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Evals, Feedback Loops, and the Engineering That Makes AI Work episode artwork

Feb 17, 2026 43 min

Evals, Feedback Loops, and the Engineering That Makes AI Work

from AI + a16z Hosted by Ankur Goyal, Martin Casado

Martin Casado speaks with Ankur Goyal, founder and CEO of Braintrust, about where engineering actually matters in AI and where it doesn't. They cover the open source vs closed source model cycle, why Chinese models are gaining ground faster than spending suggests, whether AI demand will eventually saturate, and the Bash vs SQL benchmark that challenges the "just give it a computer" approach to agents. Follow Martin Casado on X: https://twitter.com/martin_casado Follow Ankur Goyal on X: https://twitter.com/ankrgyl Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.

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Martin Casado speaks with Ankur Goyal, founder and CEO of Braintrust, about where engineering actually matters in AI and where it doesn't. They cover the open source vs closed source model cycle, why Chinese models are gaining ground faster than spending suggests, whether AI demand will eventually saturate, and the Bash vs SQL benchmark that challenges the "just give it a computer" approach to agents.

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Evals, Feedback Loops, and the Engineering That Makes AI Work

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This episode is 43 minutes long.

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This episode was published on February 17, 2026.

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