Mike Knoop | Zapier, Arc Prize, Ndea AI Lab — On why scaling LLMs won’t reach AGI, the future of program synthesis, and maximizing the rate of innovation

Meet Mike Knoop — co-founder of Zapier, co-founder of Arc Prize, and co-founder of the NDEA AI Lab. In this wide-ranging conversation, Mike shares his journey from building one of the most capital-efficient SaaS companies ever to taking big swings at the frontier of artificial intelligence.

We dive into why scaling language models alone won’t get us to AGI, how benchmarks like ARC expose the limits of today’s systems, and why program synthesis may be the missing piece.

We close with what it means to build technology that truly expands human potential, innovation, and adaptation.