think that AGI is coming in the next two to four years. I actually am now moving up my my thought process on that. I think quantum will happen in the 28 time frame like three years from now and think about quantum as like a thousand times multiply everything we have by a thousand times right now and that's what quantum uh does and then shortly thereafter we'll have humanoid robotics and so >> and what's Verizon going to look like in that context? It's going to be an extraordinarily different company as every company >> uh in um >> in what way >> the world is going to be?

[00:09:44]>> Well, first of all, um we'll be um way more efficient >> in the way we do things. Um and you know, this is one of the things that I've talked to Verizon employees about.

[00:09:58]I I'm a very open person. When when when I come on stage at all employee meetings, it's me and a cup of coffee in my hand. There are no slides. There are no speaker notes.

[00:10:12]There's nothing whatsoever. I'm just kind of talking from my heart. And what I say to everybody is we live in the age of AI.

[00:10:23]You need to that's a fact. Like so there's not like like Shakespeare said that nothing is or is not but thinking makes it so so like that's just the fact we live in the age of AI. It's going to change everything. If you're scared of it that's problematic. Um and you you need to embrace it for all that it is. It will lead inevitably to um um job rotation at a minimum. at a minimum if not job displacement. And I think um um we as companies need to be responsible to make sure that our employees, our retirees, customers of ours, you know, that we provide the resources and the dollars to train them on AI.

[00:11:17]>> So on this, you as you say, you had a major layoff. Um but in the process, >> I didn't say that. You said that >> you created this $20 million kind of reskilling fund to help people with the transition to new roles and give them the skills they're going to need out in a very different marketplace. Um, is that some is that going to make enough for difference? Yeah. How do you scale that up if you're Verizon? You've you've identified this need. What can you do to get more impact behind?

[00:11:44]>> Yeah. Well, I think initially we're going to throw uh $20 million at uh enabling our employees um to reskill.

[00:11:56]Um, but my goal is to work with other CEO, Fortune 100 CEOs for all of us to put in 20, 25, $30 million, combine all of that and work also with the public sector and figuring out um what we do where workers are displaced like h how do we retrain them? To what uh do we retrain them? How do we make sure that people can embrace the skill sets that are necessary with all the new tools that are out there?

[00:12:33]>> And is that you so you pull those funds or is it everybody doing agreeing to spend a similar sum to make it work in their own companies? Yeah, my own view is we need something akin to you know what was the Manhattan project but around AI and you know like how do we work as a society as an economy uh as a democratic governance structure when you have all of this change that's going to be going on and as rapidly as you can imagine like these models are doubling in power every 3 months now. So like whatever we're using right now, we're using the latest. It's going to be obsolete in in a short amount of time.

[00:13:20]>> So this week there's a new AI fear on the horizon. That's the arrival of mythos and now an open AI similar similar model uh which you know repeatedly has exposed all sorts of vulner found all sorts of vulnerabilities in every network. Um what's your own network look like in that context? How concerned are you about vulnerabilities?

[00:13:40]>> Well, we've had access uh to the Mythos uh tool set and model. Um I think um and what they're saying about mythos is right. I mean it it does uh expose vulnerabilities. Um and I think anthropic has done the responsible thing uh by not releasing that model. I think it's incumbent on us that do critical infrastructure to use the model to identify the vulnerabilities and there will be vulnerabilities everywhere and then to figure out a action plan um to patch those vulnerabilities upgrade whatever it may be. So I think mythos will be able to help us uh do that as well and I think those vulnerabilities were out there um they were going to be identified at some point or another. Uh I'm actually glad that we have a shot of uh getting to them before anybody else does.

[00:14:34]>> Right. So final final word. Is there one thing you found helpful for keeping your employees focused at a time of this much flux?

[00:14:45]>> Well, I think um everybody wants to play for a team that wins in the market.

[00:14:54]I mean that's just kind of like success sort of breeds success and people want to feel proud >> of what they're doing. I think rightfully so the services that we offer are things that people need like we need to do a fantastic job at providing those. Um and we need to um think about how do we satisfy customer needs better than anybody else can and establish a brand that stands for trust. And that's really, you know, the ultimate goal that I want us all to strive for.

[00:15:28]>> Yeah. Thanks very much for talking us through that.

[00:15:30]>> Okay. Thank you so much, Andrew.