The Infra Pod

In this episode of the Infra Pod, hosts Ian Livingston (Keycard) and Tim Chen (Essence VC) interviewed the Field CTO Akshay Shah of Antithesis, diving deep into the world of distributed systems, reliability, and the future of software testing. The conversation covers the challenges of building bug-free distributed systems, the story behind Antithesis, lessons from major outages, and the evolving landscape of infrastructure and AI-driven operations.

Timeline with Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Introduction & guest background
• 02:00 – What Antithesis does and why it matters
• 06:00 – Real-world impact: Testing distributed systems (etcd, Kubernetes)
• 09:00 – Major outages & lessons learned (AWS, Knight Capital)
• 12:00 – The origins and philosophy behind Antithesis
• 16:00 – The future of reliability, testing, and AI in infrastructure
• 28:00 – Closing thoughts & where to learn more

Links:

• Learn more about Antithesis: https://antithesis.com
• Antithesis on YouTube: @AntithesisHQ

Join Tim from Essence VC and Ian Livingston from Keycard for the year-end 2025 recap of Infra Pod! In this special episode, Tim and Ian reflect on their favorite moments, hottest takes, and biggest lessons from a year of rapid change in infrastructure, AI, and agent technology.

They revisit standout episodes—like deep dives into browser automation, the evolving role of memory in LLMs, and the disruptive potential of agent sandboxes. The hosts discuss how companies are pivoting in the AI era, the importance of adapting quickly, and the surprising ways hardware choices are shaping the future of compute.

Looking ahead, Tim and Ian share bold predictions for 2026, debate the next big abstractions in infrastructure, and invite listeners to share their own hot takes and favorite episodes. Whether you’re an engineer, founder, or just passionate about the future of tech, this episode is packed with insights, energy, and a look at what’s next for the Infra Pod community.

In this episode of The Infra Pod, hosts Tim from Essence VC and co-host Ian Livingston (Keycard) interviewed Sammy Sdu, CEO of Eventual, a multimodal data processing platform. Sammy shares his journey from AI research and self-driving cars to founding Eventual, discusses the challenges of processing unstructured and multimodal data, and explores the future of data engineering, scalability, and the role of agents in modern data pipelines.

Timestamps:

• 02:47 — Data processing challenges & founding Eventual
• 09:40 — Real-world use cases & business impact
• 24:20 — The future of data engineering & tools
• 40:00 — Closing thoughts & where to learn more

In this episode of The Infra Pod, hosts Tim and Ian are joined by Anurag, CEO of Render, to discuss the journey of building a modern cloud platform from scratch. The conversation covers Anurag’s background at Stripe, the challenges of cloud infrastructure, the evolution of developer tools, the importance of abstraction and taste in product design, and the future of agent-driven development. The episode is packed with insights on scaling platforms, developer experience, and the shifting landscape of cloud computing.

Welcome to Episode 53 of The Infra Pod! Hosts Tim from Essence and Ian from Keycard are joined by special guest Alex Eagle, CEO and co-founder of Aspect Build. In this episode, Alex shares his journey from working on Angular at Google to founding a company around Bazel, Google's open-source build tool. The conversation dives deep into the challenges and motivations behind building developer infrastructure, the evolution of CI/CD systems, and the unique strengths and hurdles of adopting Bazel in organizations of all sizes.

The trio explores the future of software development, the impact of AI on coding and build systems, and the ongoing debate between monorepos and polyrepos. Alex also discusses Aspect's mission to make Bazel more accessible and the broader implications for developer productivity in an agentic, AI-driven world. Whether you're a platform engineer, open-source enthusiast, or just curious about the future of build tools, this episode is packed with insights and spicy predictions for the future of developer infrastructure.

• 00:00 – Introduction & Guest Background
  Tim and Ian introduce Alex Eagle, who shares his journey from Google to founding Aspect Build.

• 04:20 – Why Bazel?
  Alex explains the motivation behind focusing on Bazel, its challenges, and the analogy to municipal infrastructure.

• 10:55 – Bazel in the Real World
  Discussion on Bazel’s adoption, who should use it, and the hurdles organizations face.

• 21:06 – The Future: AI, Agents, and Build Systems
  Exploring how AI and agentic coding are changing developer infrastructure and Bazel’s evolving role.

• 43:01 – Closing & Takeaways
  Final thoughts, how to learn more about Aspect and Bazel, and episode wrap-up.

In this episode of the Infra Pod, hosts Tim (Essence VC) and Ian (CEO of Keycard) sat down with Lucas Thelosen, founder of Gravity and former head of product for data and AI at Google. Lucas shares his journey from leading teams at Google and Looker to launching Gravity, a company focused on bridging the gap between business users and data through generative AI.

The conversation dives deep into the challenges of data analysis in modern organizations, the evolution of AI-powered tools like Orion, and how generative AI is transforming the way companies leverage their data. Lucas discusses the importance of semantic layers, onboarding AI agents, and the future of data teams in a world where AI can automate complex analysis and reporting.

Join host Tim Chen (Essence VC) and Ian Livingston (Keycard.sh) as they sat down with Ivan Burazin, CEO and co-founder of Daytona to explore the cutting edge of agent-native infrastructure. From the origins of Daytona to the challenges and opportunities of building for autonomous agents, this episode dives deep into the tools, use cases, and visionary thinking shaping the next generation of infrastructure. Whether you’re a developer, founder, or tech enthusiast, you’ll gain insights into the trends, pivots, and bold ideas driving the future of AI and cloud platforms.

Ian (Keycard) and Tim Essence VC) engage in an insightful discussion with Hunter Leath, CEO of Archil.

The episode delves into the motivations behind Archil, a new data startup focused on revolutionizing data storage for cloud applications. Hunter explains the limitations of existing data storage paradigms like S3 and traditional block storage, advocating for a new approach that leverages SSDs and custom protocols to offer high-performance, infinite storage that can support modern workloads, including AI and CI/CD applications. The conversation also touches on the trust and complexity of implementing such a system, the future vision for file storage, and practical use cases ranging from serverless Jupyter notebooks to large-scale CI/CD operations.00:17 The Gap in Cloud Data Storage01:48 Understanding Unstructured Data02:41 Building Modern Data Systems04:15 Challenges and Innovations in File Storage11:12 Targeting CI/CD and AI Workloads23:00 The Future of File Storage

Tim (Essence VC) and Ian (Keycard) sat down with Aditya, CEO of Blacksmith, to explore the inception and innovative approach of Blacksmith in the CI/CD space. Blacksmith utilizes gaming CPUs and NVMe SSDs to deliver high-performance, serverless CI compute. They discussed the challenges faced by large companies with CI systems, why GitHub Actions was chosen as their primary CI system, and how AI-induced code generation is pushing the need for faster and more efficient CI solutions. Adya also highlighted the future potential of CI observability and other improvements Blacksmith is focusing on to maintain their edge in the market.00:29 Founding Blacksmith: The Origin Story01:16 Understanding Blacksmith's Serverless CI Compute02:21 Challenges in CI/CD and Blacksmith's Solutions05:14 Technical Deep Dive: Performance and Optimization06:53 Why GitHub Actions?08:08 Innovative Hardware Choices for CI10:06 Scaling and Managing CI Workloads19:14 Future of CI/CD and AI Integration28:02 Spicy Futures: Predictions and Hot Takes

In this episode of The Infra Pod, Tim (Essence VC) and Ian (Keycard.sh) delve into the fascinating world of AI memory with Charles, the CEO and co-founder of Letta. They explore the intricacies of memory in AI, its current state, how it’s implemented in various applications, and its potential to revolutionize productivity tools such as coding assistants. Charles shares insights on how Letta is leading the way by creating platforms for agents with long-term memory, the future implications of shared memory systems, and the concept of 'sleep time compute.'

Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of why memory could become more valuable than the models themselves in the future of AI.00:24 The Concept of Memory in AI02:04 Expanding on AI Memory02:17 Implementing Effective AI Memory01:55 Current and Future State of AI Memory11:37 The Challenges and Opportunities of AI Memory11:37 Real-World Applications and Limitations35:14 Introducing Letta's Solutions36:35 Future Trends and Predictions