Chain of Thought | AI Agents, Infrastructure & Engineering
Technology
About
AI is reshaping infrastructure, strategy, and entire industries. Host Conor Bronsdon talks to the engineers, founders, and researchers building breakthrough AI systems about what it actually takes to ship AI in production, where the opportunities lie, and how leaders should think about the strategic bets ahead. Chain of Thought translates technical depth into actionable insights for builders and decision-makers. New episodes weekly. Conor Bronsdon is an angel investor in AI and dev tools, Technical Ecosystem Lead at Modular, and previously led growth at AI startups Galileo and LinearB. Disclaimer: All views, opinions and statements expressed on this account are solely my own and are made in my personal capacity. They do not reflect, and should not be construed as reflecting, the views, positions, or policies of Modular. This account is not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by Modular in any way.
Episodes
- The AI Hiring Doom Loop: Applications Up 239%, Hires Down 75%
This episode of "Chain of Thought" discusses the "AI Hiring Doom Loop" with Daniel Chait, CEO of Greenhouse. Since ChatGPT's launch, job applications have increased by 239%, while hires have decreased by 75%. The conversation covers the ch…
- Every AI Agent Has an Evaluation Gap | Alex Ratner, Snorkel AI
Alex Ratner of Snorkel AI discusses the "evaluation gap" in AI agents, suggesting that the ability to build AI agents has surpassed the ability to measure them. He outlines three axes of this gap: input complexity, autonomy horizon, and ou…
- 250,000 Lines of Code/Week: Inside an AMD VP's Agent-First Workflow | Anush Elangovan
Anush Elangovan, Corporate VP of AI Software at AMD, shares his experience with AI coding agents, including processing billions of tokens per week. He also discusses rewriting a 25-year-old project and AMD
- Hallucinations Are a Data Architecture Problem | Sudhir Hasbe, Neo4j
Sudhir Hasbe, President and Chief Product Officer at Neo4j, explains that AI model hallucinations are a data architecture problem. He discusses how knowledge graphs can enhance AI reasoning and accuracy by providing structured data. Hasbe…
- Why LLMs Are Plausibility Engines, Not Truth Engines | Dan Klein
Dan Klein, co-founder and CTO of Scaled Cognition, explains why current LLMs are plausibility engines, not truth engines. He discusses the gap between AI demos and production, and introduces APT1, a model built for actions rather than toke…
- Agent Memory: The Last Battleground in the AI Stack | Richmond Alake, Oracle
Richmond Alake discusses memory engineering for AI agents, differentiating it from prompt engineering. He covers failure modes, human memory types applied to AI architecture, and the principle of controlled forgetting for production system…
- Context Poisoning Is Killing Your AI Agents: How to Stop It
Michel Tricot of Airbyte discusses the issue of "context poisoning" in AI agents and demonstrates how better data management can improve agent performance. Topics include the role of context engineering, limitations of current RAG implemen…
- I Started r/AI_Agents and Now I'm Launching a VC Fund
Yujian Tang shares his experience building the r/AI_Agents subreddit from a small community to nearly 300,000 members, alongside his event business. He details the process of launching his own venture fund and discusses AI startup valuatio…
- I Built an AI Coworker That Runs 90% of My Day
Sterling Chin discusses his AI assistant, MARVIN, which handles 90% of his workday by automating tasks like meeting notes and calendar management. He explains the setup process, including personality and writing rules, and how MARVIN funct…
- How Intercom Cut $250K/Month by Ditching GPT for Qwen
Intercom’s Chief AI Officer, Fergal Reid, discusses replacing GPT with a fine-tuned Qwen model to reduce costs and enhancing the Fin customer service agent's resolution rate. He explores technical strategies including custom re-rankers, RA…
- How Block Deployed AI Agents to 12,000 Employees in 8 Weeks w/ MCP | Angie Jones
Angie Jones from Block discusses how her team deployed AI agents to 12,000 employees in 8 weeks using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The episode explores the development of the open-source agent Goose, security guardrails, the impact of…
- Gemini 3 & Robot Dogs: Inside Google DeepMind's AI Experiments | Paige Bailey
Paige Bailey from Google DeepMind joins to discuss the Google AI ecosystem, including Gemini 3, Gemma models, and developer tools like Anti-Gravity IDE. The conversation also covers robotics, infrastructure projects like Project Suncatcher…
- Explaining Eval Engineering | Galileo's Vikram Chatterji
Vikram Chatterji explains 'eval engineering,' differentiating it from basic evaluations by treating it as crucial infrastructure for shipping AI. He covers why generic metrics plateau, the importance of continuous learning loops and human…
- Debunking AI's Environmental Panic | Andy Masley
This episode features Andy Masley and host Conor Bronsdon debunking common environmental claims about AI. They discuss a significant error in the book "Empire of AI" regarding data center water usage and provide factual context on AI's wat…
- The Critical Infrastructure Behind the AI Boom | Cisco CPO Jeetu Patel
Cisco CPO Jeetu Patel joins host Conor Bronsdon on Chain of Thought to discuss the critical infrastructure, energy, security, and data pipeline requirements for large-scale AI. Patel identifies infrastructure limits, a trust deficit in AI…
- Beyond Transformers: How Liquid AI Is Rethinking LLM Architecture | Maxime Labonne
Maxime Labonne joins Conor Bronsdon to discuss Liquid AI's hybrid LLM architecture, which combines transformers with convolutional layers. This approach aims to improve inference speed, reduce latency, and decrease model size for effective…
- Architecting AI Agents: The Shift from Models to Systems | Aishwarya Srinivasan
Aishwarya Srinivasan discusses the need to architect AI agents as complete software systems rather than focusing solely on models. The conversation covers the evolution from prompt to context engineering, evaluation-driven development, and…
- The Accidental Algorithm | Humans of AI Crossover with Writer's Melisa Russak
This episode features Melisa Russak discussing her unexpected path to discovering machine learning algorithms and her insights into how WRITER leverages curiosity-driven research and accidental discoveries for innovation in enterprise AI.
- After Code Gen: What Graphite Is Building for the Post-AI Dev Stack | Greg Foster
Greg Foster, Co-Founder & CTO of Graphite, explains how AI coding tools have shifted software development bottlenecks from code generation to code reviews. He discusses the rise of autonomous agents, the pressure on the human-centric "oute…
- Vercel's Playbook for AI Agents: From Vibe Check to Production | Malte Ubl
Malte Ubl, CTO of Vercel, shares Vercel’s playbook for building enterprise-grade AI tools and agents, covering the process from initial concept to production-ready applications. The discussion includes Vercel’s ecosystem, production AI cha…
- From Demo to Defensibility: How to Build an AI Business that Lasts | Aurimas Griciūnas
Aurimas Griciūnas joins Chain of Thought to discuss building lasting AI businesses. He emphasizes the importance of strong engineering fundamentals over trendy tools and identifies new competitive advantages for AI startups, such as rapid…
- Mindset Over Metrics: How to Approach AI Engineering | Hamel Husain
Hamel Husain joins Chain of Thought to discuss the essential mindset shift for AI engineers. He emphasizes the need for customized evaluations and disciplined error analysis over vanity metrics to ensure AI reliability and build continuous…
- How AI Velocity is Rewriting the Rules for Engineering Leaders | ChatPRD's Claire Vo
Claire Vo discusses the impact of AI velocity on engineering, advocating for top-down accountability via an "AI czar" and a culture of experimentation. She highlights the risks of slow adoption for established companies and predicts the em…
- Building an AI-Native Startup | GrowthX's Marcel Santilli
Marcel Santilli shares GrowthX's framework for building an AI-native company, emphasizing mastering the "messy middle," prioritizing culture, and the importance of first-principles thinking and delegation over chasing new models. The discu…
- AI's Trillion-Dollar Healthcare Bet | Corti's Andreas Cleve
Andreas Cleve, CEO of Corti, explains how AI is unlocking a trillion-dollar opportunity in healthcare by improving care and efficiency. He highlights AI's ability to alleviate clinician documentation burdens and address the projected short…
- Mastering Multi-Agent Systems | MongoDB’s Mikiko Chandrasekhar
Mikiko Chandrashekar explains how MongoDB serves as a memory store for multi-agent AI systems, detailing its capabilities in data storage, vector search, and debugging. The episode emphasizes applying software engineering best practices to…
- The AI Agent Trust Gap: Bridging Risk to Reliability | Elastic’s Philipp Krenn
This episode discusses the critical need for trust and reliability in AI agents, introducing Galileo's AI reliability platform and its features like Luna 2 SLMs and an Insights Engine. It also features Philipp Krenn from Elastic, detailing…
- Architecting Reliable Agentic AI | Cisco’s Giovanna Carofiglio on the AGNTCY Collective
Giovanna Carofiglio details the AGNTCY Collective's vision for seamless enterprise and internet agent collaboration, covering discovery, protocols like Slim, and a secure transport layer. The discussion also addresses observability, evalua…
- Taste Is The New Moat | Why Customer Obsession Wins in the AI Era
Bharat Vasan, founder & CEO at Intangible, explains how unique taste and distribution are crucial for standing out as AI lowers content creation costs. The episode covers the AI creative revolution, founding advice, company building, and w…
- The Emerging AI Agent Stack | CrewAI’s João Moura
João Moura of CrewAI discusses the emerging AI agent stack with Galileo's Conor Bronsdon and Vikram Chatterji. They cover the need for measurability, reliability, and trust in scaling intelligent multi-agent systems for enterprises, challe…
- AMD's Challenge to NVIDIA: The Open Ecosystem Bet | Anush Elangovan & Sharon Zhou
AMD leaders Anush Elangovan and Sharon Zhou discuss the company's strategy to become a full-stack AI leader by fostering an open ecosystem. They cover the new MI350 GPUs, ROCm 7 software, developer accessibility, and predictions for self-i…
- Your Key to AI Success is Hiding in Plain Sight | Cohesity's Greg Statton
Greg Statton, VP of AI Solutions at Cohesity, explains how enterprises can activate dormant data in backups to power AI, focusing on data hygiene and governance as critical steps. He shares Cohesity's evolution and provides advice for data…
- Why Gamers Paved the Way for AI | Databricks' Carly Taylor
Carly Taylor explains how the gaming industry
- The 2025 AI Shift: From Chat to Task Completion & Reliable Action | Galileo Founders
The 2025 AI Shift podcast episode discusses the evolution of generative AI from chat to task completion, focusing on enterprise readiness and reliability challenges. Galileo co-founders Vikram Chatterji and Atindriyo Sanyal explore the com…
- Amplitude's AI Playbook: How Wade Chambers Builds for the Agentic Future
Wade Chambers, Amplitude's Chief Engineering Officer, explains how the company uses AI to understand customers and improve products, focusing on a strategy that utilizes proprietary data and feedback loops for a competitive advantage. The…
- First Code, Then AGI: Software’s Event Horizon with Poolside Founders Jason Warner & Eiso Kant
Jason Warner and Eiso Kant of Poolside explain their unique vision for achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by focusing on specialized AI for coding, utilizing reinforcement learning and synthetic data. They discuss the implicat…
- AI's Two Extremes – Foundations & The Frontier | Databricks’ Denny Lee
This episode unpacks the spectrum of AI, from core infrastructure to advanced applications, emphasizing the importance of logging, tracing, and data lineage for credible evaluation. It covers strategies for democratizing AI, hardware bottl…
- Why Enterprises Need a Different Approach to AI Agents | Lyzr’s Siva Surendira
Siva Surendira, CEO of Lyzr AI, joins host Conor Bronsdon to discuss the challenges and strategies for enterprises deploying AI agents beyond prototypes. They cover building trustworthy frameworks, responsible AI implementation, multi-agen…
- Breaking the Language Barrier: Smartling's AI Translation Pipeline | Olga Beregovaya
Olga Beregovaya and Conor Bronsdon discuss the evolution of AI translation, its current challenges like English bias and hallucinations, and future opportunities including RAG, purpose-built models, and agentic AI workflows.
- Low-Code AI: From Requirements to Apps in Minutes | OutSystems' Rodrigo Coutinho
Rodrigo Coutinho of OutSystems discusses the intersection of low-code development and artificial intelligence. The episode explores how AI-driven tools like OutSystems Mentor accelerate application creation while examining the changing rol…
- AI Won't Solve Your Toughest Engineering Problems | Honeycomb’s Charity Majors
Charity Majors joins host Conor Bronsdon to discuss generative AI's actual impact on engineering teams, challenging the notion that it will solve all engineering problems. They explore AI's influence on hiring, the importance of junior eng…
- Inside IBM's watsonx: Building Enterprise AI That Ships | Dr. Maryam Ashoori
Dr. Maryam Ashoori, Head of Product for watsonx AI at IBM, joins Chain of Thought to discuss building enterprise AI. She explains how watsonx simplifies the AI stack, automates pipelines, and helps enterprises scale AI operations cost-effe…
- Information Symmetry: DevRev's Bet on AI-Driven Enterprise Decisions | Manoj Agarwal
On Chain of Thought, Manoj Agarwal, co-founder and president of DevRev, joins hosts Conor Bronsdon and Yash Sheth to discuss information symmetry in organizations. They explore how DevRev uses AI to connect data, personalize schemas, and a…
- The Agent Bubble Debate | Spot AI's Kelly Vaughn
Kelly Vaughn from Spot AI discusses the potential AI agent bubble with host Conor Bronsdon, exploring the differences between AI-enabled and traditional software development, the challenges in building AI teams, and the risks of overpromis…
- Using AI to Modernize Your Legacy Applications | MongoDB’s Rachelle Palmer
Rachelle Palmer of MongoDB explains how AI and LLMs are revolutionizing legacy application modernization, cutting timelines from years to months and reducing technical debt. Her team is automating tasks like documentation improvement, test…
- AI in 2025: Agents & The Rise of Evaluation-Driven Development
This special episode features Galileo CEO Vikram Chatterji on Dev Interrupted, discussing AI strategy. Chatterji emphasizes evaluation frameworks, prioritizing use cases, and cultural context for successful AI deployment and investment.
- The Making of Gemini 2.0: DeepMind's Approach to AI Development and Deployment | Logan Kilpatrick
Logan Kilpatrick discusses Google DeepMind's Gemini 2.0, highlighting its development, strengths in the AI race, multimodal AI, function calling, and future potential for developers.
- How DeepSeek Changed the AI Race Overnight
Hosts Conor Bronsdon and Atindriyo Sanyal review the impact of DeepSeek's R1 model on AI development and the open-source landscape. They also cover export controls' effect on innovation and the rise of agentic systems, highlighting Galileo…
- AI, Open Source & Developer Safety | Block’s Rizel Scarlett
Rizel Scarlett joins Conor Bronsdon to discuss the relationship between AI, open source, and developer advocacy. They cover Block's AI initiative, Goose, an on-machine developer agent, and explore how AI can foster psychological safety for…
- AI in 2025: Agents & The Rise of Evaluation Driven Development
The second season of Chain of Thought features Galileo co-founders Yash Sheth and Atindriyo Sanyal discussing AI trends for 2025, such as AI agents and evaluation driven development. They emphasize building trust and security in AI applica…