Ep 26: Replit Founder Amjad Masad on the 1000x Engineer, ChatBots are Overhyped and Why We Don’t Really Have True Open-Source Models

Replit raised nearly $100M at $1.2B valuation last April and powers over 20M developers. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with Replit Founder and CEO Amjad Masad to talk about the future of software development, how Replit is empowering young users, how Replit developed its own models, and the data advantage Replit has. Amjad also shared his takes on why he’s bullish on agents, where the value in AI will most likely accrue and why open-source models might not be truly open today.

 

(0:00) intro

(0:45) advice for new coders

(6:20) how Replit uses AI

(10:36) AI’s coding capabilities

(15:49) what makes the best data

(20:52) educating new Replit AI users

(23:46) structuring AI teams

(27:02) building an in-house model

(36:54) “the world is gonna get way weirder”

(38:10) Kim and Taylor teaching calculus

(44:19) usage based pricing is going to get more prevalent

(51:05) will Microsoft win it all?

(55:00) Llama and vibe-checking AI models

(57:35) chatbots are overhyped

(58:18) latency matters

(59:50) why Sam Altman is the GOAT

(1:01:16) over 10 years we’ll see companies really shrink in size

(1:03:51) Jacob and Pat debrief

(1:05:27) training coding models on random data 

(1:06:36) Amjad’s take on agents

 

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.