Infinite Curiosity Pod with Prateek Joshi

Surojit Chatterjee, CEO of Ema and former CPO at Coinbase, dives into the world of AI employees—automated agents designed to streamline complex workflows. He shares insights from his time at Google on scaling tech for transformative outcomes and discusses why the term 'AI employee' highlights collaboration and autonomy over simple copilots. Surojit reveals Ema's foundational pillars for success, including governance and model integration, while emphasizing the importance of trust and human oversight in AI deployments.

Rishi Bhargava is CEO of Descope, an identity management platform for customers and AI agents. They've raised $88M in funding from investors such as Notable Capital, Lightspeed, Unusual Ventures. The two previous he founded were acquired by Palo Alto Networks and McAfee. (00:01) Introduction(00:08) Origin story: why identity and passwords needed a rethink(02:59) Passwords vs passkeys explained in plain English(05:06) Why logging in is still painful (and why passwords persist)(09:06) Account takeovers explained: how hacks actually happen(11:59) Building security products: philosophy vs regular software(14:24) The ideal login experience: from frustration to seamless access(16:40) What is an AI agent? Defining agent identity simply(21:54) Good bots vs bad bots: trust, access, and control in an agent world(25:03) Breaches and blast radius: security before vs after Descope(27:55) Company building lessons from Demisto to Descope(30:15) AI trends that matter most for enterprise products(32:40) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Rishi Bhargava: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhargavarishi/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Website: https://prateekj.com Research Column: https://www.infrastartups.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekj

Gou Rao is CEO of NeuBird, an agentic AI Site Reliability Engineer for IT teams. They've raised $44.5 Million from Mayfield and M12. He was previously the CTO of Citrix and Portworx.(00:01) Introduction(01:07) What Does an SRE Do?(02:19) Inside a Typical Incident Flow(04:16) What Can Be Automated?(05:52) Deploying Hawkeye: Day 1 to Day 100(11:59) Earning Trust for Autonomous Agents(14:57) Versioning Agent Behavior & Chain of Thought(17:02) Building Agentic Infra Products(18:38) Access Control for Agents(20:29) Company Building in the AI Era(23:53) Competitive Edge in AI + Infra(26:35) Model Choice & Agent Reasoning Quality(29:33) Biggest Product Bet(31:22) Exciting AI Advancements(33:04) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Gou Rao: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gouthamrao/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Research Column: https://www.infrastartups.comNewsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekj 

Brian Moore is CEO of Voxel51, a data infra platform for visual AI. They most recently raised a $30M Series B led by Bessemer.  Brian's favorite books: Trillion Dollar Coach (Author: Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle)(00:01) Introduction and setup(00:22) Defining visual AI — beyond traditional computer vision(02:14) Why visual data is so hard to manage(04:17) Common “gotchas” in image and video datasets(06:43) Is it a data problem or a model problem?(09:41) The importance of edge cases and scenario analysis(10:46) Coverage and handling rare events in datasets(13:35) Using synthetic data and foundation models to fill data gaps(14:25) The origin story of Voxel51 and the birth of FiftyOne(17:56) Open source strategy and community growth(19:31) Handling massive visual datasets — storage best practices(22:03) Cost vs. quality tradeoffs in video storage(23:54) Cleaning and indexing messy datasets(25:49) Measuring real progress — beyond simple metrics(27:40) Compute bottlenecks and faster iteration loops(30:05) The economics of data infrastructure(31:53) Labeling inefficiencies and smarter annotation workflows(33:56) Hidden costs of data wrangling and wasted engineering time(35:10) Positioning Voxel51 and lessons for founders(37:53) The future of visual AI and missing industry standards(40:36) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Brian Moore: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brimoor/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Research Column: https://www.infrastartups.comNewsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Carina Hong is CEO of Axiom Math, where they're building a self-improving superintelligent reasoner, starting with an AI mathematician. She's a Rhodes Scholar, first-gen college grad and mathematics prodigy who earned dual degrees in mathematics and physics from MIT in 3 years. And a joint JD/PhD at Stanford. They just raised a $64M seed round from B Capital, Greycroft, Madrona, and Menlo Ventures. Carina's favorite books: Proofs from THE BOOK (Author: Martin Aigner, Günter M. Ziegler)(00:02) Intro(00:38) What self-improving mathematical superintelligence means(04:04) Proofs as programs: Lean and the data gap(06:36) How AI proves: human-style vs. Lean-style reasoning(10:43) Carina’s journey: from Olympiad problem-solver to theory-builder(14:47) The engine room: data, infra, and building a math knowledge graph(17:42) Verifying results: compile checks vs. LLM judges(18:56) Self-improvement loops: skills libraries, memory, and conjecture↔prover curricula(21:30) Synthetic data & auto-formalization strategy(24:00) Benchmarks that matter: miniF2F, CombiBench, miniCTX v2(26:24) Why combinatorics is uniquely hard for AI(31:13) Compute footprint & scaling philosophy(32:20) In-house Lean tooling and productization path(33:57) Early use cases: formal verification in hardware/software(36:19) Team blueprint: AI, programming languages, and math(37:35) Scaling laws, efficiency, and bottlenecks(38:26) If Axiom works: what becomes cheaper/faster for the world(40:22) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Carina Hong: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carina-hong/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Research column: https://www.infrastartups.comNewsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

Mukund Jha is CEO of Emergent, an agentic vibe-coding platform. They've raised $23M from Lightspeed, Y Combinator, Together Fund, and Prosus. He was previously the cofounder and CTO of Dunzo, a hugely popular ecommerce company in India.Mukund's favorite books: The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Author: Ben Horowitz)(00:01) Intro(00:07) State of vibe-coding and where we are today(01:42) Emergent in plain English: what the product delivers(03:07) From prototype to traction: the first 90 days(06:03) What changed in the last 24 months (models + infra)(08:13) Early infra bets that enabled speed(12:07) Precision vs. control: editing and debugging without code(14:21) One-click to production: the unglamorous infra behind it(15:55) Points of failure across prompt → plan → code → test → deploy(17:53) Models division of labor: planning, codegen, tests, commits(20:05) What “reasoning” means and how they evaluate it(22:13) Context & memory strategy (beyond naive RAG)(24:22) Representing large codebases so agents don’t hallucinate structure(27:03) Orchestration walkthrough: adding SSO end-to-end(29:40) Agent coordination protocols (how agents talk)(31:05) Debugging long-running agents and trace observability(32:37) Company-building lessons from Dunzo to Emergent(36:10) Philosophy: offloading decisions to models(36:57) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Mukund Jha: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mukund-jha-a1596413/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

In this engaging discussion, Stefano Ermon, a Stanford associate professor and co-founder of Inception Labs, dives into the revolutionary world of Diffusion Language Models. He explains how these models surpass traditional autoregressive techniques, highlighting breakthroughs in parallel refinement for text and code generation. Stefano also shares insights on engineering challenges, the importance of high-quality data, and commercial viability. Excitingly, he discusses the future potential of diffusion LLMs in coding and multimodal applications.

Idan Plotnik, CEO of Apiiro, shares insights from his extensive expertise in application security. He discusses how LLMs can boost developer speed but notes the risks of vibe coding for production use. Idan highlights AI assistants' potential to introduce vulnerabilities while stressing the importance of embedded security in app development. He envisions a simplified security process with Apiiro's innovative tools, stressing the need for seamless UX to build developer trust. Tune in for Idan's rapid-fire recommendations, including his favorite book!

Astasia Myers is a GP at Felicis, an iconic VC firm with investments in companies like Shopify, Canva, Adyen, Notion, Mercor, Plaid, Supabase, Flexport, and more. Astasia's favorite books: God's Bankers (Author: Gerald Posner)(00:01) Introduction(00:26) Astasia’s Infra Thesis(03:59) Golden Age of Infra & Innovators Network(06:22) RL Environments & AI Agents(08:57) Disruption Opportunities: Data & Observability(11:31) Where to Find Infra Founders(16:31) Early Signals & Thesis-Driven Investing(18:01) Picking & Decision-Making Process(20:11) Red Flags in Infra Investing(22:20) References & Diligence(24:35) Proof of Usage & Production Signals(26:24) Building Edge as an Investor(28:01) How Felicis Helps Founders Post-Investment(30:05) Consensus vs. Contrarian Views in Infra(32:09) Tourist Traps in Infra Investing(34:43) GTM & Sales Motion in Infra(37:25) Pricing Strategies for Infra Startups(40:09) Ecosystem vs. Core Product Focus(42:15) Lessons from Outlier vs. Good Companies(44:30) Infra Wedges to Fund Today(45:23) Commoditized but Promising Categories(47:06) Exciting AI Advancements(48:21) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Astasia Myers: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/astasiamyers/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekvjoshiResearch column: https://infrastartups.com 

Spiros Xanthos is the CEO of Resolve AI, a platform to put AI on-call for humans. He previously started Log Insight that was acquired by VMware. And started Omnition that was acquired by Splunk. He also helped start OpenTelemetry. They've raised $35M from amazing investors such as Greylock.Spiros's favorite books: - Zero to One (Author: Peter Thiel)- Build (Author: Tony Fadell)(00:01) Introduction & Setting the Stage(00:42) AI’s Impact on Software Engineering(02:55) What Reliability Means in Software(04:34) Resolve AI Explained in Plain English(06:33) Real-World Example of Resolve in Action(08:28) Early Customers & Lessons from Company Building(11:40) OpenTelemetry & The Open Source Journey(16:55) Positioning a Developer Tool in a Crowded Market(18:58) Philosophy of Product Building(21:06) Cultural Norms: What to Keep and What to Change(24:33) Radical Transparency & Team Dynamics(26:50) Recruiting for Resilience in Early Team Members(28:59) Future of AI in Software Engineering(31:25) Resolve AI Roadmap & Expansion Plans(33:28) Exciting AI Advancements on the Horizon(35:17) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Spiros Xanthos: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spiros/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi