ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This episode is a wide-ranging conversation between Jacob and Swyx (Shawn Wang), an AI engineer, podcaster, and now operator at Cognition, who sits at a uniquely informed intersection of builder, investor, and community organizer in the AI world. The two cover the current state of the AI engineering zeitgeist: from the stabilization of agent infrastructure and the surprising stickiness of Claude Code, to the competitive dynamics of the AI coding wars, the rise of open models, the threat to traditional SaaS, and the frontier questions around world models, memory, and what it actually means for AI to "understand" something. The episode is grounded in practitioner-level candor, with Swyx offering real takes from running AIE conferences, working inside Cognition, and thinking deeply about what the next wave of AI-native software development looks like.
(0:00) Intro
(1:17) What the Top AI Engineers Are Thinking About
(2:13) Has AI Infra Finally Stabilized?
(6:39) When Does Doing RL In-House Make Sense?
(11:26) Why Selling Dev Tools to Agents is Different
(17:18) AI Coding Wars
(29:04) Consumer AI Plateau
(30:22) Codex vs Claude Code
(44:52) Future of Open Models
With your co-hosts:
@jacobeffron
- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health
@patrickachase
- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn
@ericabrescia
- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)
@jordan_segall
- Partner at Redpoint
Jacob is an AI investor at Redpoint Ventures. He's led Redpoint's investments in companies like Abridge, Physical Intelligence & Legora. Follow Jacob on Twitter (@jacobeffron).
On Unsupervised Learning we probe the sharpest minds in AI in search for the truth about what's real today, what will be real in the future and what it all means for businesses and the world. If you're a builder, researcher or investor navigating the AI world, this podcast will help you deconstruct and understand the most important breakthroughs and see a clearer picture of reality. Subscribe to this show to stay up to date on our latest episodes.
