Photo via zetaglobal.com
Zeta Global expects revenue of just over $1.8 billion this year, against $283 million in the trailing year around its 2021 IPO, and David Steinberg, founder and CEO of Zeta Global, told Dan Nathan on RiskReversal Pod that the AI spending behind growth like that is not a repeat of the dot-com bubble.
Much of the market now asks whether AI is the 2000 bust over again. David's answer is that the largest spenders this time are already highly profitable, and that the companies he worries about are the private ones raising money at valuations he doubts they can justify.
"The dot-com bubble had a lot of public companies that were consuming massive amounts of cash with no real business. That is very different from the companies that are currently public that are doing this now."
David bet the company on AI three years before ChatGPT, persuading his private-equity backers in 2017 to give up more than $50 million a year in EBITDA so that 400 engineers could rebuild Zeta's platform from the ground up.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 48 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 arguments that matter.
RiskReversal Pod · Oct 28, 2026 · 48m · 39m saved
With David Steinberg, Founder and CEO of Zeta Global
Key Takeaways
Zeta gave up more than $50 million a year in EBITDA in 2017 to rebuild its platform around proprietary data and AI
AI companies are splitting in two: platforms built on AI from the ground up, and workflow tools that only cut headcount
Zeta returns 6x to 7x on marketing spend, against about 2x for an average competitor, by an independent Forrester measure
Athena OS now reaches beyond marketing into supply chain, finance, fraud detection and cyber protection
Athena is also available inside ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini
Today's AI spenders are profitable, unlike the dot-com companies that burned cash with no business behind them
David's worry is private AI companies other than OpenAI and Anthropic, which he said may never justify their valuations
Zeta still trades at a 70% discount to competitors on valuation multiples, in David's telling
1. A 2017 Bet on Rebuilding
David dates Zeta's turn to a 2017 board meeting. The company was earning more than $50 million a year in EBITDA, a measure of operating profit, and could have kept growing it steadily.
David persuaded Zeta's private-equity owners to rebuild the whole platform instead
"That was an interesting board meeting where I had to go in and convince a bunch of my private equity partners that we were going to re-architect our entire platform." — David Steinberg
The plan took Zeta down to roughly breakeven for several years while 400 full-time engineers rebuilt the product around Zeta's own data, with AI built into the software customers use. The relaunch went live in 2020, and by David's account the market showed no interest.
