The Data Exchange with Ben Lorica

Ben Lorica speaks with Helen Gu, CEO of InsightFinder AI and professor at North Carolina State University, about why reliability is becoming a central challenge for enterprise AI. They discuss AI incident response, monitoring agents in production, domain-specific small language models, causal inference for operational data, and why the “last 1%” of accuracy and reliability is often the hardest part of deploying AI systems. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica talks with Chang She, co-founder and CEO of LanceDB, about the limitations of traditional analytical data tools like Pandas and Parquet when applied to AI workloads. They discuss the rise of the “multimodal lakehouse,” the unique data storage and retrieval challenges introduced by AI agents, and how LanceDB provides both lightweight embedded memory and massive-scale infrastructure. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica is joined by Evangelos Simoudis for a wide-ranging check-in on how AI is reshaping mobility, enterprise software, and corporate strategy.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica speaks with Hamza Tahir, co-founder of Kitaru, about what it takes to move AI agents from demos to production. They discuss the difference between workflows and agents, why “harness engineering” is becoming a useful frame for application builders, and why long-running agent workloads require orchestration, durable execution, retries, state management, and human-in-the-loop semantics.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, host Ben Lorica sits down with Zhou Yu, associate professor of computer science at Columbia University and co-founder of Arklex AI. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica sits down with Doris Xin and Moustafa Abdelbaky, co-founders of Disarray, to discuss why classical machine learning models remain essential despite the rise of foundation models and LLMs. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica speaks with Terrence Lee-St. John, founder of Enli and lead author of From Garbage to Gold: A Data Architectural Theory of Predictive Robustness. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica talks with Evan Marshall, CTO of Ito AI, about why software testing and QA are becoming the critical bottleneck in the age of coding agents. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica talks with Richard Garris and Barry Dauber from Databricks, about what enterprises are actually struggling with as they move AI from demo to deployment. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes and transcript, can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica talks with Nick Vasiloglou, VP of Research at Relational AI, about Nick’s deep dive into NeurIPS 2025 and what people in industry should actually pay attention to. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica speaks with Changan Chen, co-founder and Chief Research Officer at Rhoda AI, about what it takes to build foundation models for robots that can operate in the real world. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica and Evangelos Simoudis discuss how enterprises are structuring their internal AI efforts, highlighting the friction between top-down AI governance committees and bottom-up “shadow IT” innovation.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica speaks with Tudor Achim, cofounder of Harmonic, about the fast progress of AI for mathematical reasoning and what it would take to build “mathematical superintelligence.” Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, host Ben Lorica sits down with Kay Zhu, Co-founder & CTO of Genspark AI, to explore the rapid evolution of autonomous AI agents and the concept of hiring your first “AI employee.” Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, host Ben Lorica sits down with Arun Kumar (Associate Professor at UC San Diego and Co-founder/CTO of RapidFire AI) to explore the rapidly evolving discipline of agent engineering. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica is joined by Mikio Braun, Senior Principal Applied Scientist at Zalando, for a wide-ranging conversation about the practical realities of AI-powered coding agents. They explore the unique challenges of using coding agents for data science workflows, the team-level implications of dramatically increased developer velocity, and what skills will matter most in an AI-augmented workplace. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, host Ben Lorica speaks with Jeff Hawke, CTO at Odyssey, about world models — a category of AI that generates continuous, interactive simulations from images or text prompts. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Chen Goldberg, EVP of Engineering at CoreWeave, joins the podcast to discuss the critical infrastructure shifts required as companies move AI from pilot to production. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, host Ben Lorica is joined by Evangelos Simoudis to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the modern workplace and what knowledge workers must do to adapt. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica talks with Sudip Roy (Co-founder & CTO, Adaption Labs) about why enterprise AI adoption stalls in the “last 5%” of reliability — and why waiting for the next frontier model release is usually the wrong bet. They unpack “adaptation” as something broader than post-training, including gradient-free, inference-time techniques that can sit above models to route, combine, and continuously improve behavior.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Jason Martin, Director of Adversarial Research at HiddenLayer, returns to discuss the security implications of OpenClaw, a viral open-source AI personal assistant that was entirely vibe-coded and has exploded to 180,000 GitHub stars. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Umur Cubukcu, co-founder of Ubicloud, explains what an “open cloud” should mean in practice — starting with an open-source control plane and extending to transparency, portability, and freedom from data lock-in. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Sid Sheth, founder and CEO of d-matrix, discusses the company’s approach to AI inference hardware with a focus on solving the memory bottleneck problem. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica and Evangelos Simoudis discuss two critical technology infrastructure topics: the evolving economics of autonomous vehicles and growing local opposition to AI data centers. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ethan Ouyang, Technical Lead at Atoms, joins the podcast to discuss the rise of “vibe business”: multi-agent AI systems that can research a market, design a product, build and launch it, and iterate toward revenue. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica talks with Jason Martin (co-founder of Permiso Security) about what it means to secure AI agents as they proliferate across enterprises. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Lior Gavish, CTO and co-founder of Monte Carlo Data, joins Ben Lorica to discuss the critical transition from data observability to agent observability in production environments. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica speaks with Ben Luria, CEO and co-founder of Hirundo, about the emerging necessity of machine unlearning for enterprise AI.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica and Evangelos Simoudis of Synapse Partners to break down the most significant developments from CES 2026. They explore the explosion of humanoid robotics and the transition toward software-defined vehicles before diving into a deep analysis of the shifting US-China export controls on AI chips. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Matthew Glickman, Co-founder and CEO of Genesis Computing and former VP of Product at Snowflake, joins Ben Lorica to discuss the emergence of AI data agents tailored for the data engineering persona. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this panel discussion from the PyTorch conference, Ben Lorica speaks with Samuel Colvin (Pydantic), Aparna Dhinakaran (Arize AI), Adam Jones (Anthropic), and Jerry Liu (LlamaIndex) about the current state of Agentic AI. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

To mark the season, we’re sharing twelve non-fiction selections for the twelve days of Christmas. These are books we enjoyed and found worth passing along, ranging from deep dives into semiconductor history to fresh looks at creative collaboration. Whether you’re looking for a companion for a long-haul flight, a thoughtful gift idea, or simply a quiet escape during the holidays, we hope you’ll find something in today’s episode worth your time.Detailed show notes - with links to the books we mention - can be found on The Gradient Flow newsletter:   https://gradientflow.substack.com/p/your-holiday-reading-list-12-booksSubscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.

Steve Wilson, Chief AI and Product Officer at Exabeam and lead of the OWASP GenAI Security Project, discusses the practical realities of securing Large Language Models and agentic workflows. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, Ben Lorica and Evangelos Simoudis of Synapse Partners explore the complex reality behind AI-driven layoffs, from automation and upskilling gaps to strategic shifts in R&D. They also dive into the massive capital investments in AI, discussing the growing pressure for ROI and the emergence of LLMOps as a form of financial management. The conversation highlights practical strategies for enterprises, emphasizing the need to break down organizational silos to succeed in the AI era.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

In this episode, host Ben Lorica talks with Sakana AI research scientist Stefania Druga, formerly a research scientist at Google DeepMind, about building AI tools for young learners and what that teaches us about AI design for everyone.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Stanford professor and Kumo.ai co-founder Jure Leskovec introduces the concept of a relational foundation model for structured enterprise data. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

This episode features Philip Rathle, CTO of Neo4j, discussing the real-world state of Graph RAG and its journey from prototype to production in enterprise AI systems. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Emmanuel Ameisen, an interpretability researcher at Anthropic, joins the podcast to demystify how large language models work.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica and Evangelos Simoudis of Synapse Partners explore the complex reality behind AI-driven layoffs, from automation and upskilling gaps to strategic shifts in R&D. They also dive into the massive capital investments in AI, discussing the growing pressure for ROI and the emergence of LLMOps as a form of financial management.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ciro Greco, Co-founder & CEO at Bauplan, joins the podcast to discuss a new paradigm for data engineering rooted in software engineering principles. He explains how treating the data lakehouse like a software project — with version control, branching, and transactional pipelines — creates a robust and safe environment for development. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Mike Freedman and Ajay Kulkarni, founders of Tiger Data, join the podcast to unveil Agentic Postgres, a database re-imagined for AI agents. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Nick Schrock, CTO of Dagster, discusses the critical role of data orchestration in the AI era, framing “context pipelines” as the new data pipelines that form the foundation of any AI strategy. He introduces Compass, a new Slack-native tool for collaborative, exploratory data analysis designed to replace the 80% of ad-hoc BI dashboards. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica and Evangelos Simoudis discuss AI-bubble signals (runaway revenue multiples, circular financing), why many enterprise pilots stall, and what separates leaders (use-case matrices, cross-functional ownership, hard metrics). They also examine U.S.–China tech competition in robotics and semiconductors, and offer a pragmatic view on humanoid robots — what works now versus what’s still research-grade.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Luke Wroblewski of Sutter Hill Ventures joins the podcast to discuss the paradigm shift in building AI applications. He explains how the traditional model of “code + database” is being replaced by “URL + model,” where the AI agent itself becomes the application logic. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Heiko Hotz and Sokratis Kartakis of Google Cloud discuss the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol, a new standard for enabling collaboration between AI agents built on different frameworks.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Zhen Lu, CEO of Runpod, joins the podcast to discuss what it means to build an “AI-first” cloud, moving beyond the architectures of the Web 2.0 era. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Yoni Leitersdorf, CEO of Solid, joins the podcast to demystify why simply pointing an LLM at a database for text-to-SQL doesn’t work. He explains the critical need for a semantic layer to provide business context, turning raw data into a “Rosetta Stone” that AI can actually understand. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Ben Lorica and Evangelos Simoudis discuss some takeaways for AI practitioners from the recent AI Conference. They cover the disconnect between the hype and reality of AI agents in the enterprise, the critical importance of building reliable and trustworthy AI applications, and the potential impact of new H-1B visa policies on tech startups and innovation.Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Jakub Zavrel, CEO of Zeta Alpha, joins the podcast to discuss the practical evolution from traditional enterprise search to powerful “deep research” systems. Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

Andrew Rabinovich, CTO and Head of AI at Upwork, discusses how digital work marketplaces serve as ideal testing grounds for AI agents, exploring their custom reinforcement learning approach called RLEF (Reinforcement Learning from Experience). Subscribe to the Gradient Flow Newsletter 📩  https://gradientflow.substack.com/Subscribe: Apple · Spotify · Overcast · Pocket Casts · AntennaPod · Podcast Addict · Amazon ·  RSS.Detailed show notes - with links to many references - can be found on The Data Exchange web site.