Mar 31, 2026

This AI Company Catches Fraud Across the Internet

Variance, emerging from three years in stealth with a $21 million Series A, is transforming enterprise risk and compliance through purpose-built AI agents. Founded by ex-Apple engineers, the company automates complex tasks like fraud detection, content review, and identity verification for Fortune 500s and platforms such as GoFundMe. They discuss the strategic reasons for stealth, technical challenges of integrating disparate data sources (including UI scraping), the shift from legacy systems to self-healing AI agent architectures, and how their lean, AI-maximalist team detects sophisticated threats like state-sponsored fraud rings.

Mar 30, 2026

A Typo Led to the Creation of Spring Cloud Contract • Marcin Grzejszczak & Jakub Pilimon • GOTO 2026

Marcin Grzejszczak, a Java Champion and Spring Cloud Contract contributor, discusses how a production-breaking typo led to the creation of Spring Cloud Contract. He outlines an AI-powered future for contract testing, leveraging production traffic and OpenAPI specs to generate and validate contracts automatically. Marcin also emphasizes that 'context' is the most underrated pillar of observability, transforming raw logs, metrics, and traces into actionable insights.

Mar 27, 2026

What Tesla and SpaceX Teach Founders About Building Hardware | a16z

Ex-Tesla and SpaceX engineers Chandler Luzsicza and Turner Caldwell share the practical lessons they learned about building complex hardware and how they apply them at their own startups. They cover core principles like decision velocity, strategic vertical integration, managing the critical path without creating new bottlenecks, and using aggressive milestones as a forcing function to reveal true priorities. The discussion also delves into the value of a 'factory mindset,' the importance of a rigorous hiring process, and advice for young engineers.

Mar 27, 2026

François Chollet: ARC-AGI-3, Beyond Deep Learning & A New Approach To ML

François Chollet discusses his contrarian approach to AI, moving beyond scaling LLMs to understand intelligence from first principles. He explains his work on the ARC benchmark series, including the new ARC-AGI V3, designed to measure 'agentic intelligence' and skill acquisition efficiency. He also introduces his lab, Ndea, which is developing a new ML paradigm based on symbolic models, and shares his perspective on the limits of current systems and the future path to AGI.

Mar 27, 2026

AI agent adoption: From scientists to CFOs

This episode explores the transformative impact of AI through three key discussions: a homeowner using ChatGPT to sell his house, a study on AI adoption in scientific research, and Adobe's CFO building an internal AI lab. The experts deliberate on AI's role in democratizing expertise, the future of professional roles, the challenges and biases in measuring AI's scientific impact, and the critical factors for successful enterprise AI adoption, including process and cultural shifts, and identifying the hottest areas for implementation.

Mar 26, 2026

A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering • Jay Wengrow & Kris Jenkins • GOTO 2026

Jay Wengrow, author of “A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering,” breaks down how AI agents work, describing the 'clever hack' of intercepting LLM output to trigger functions. The discussion covers multi-agent architectures for complex tasks, implementing guardrails with regex and judge LLMs, and a pragmatic take on when to use frameworks versus building from scratch. Wengrow emphasizes understanding fundamentals over specific tools to create robust, production-ready AI applications.