Chris, Shawn, and Lukas — The Weights & Biases Journey

Chris, Shawn, and Lukas — The Weights & Biases Journey

Author: Lukas Biewald November 5, 2021 Duration: 49:13

You might know him as the host of Gradient Dissent, but Lukas is also the CEO of Weights & Biases, a developer-first ML tools platform!

In this special episode, the three W&B co-founders — Chris (CVP), Shawn (CTO), and Lukas (CEO) — sit down to tell the company's origin stories, reflect on the highs and lows, and give advice to engineers looking to start their own business.

Chris reveals the W&B server architecture (tl;dr - React + GraphQL), Shawn shares his favorite product feature (it's a hidden frontend layer), and Lukas explains why it's so important to work with customers that inspire you.

The complete show notes (transcript and links) can be found here: http://wandb.me/gd-wandb-cofounders

---

Connect with us:

📍 Chris' Twitter: https://twitter.com/vanpelt

📍 Shawn's Twitter: https://twitter.com/shawnup

📍 Lukas' Twitter: https://twitter.com/l2k

📍 W&B's Twitter: https://twitter.com/weights_biases

---

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

1:29 The stories behind Weights & Biases

7:45 The W&B tech stack

9:28 Looking back at the beginning

11:42 Hallmark moments

14:49 Favorite product features

16:49 Rewriting the W&B backend

18:21 The importance of customer feedback

21:18 How Chris and Shawn have changed

22:35 How the ML space has changed

28:24 Staying positive when things look bleak

32:19 Lukas' advice to new entrepreneurs

35:29 Hopes for the next five years

38:09 Making a paintbot & model understanding

41:30 Biggest bottlenecks in deployment

44:08 Outro

44:38 Bonus: Under- vs overrated technologies

---

Subscribe and listen to our podcast today!

👉 Apple Podcasts: http://wandb.me/apple-podcasts​​

👉 Google Podcasts: http://wandb.me/google-podcasts​

👉 Spotify: http://wandb.me/spotify​


Lukas Biewald hosts Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI, a series that moves beyond theoretical discussions to examine how artificial intelligence is actually built and deployed. Each episode features a direct, unscripted talk with a leading practitioner-you’ll hear from engineers and researchers at places like NVIDIA, Meta, Google, Lyft, and OpenAI. The focus is on the tangible challenges and breakthroughs they encounter, from initial research to the complex reality of putting models into production. This isn't about abstract futures; it's a grounded look at the decisions shaping the field right now. Biewald, bringing his perspective from Weights & Biases, steers conversations toward the practical trade-offs and collaborative efforts that define modern AI work. For anyone in technology or business who wants to understand the mechanics behind the headlines, this podcast offers a rare, candid window into the process. You’ll come away with a clearer sense of how ideas become functional systems and what it really takes to operate at the cutting edge.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI
Podcast Episodes
Harnessing AI for legal practice with CoCounsel’s Jake Heller [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:16
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Jake Heller, Head of Product, CoCounsel, joins host Lukas Biewald to discuss how AI is innovating legal practices and reshaping educational approaches for aspiring lawyers. From autom…
Transforming Search with Perplexity AI’s CTO Denis Yarats [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:54
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Denis Yarats, CTO of Perplexity, joins host Lukas Biewald to discuss the innovative use of AI in creating high-quality, fast search engine answers.Discover how Perplexity combines adv…
AI in electronics: Quilter’s journey in PCB design [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:50
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Sergiy Nesterenko, CEO of Quilter, joins host Lukas Biewald to discuss the groundbreaking use of reinforcement learning in PCB design. Learn how Quilter automates the complex, manual…
The Future of AI in Coding with Codeium CEO Varun Mohan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:53
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Varun Mohan, Co-Founder & CEO of Codeium, joins host Lukas Biewald to discuss the transformative power of AI in coding. They explore how Codeium evolved from GPU virtualization to a w…
Shaping AI Benchmarks with Together AI Co-Founder Percy Liang [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:20
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Together AI co-founder and Stanford Associate Professor Percy Liang joins host, Lukas Biewald, to discuss advancements in AI benchmarking and the pivotal role that open-source plays i…
Accelerating drug discovery with AI: Insights from Isomorphic Labs [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:23
In this episode of Gradient Dissent, Isomorphic Labs Chief AI Officer Max Jaderberg, and Chief Technology Officer Sergei Yakneen join our host Lukas Biewald to discuss the advancements in biotech and drug discovery being…
Redefining AI Hardware for Enterprise with SambaNova’s Rodrigo Liang [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:04
🚀 Discover the cutting-edge AI hardware development for enterprises in this episode of Gradient Dissent, featuring Rodrigo Liang, CEO of SambaNova Systems. Rodrigo Liang’s journey from Oracle to founding SambaNova is a t…
Navigating the Vector Database Landscape with Pinecone's Edo Liberty [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:05
🚀 This episode of Gradient Dissent welcomes Edo Liberty, the mind behind Pinecone's revolutionary vector database technology.As a former leader at Amazon AI Labs and Yahoo's New York lab, Edo Liberty's extensive backgrou…