YouSaid · the spoken record

Jennifer Scanlon

lines on the record: 71
first: 2026-04-27
most recent: 2026-04-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It is. I have to say, I'll give a little IBM shout out because I love Arvind, but I was walking through O'Hare and they have their IBM Quantum Chandelier sitting right there next to the dinosaur. And I mean, I skidded to a halt while I was pulling my luggage. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's a quantum chandelier. And it's really exciting because, you know, I am here in Chicago and we at UL have been involved in creating the quantum ecosystem that Chicago has been promoting and we're excited about what's next in that set of technology. So we can talk about that another time.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, for us, it's going to be this continuation, as I like to say, of growth and relevance. We will continue to be on the forefront of innovation and continue to find ways to make safety relevant for whatever innovation comes next. You know, I can geek out and get excited about quantum for a second as something that's the future extension of what's post-AI or what makes AI better. But those are areas that we continue to try to stay involved in and think about not just the electrical safety of 132 years ago, the electrical safety needed in data centers today, but what is coming next.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think where it's heading is it's more of the standards development organizations and the industry bodies coming together. And because they will be the most knowledgeable about what should work. You know, I mean, you always want that deep industry expertise when you're developing any type of safety standard that then moves into regulation. I think if you start with regulation tops down, you don't always get to the right answer and it's not always grounded in the science and the engineering that it needs to be. So I would advocate industry groups with standards development organizations.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you had to pick a structure for that to happen, and again, you manage a complicated safety structure. So I'm just asking you abstractly. If you had to pick a structure for that to happen in, does that look like a government regulation? Does it look like an industry body? Does it look like a notprofit that controls a for-profit testing center? How would you design this?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What do you mean by both? All of the above. I think that the tech industry, it would be ideal if they came together and said, here's what we believe collectively will help, you know, keep the world safe and then we'll adhere to that versus letting each one just go off follow whatever path they think is best.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think they're trying to ground in science and engineering and certainly in different ways to use AI and different models and LLMs are one approach, but there's lots of others. I think that It's probably a false choice to say, you know, let us do what we want and therefore we'll prevent this from destroying. I think you need both”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think this is to me one of the exciting pieces of when we went public and funded the endowment for our not-for-profit. And so we've talked a lot about the standards development organization, UL Standards and Engagement. We haven't talked so much about the UL research institutes and the areas where they're focused. And one of their institutes is focused really on AI safety and how should the world be better educated of what would be considered safe and where they should dig deeper. And so I think there's a lot more to come on not just the research around that, but also around what is that step to raise the consumer's consciousness of the fact that, as I like to say, by the way, if something's free, you're the product. So if you're giving your data away free, you know, back to...”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“UL certification for firmware updates on your cameras on a cadence is just maybe the hardest sell of all. So if it's not going to be the consumers that do it and we have a government that seems checked out of it, this is what I keep circling. It's what I was most excited to talk to you about. It's what I keep circling back to is where does the pressure come from for people to participate in a safety program?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think that this is just a market problem? I think maybe this is what I am coming back to over and over again throughout this conversation is I really wish the consumer market demanded more of these companies. But that's just a collective action problem. I think it's totally rational for most people to just pick the cheapest power strip that Amazon has on the first page. And I can't really blame them for it. At the same time, maybe we don't have a federal regulator who's going to step in and say, okay, to keep everybody safe, we're going to demand the certification. Maybe we don't have insurance companies who are going to go demand them of Amazon. And then when it comes to software, it seems like the tech industry in particular is utterly resistant to anyone telling them what they can do. And the idea that.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, and we do have a service that focuses back to that functional safety of that embedded software or that efficacy of that product being connected to the internet and the cybersecurity of that. And so there are standards around that and there are ways to approach it. But I think what you're highlighting is an opportunity to make consumers more aware of what they should be looking for and demanding as they purchase their products.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think the set of standards that exist today really facilitate that trust that consumers should have with products that are made anywhere in the world, that if you're adhering to those standards, if you've got a third-party tester that has endorsed and certified that you've met that, I think that's”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we have long and deep relationships with customers all over the world and long and deep relationships with customers in China. Those customers see value in testing to standards and following regulations and rules. And we will continue to support them in the ways that they need.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Brendan is not a subtle man. He doesn't do things in the shadows. He says, You're beholden to the Chinese government, and you're saying that is absolutely not true. And it was enough for you to walk away and say, we don't want to be a part of this.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, those requirements were really around how they wanted to run the program in the future. And it was, you know, just a set of requirements that we didn't feel that we were the best participants to do that”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, when the cyber trust mark was first announced, I mean, we're proud. We have been, you know, we're a proud American company. We've been here for 132 years. You know, if our government asks us to serve, we, of course, will step up and serve and support whatever they need. And so we were really pleased with the work that we were able to do to help set up the lead administrator as a lead administrator kind of help set up the parameters of that and work closely with the FCC. When the FCC decided that they wanted additional requirements from the lead administrator, we realized that we weren't the best fit for that. easily transferred that intellectual property and that work back to the FCC and they continued down their path.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, our reported revenue last year, and we report revenue by point of customer. So if you're a U.S. customer but we're testing your product in China because you happen to have an innovation center there, we will report that in the US. So last year, 42%, I believe, of our revenue was point of customer in the United States, 25% of our point of customer is China, about 17% is AMIA, and the rest is kind of the rest of Asia and the rest of the world. So China has been very important for us. We've been in there 40 years. We've got a joint venture partnership, and we have independently wholly owned labs as well. And we work very closely with a significant number of Chinese manufacturers to help them get their products to markets all over the world.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what we feel, I mean, we can absolutely scale. We've scaled all over the world, and we like to say, you know, we meet our customers where they are. So if you're doing innovation in China, we've got our testing labs in China ready to go. If you're doing innovation here in the United States, we've got our labs here ready to go. If you're manufacturing anywhere in the world, our field inspection team will visit your plant four times a year to ensure that you're manufacturing in accordance with the standards that we tested to. So we've been growing, we'll continue to grow.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can you scale up fast enough to meet the flood of new products that again, a lithium-ion battery, a high efficiency motor in a dream, you can start a company and make 500 products tomorrow. Can you scale up to meet that flood in terms of testing?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Amazon and UL together are suing some e-bike manufacturers or selling on that platform with fake UL certifications. You have to catch them. So you have an enforcement team that's actually scanning Amazon for fake UL certifications.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So the Consumer Product Safety Commission came to UL standards engagement, UL Solutions at the time, and said, can you very rapidly write a standard and help us get our arms around this? And we did that. And again, it helped with the safety. And then one of the key areas that we have is market surveillance and anti-counterfeiting. So we are constantly working with customs agents and competitors who are putting the UL mark properly on their product who will highlight a product that's in the market that's not meeting the codes and the standards. We've won some significant lawsuits around these cases where there are unsafe batteries, uncertified situations when they're not in compliance with the law.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's all just on Amazon. And Amazon doesn't seem to be enforcing any of these standards at all. How do you think about that? How do you think about just the prevalence of high-powered lithium-ion batteries everywhere without the consumer demand for your certification?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We profiled some of them, Hodo and Fantic are two that have just sprung up and they make tools. The other day I saw one of those companies had like a sawsall, like a lithium ion handheld sawsal, which is just a lot of power. If you're going to put that much torque in a little motor, that's a lot of power you're going to draw. And I look at these companies and they're all, you know, they're obviously all based in China. And whether or not they have UL certification is irrelevant to the consumers buying all these products because products are cool. They're legitimately cool products. And there's in a race of innovation happening there.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fair enough. Let me ask you what the other race condition because, again, I think it would be great if everything was certified and everything was safe. And then I kind of look at the markets that we're in and there's just an explosion of things all the time. And the one that really strikes me is everything with a battery in it. I go on Amazon. We're profiling more and more of these companies here at the Verge all the time. If you've got a lithium ion battery and a high efficiency motor and a dream, you can start a company that makes 500 products today. Yeah.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, now you all 3115 is just really around AI embedded in products with AI data centers, there's 70 other standards that we test to today around the safety of the electricity, the components, the chillers, the DC current coming in, the inverters, all of that. And then there's a whole host that we're hearing from our customers that with the rapid change in the amount of power, the rapid change just in the thermal dynamics of GPUs versus CPUs, the rapid change in the way that you're going to put a megawatt of power into a rack or that you're shifting the water cooling. So there's a whole set of new standards way outside of UL3115. We've had two summits with customers on AI data center summits on how they're thinking about their needs.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm just curious because that's the other arms race. I look at this from the outside and I say no one can keep up with these labs. They're paying all the money that even the competition between them doesn't seem to be keeping them in check. The idea that they're all going to sign up for a literal check mark from UL that says they're safe when they're all racing to an IPO. I'm just very curious where that pressure is going to come from. I don't know if it's going to come from an industrial manufacturing supplier at this point in time. I think it might have to come from a government.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, they've come to us and said we need a standard. Help us think about it. And so as we start to develop it, we bring them into a room and then we've got our PhD AI researchers in there with them. And it's a dialogue grounded in science with then a consensus of, okay, we think that this actually will really help us. Let's make sure that that's in there.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it's interesting, and I know you've spoken with some of our large customers recently, and I think it's coming from those large multinational customers who care deeply about how their products are used in environments and want their relevance and longevity to be out there. So they don't want to find themselves in a situation of failure.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a really great question because it comes back to one of the concerns or questions that I actually have about AI, it comes back to that veracity of the trade. Really be appealing to these development companies around does that model have the longevity to continue to provide the answers, the intelligence, the information that is grounded in something that is actually true and correct.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other dynamic that's happening in AI specifically is that the models themselves are getting ever more capable. And the idea that you need to build a specific AI application that's a wrapper around the model that forces it to do what you want. Who knows how that's going to play out? But you can see, well, maybe actually I just need a subscription to Claude and I don't need a subscription to some application that is powered by Claude because Claude can just do it for me if those companies are engaged with you, how does this work? If Anthropic and OpenAI and the rest aren't engaged with you, how does this work?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or not. And we have plenty of tests that we do that have absolutely nothing to do with an actual regulation but have to do with the fact that our customer has decided that this is important for their brand, for their end consumers, and that that drives the demand for what we have to offer.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think that's where getting back to our customers and what they're looking for, where that comes in and how they're going to level the playing field of their competition. And at some point, the end consumer does speak. was in manufacturing for 20 years. I don't want unsafe, you know, kilns or metal presses happening, you know, AI powered in my environment. And so there's a point at which you're going to want that verification, that validation, that endorsement that what you're installing in your industrial environment or what you're bringing into your home as a consumer is safe. And so that's where I do think the end user at some point has a voice because they're going to decide, do I want to buy this product?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The big opportunity in AI right now is software development, the cost of producing new software is dropping precipitously and may drop to zero because the tools are so good at it and tools like Claude Cowork and OpenClaw can just go do things for you all the time, which is really fascinating. That means the number of providers of software, the number of providers of AI empowered software is just going to skyrocket. Like it might get away from you in a way that when you describe the market making capability or the market making function of UL, everyone is going to get this certification. So we're all on the same level playing field. Well, if the playing field is that it's a bunch of teenagers writing applications and erasements who don't care about you, it might just totally get away from you. How do you think about that balance of there's going to be big players who want to participate and get the logo mark and then maybe there's going to be an entrepreneur saying, you know, I can make you this building control software much cheaper who never actually comes to you.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it has to go into how the people designing those models. You know, so how are they building out, you know, what is the veracity of the data source that they use to train the models? And so that's outlined in our standard of how should they make decisions about that. And so I love that you focus on how decisions are made. When I look at UL 3115, I think that it is a standard to help guide those decisions as AI is being embedded in products.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“AI models Really, rest upon that predictive modeling. But our focus is not on getting into the black box of the code. Our focus is on establishing, you know, I'm going to call it over 200 criteria around how internally when they're making decisions about their code development, how they should think about bias, how they should think about transparency, how they should think about fairness and privacy. And, you know, the whole...”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is just a philosophical question. These AI systems are fundamentally non deterministic, right? They're not predictable in the way that they operate. And that actually is what makes them powerful, right? There's the bad side of hallucinations and them posting to their own weird internal Facebook that they've built for themselves. And then there's the good side of, oh, that means they're creative. Like they can write, they can do software development in a way that a deterministic system really could not do before. How do you test that? the mechanism of testing whether an AI-powered building control software is always going to do what it says if the engine powering it is inherently unpredictable.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you mentioned your new standard URL 3115. It's a pretty wide ranging standard, right? It's everything from data centers to consumer applications. I think the first two products certified under it are out or the certifications were received. They're like building control applications from what I understand. That to me is, okay, we're going to certify a building control application to make sure it doesn't go haywire and like turn up the heat and all the units or whatever a building control application might be able to do. All the elevators are going to go crazy.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not directly engaged with open AI or anthropic. We certainly have done a fair amount of work with Meta through the years and most of the hyperscalers and more on the product side. But these continue to be topics of conversation that our chief scientist and our PhD researchers in AI are out there promoting and continuing to try to push the rock up the hill.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I am optimistic that there are global forces around this because, again, multinational companies don't just need to follow regulation in the United States. They need to follow what's happening in the EU, what's happening across Asia. And when you look at the influence of different countries, again, different authorities having jurisdiction in some of these topics, I do think it will expand. But I agree with you. There's not any, you know, kind of tops down forcing function right now to bring them to the table.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The market is getting farther and farther away from wanting to comply. Right. So I'll give you the example here. You know, the Biden administration really pushed for AI safety. And they had a set of standards that they wanted to promulgate. President Obama was on the show talking about the need for AI safety. And his comparison was very explicitly, we failed to regulate social media at hurt people. We're not going to screw that up with AI. And we at least want the labs to publish their testing at the very least. Trump administration showed up. All that is basically gone, right? That Biden-era EO is no longer in effect. It's a free-for-all. What is bringing the Frontier labs to the table with you? What is bringing OpenAI or anthropic or XAI to the table?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. That seems very important, right? That's the heart of the enterprise to protect the sanctity of the testing. In the context of AI, but even in the context of batteries, which I want to talk about at length actually, it feels like”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my personal framework is ground in data. I am a data person, and I think you need to have enough data and pressure test it to make a good decision. I believe organizationally in empowering people that, you know, if your job is to run X, then you should be grounding in data and making decisions around that. And then there's a certain level that they should, you know, potentially get bubbled up to me. But a lot of times, you know, I think the people closest to closest to the customer, closest to the decisions need to make that. There is one set of decisions here at UL that I will never overrule, and that is the scientific decisions that our scientists, our engineers, our lab technicians make. Every once in a while, a customer is not happy with. A report or a decision that we have made, and it can get raised to me. And I think my team.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Value of tech and IP, but I'm a lifelong safety freak and I really believe that, you know, some of this stuff could turn products into being inherently unsafe and we need to do our best to prevent that from happening.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just bring Know it's early days, and I completely agree with you that we've got to get our arms around this. There are a number of standards development organizations around the world, you know, not just UL, but IEC, ISO, others that are coming together and saying that this is necessary, this is important. We will continue to advocate various governments, authorities having jurisdiction, tech industry associations, others to continue to pursue this. But it is indeed a, I'm going to call it an uphill battle where the tech industry likes to have their own approach and will cloak themselves in intellectual property and proprietary standards. And I get that. I started my career at IBM. I understand, you know, the...”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I can point you right now to AI powered children's toys that are completely off the rails. And I would just bring that back to what is the enforcement mechanism? What is the choke point? There's no New York City that's going to say you can't sell teddy bears in our town unless the AI has a certification. I don't think that exists in some of these markets. Where are you finding the enforcement or the incentive structure that makes them participate?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That data was fair, that it remains private, that it's transparent, that there's, you know, lack of bias in the algorithm. And because all of that determines how that product actually performs. And so that's the perspective that we have. But back to your first comment about the technology industry being very resistant to others setting standards or guidelines or regulations. We fervently believe that third party independent testing inspection certification leads to better outcomes for society.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know for us, we focus on products. We focus on product safety and functional safety of products would be when you embed software, let's say, an electric vehicle, you don't want to turn the radio on and have the brakes slam, you know, because the latest software download changed the if-then-else statements and you find yourself in a safety problem. So similarly with AI, you want to make sure that AI is not creating functional safety challenges, but you also want to ensure, and what we're hearing from our customers, is that they can portray, profess, that there's trust in the models. So our UL 3115 came from customers coming to us and saying, you know, and it's a great example, you know, a child's toy, how do you know that the data that was used to train that AI that's embedded in a child?”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think our customers feel that same weight, they don't want to fail. They don't want to have a product launch that's going to harm somebody either in that industrial environment or that consumer environment. And so it's a really open, honest dialogue because we're there to help them. And sometimes helping them is giving them news that they don't want to hear. But it's incumbent upon us to tell them, you know, this is these are the facts. This is what happened in the test. And now you have to go back and do something about it. And we can't advise them on how to redesign their product. That would be a breach of that trust. We have to stay agnostic and test when that product sample comes in.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, our customers, we have three segments to our business, so industrial, which customers tend to be selling their product in the B2B space. Consumer where our customers tend to be selling their products in the B2C space. And then our risk and compliance software segment where those tend to be our largest multinational, global, and strategic accounts. So our teams are out there working with the new product development teams, the quality and compliance teams in all of our customers. And our customers express their needs as they're going through their innovation cycles. We frequently have a line of sight into their product roadmaps, a line of sight into how they intend to use technology differently in innovation. And I say frequently innovation without safety is failure.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've been around for 132 years and we still speak the words of our founder, which are no by test, state the facts. And if we were to ever deviate from the highest quality standards, if we were ever to deviate from the highest quality science, it would erode the trust that our customers have in us that we've built for 132 years, and our business is trust. And so I fervently believe that we have to continue kind of this long-term view of, I use the phrase growth and relevance, grow as far as our influence and our ability to advise our customers and support them, but remain relevant. And the only way you remain relevant is if you maintain that trust.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, I was a public company CEO prior to joining UL Solutions, and I don't see any difference between this board and my previous board because there's a distinction, you know, my previous board, I had Berkshire Hathaway as my largest shareholder. And they did not sit on our board. And I was well trained that as CEO, as the management team, and as the board, we serve all shareholders, not a single shareholder. And I treat that in the same vein here. There is all of our shareholders deserve equal attention and kind of duty of care, duty of loyalty to all of them. And there is strategic value in having the right strategic relationship with the not-for-profit. And that value goes to all shareholders. So that's the way. Think about it, that's the way we treat our board meetings, that's the way we treat our management decisions.”
2026-04-27 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT