AI Rebels

AI Is Moving at 100 MPH. Your Company Probably Isn’t. ft. Sreedhar Peddineni 07.05.2026 54min

Sreedhar Peddineni has built companies through the internet, SaaS, cloud, and now AI, which makes his perspective especially valuable because he is not reacting to hype — he is comparing this shift to every major technology wave he has lived through. He argues that AI is moving far faster than most leaders and companies can absorb, and that the widening gap between what is possible and what teams are actually doing is becoming a serious competitive threat. His own experience growing GTM Buddy...

Cavemen With Fire: Governing the AI Agent Fleet ft. Logan Kelly 15.04.2026 57min

Everyone's shipping agents. Almost nobody is asking what happens when a hundred of them go off the rails at 100% utilization while a customer is on the other end. Logan Kelly — CEO of Waxell and a guy who's been punched in the face by real-world sales operations — joins us to argue that a dashboard isn't governance, it's an autopsy, and that most teams are "cavemen playing with fire, hoping there's a bucket of water somewhere." We get into why governance actually *accelerates* agent developme...

Why Your AI Projects Keep Failing (It's Not the Tech) ft. Barbara Wittman 07.04.2026 52min

Barbara Wittman has spent 25 years cleaning up broken transformation projects, and the root cause is never the technology. In this episode, she breaks down how AI is exposing dysfunction that companies have been hiding for years: misalignment between business and IT, unchecked assumptions, and a total lack of shared understanding. She explains why boards pressure CEOs into AI adoption out of fear, why the people actually executing get sidelined, and why most “AI use cases” fall apart the mome...

Bhaskar Sunkara: The AI Agent That Never Sleeps. How Bicycle AI Catches Revenue Leaks in Real Time 31.03.2026 57min

Bhaskar Sunkara built AppDynamics into a $3.7B company. Now he's back with Bicycle AI, an always-on agent that catches revenue leaks before your team even knows they exist. In this episode he breaks down why most AI products will never make it to production, how to actually build enterprise trust, and what "doing the boring stuff" really means. We get into real use cases across travel and payments where Bicycle is already saving companies millions. If you're building in AI or buying AI tools ...

RAG, Agents, and the Future of AI Memory with Roie from Pinecone 25.03.2026 1t 3min

Most RAG implementations are fundamentally broken; and the company that coined "vector search" just told us why. In this episode, Roie from Pinecone breaks down the "Franken answer" problem plaguing AI systems, why naive retrieval falls apart at scale, and what most teams are getting wrong about evaluation. He reveals how the AutoGPT explosion nearly took down Pinecone's infrastructure overnight — and the radical architecture shift it forced them to build. We dig into why LLMs can't be truste...

You Can't Have an AI Story Without a DataStory ft. Dalan Winbush, Nasuni 11.03.2026 1t 1min

95% of enterprises are failing at AI. Not because the technology doesn't work, but because they're measuring the wrong things. In this episode, Nasuni CIO Dalan Winbush breaks down why adoption metrics are meaningless without real business impact, why his decentralized AI team failed and what he replaced it with, and how he's building an army of digital employees that will match his 800-person workforce. From his sales agent NORA to a hiring agent that cut time-to-hire by 80%, Dalan isn't the...

Making Insurance Fair: How Tuio Puts Customers First With AI ft. Juan Garcia, Tuio 05.03.2026 55min

Insurance was built to profit off confusion, and Tuio is proving it doesn't have to be that way. Juan Garcia and his co-founders rebuilt insurance from the ground up as a fully digital, AI-native company in Spain, and they're running 3x the industry's average profit margins while charging customers less. The secret isn't just slapping AI onto old processes. It's rethinking every layer of the business, from data infrastructure to claims handling to marketing, so that AI actually compounds in v...

Same Effort, 10x Results: How a Neurodivergent Artist Uses AI as a Force Multiplier ft. Victor Varnado 24.02.2026 48min

A billion-dollar liquor company paid a rapper with ADHD low six figures to build them a custom video game, and he delivered it in two weeks. That rapper is Victor, and in this episode he shows two games side by side, built on the same timeline: one before AI, one after. He's also a New Yorker cartoonist, NSF grant recipient, patent holder, and TV producer who will tell you straight when AI is not the right tool for the job. He breaks down a business model where every customer becomes a perman...

AI Prototyping at Zero Cost: How Ian Cook Ships What Others Can't 17.02.2026 48min

95% of enterprise AI projects fail, but not for the reasons you think. Ian Cook has spent 16 years shipping AI products across healthcare, physical security, consumer goods, and now cultural data, and the pattern behind the failures is always the same: companies start from the top down with vague mandates instead of solving a specific person's specific problem. In this episode, Ian breaks down his framework for AI implementations that actually stick. Start bottom-up, ask a tangible question, ...

Humanoid Robots Are a Distraction (Here's What Actually Works) ft. Grigorij Dudnik 03.02.2026 1t 2min

What happens when AI leaves the screen and enters the physical world? It breaks. Spencer and Jacob sit down with robotics researcher Grigorij Dudnik, who's been running real experiments with real robots—and finding that most of our assumptions about AI fall apart the moment hardware gets involved. The big one: the idea that a single massive model can do everything. Grigorij makes the case that the future isn't a "super-intelligent" humanoid. It's a modular system where an LLM plans, specializ...

The Hidden Tradeoffs of AI Automation (and Why Friction Still Matters) ft. Jakob Ambuehl, Brex 27.01.2026 58min

How does generative AI actually work inside a large, regulated fintech company when real customers, real money, and real regulations are on the line? The AI Rebels Crew sits down with Jake from Brex’s Customer Experience Strategy team to reveal what actually happens when AI moves from hype to production. You’ll hear how a major fintech deploys AI in customer support without sacrificing trust, compliance, or the human experience, and why most AI implementations fail to do the same. We break ...

From Hype to Controls: Securing AI Before Regulation Catches Up 22.01.2026 54min

Most companies are racing to adopt AI, but almost none can explain who’s responsible when it goes wrong. Cordell Robinson of Brownstone Consulting joins the AI Rebels crew to unpack the uncomfortable truth about AI governance, security, and compliance in a world moving faster than regulation. Why is the U.S. is lagging behind on enforceable AI rules, how can existing frameworks like NIST and ISO be adapted to fill the gap, and what does “good governance” actually look like in practice? These ...

Inside Dreami.me: Why Safer Companion AI Means Saying “No” More Often ft. Ryan "Zuda" Satterfield 14.01.2026 56min

Chatbots are starting to feel less like tools and more like something you relate to, and that shift comes with real risks. On AI Rebels, we sit down with Ryan “Zuda” Satterfield, the builder behind Dreami.me, to unpack the “AI psychosis” controversy: how overly agreeable models can validate bad ideas and create safety problems for anyone shipping companion AI. Ryan breaks down the guardrails he is implementing, from reducing sycophancy to shutting down “messiah” narratives, and explains why h...

AI Is Getting Cheaper. Human Judgment Is Getting More Valuable ft. Daniel Yoo, Finmate AI 16.12.2025 59min

AI isn’t magic, and pretending it is may be the biggest risk in tech right now. A former financial advisor turned AI founder argues that most AI products are already becoming commodities, with little defensible moat and wildly inflated valuations. He explains why real value comes not from “agentic” hype, but from deep domain expertise, careful guardrails, and knowing what not to automate. In regulated industries like finance, trust, liability, and human judgment still matter more than raw int...

Your Next News Anchor Is AI ft. Nikolai Yakovenko, DeepNewz 10.12.2025 1t 6min

AI is now spotting the news before journalists even know it exists. DeepNewz’ founder reveals how their system scans real-time signals from across the internet to uncover emerging stories faster than any newsroom. He breaks down why writers are secretly relying on AI, how tiny teams are scaling like giants with agents, and where media is headed next. The conversation uncovers the shift from simple article summaries to true signal discovery and personalized news intelligence. If you want an ea...

Beating the Machines: How Bot Spot Levels the Playing Field Against Hedge Funds ft. Robert Grzesik 02.12.2025 1t 1min

Most retail traders don’t realize they’re battling algorithms that execute 70–80% of all market activity. Robert Grzesik reveals how Bot Spot turns plain-English instructions into actual Python trading bots capable of running on real brokerages. The discussion digs into AI-assisted backtesting, strategy optimization, and agentic systems that can research news or sentiment before placing trades. A new marketplace for user-built algorithms hints at a future where anyone can publish or refine au...

The Next Big AI Wave: Context Engines, Not Chatbots - ft. Ping CEO Camden Bean 13.11.2025 55min

AI note-takers are already obsolete, and Camden Bean, CEO of Ping Assistant, explains why the real power is everything that happens before and after the meeting. In this episode, he reveals how Ping is building a full-context engine for accountants that remembers every client detail, automates emails and documents, and turns hours of work into minutes. Camden breaks down the wild speed at which modern builders can create using AI, including how he built in a weekend what used to cost $40,000 ...

Why Companies Fight Over Engineers Who Don't Write Code ft. Austen Allred 24.10.2025 1t 2min

Austin Allred lived in his car in San Francisco teaching himself to code, and now he runs a program where students never write a single line. At Gauntlet AI, engineers learn to direct AI systems that do all the coding while companies pay recruiting fees upfront, making the entire training free for students who land $200K jobs. The model works because the skills gap has reversed: employers are now bottlenecked by talent, not the other way around. Allred's most practical insight gets overlooked...

Plotly Thickens — How Open Source Is Powering the Next AI Wave ft. Domenic Ravita 08.10.2025 57min

What if rebellion looked like collaboration instead of chaos? Plotly’s VP of Marketing Dominic Revita traces his journey from coding the first internet-only bank in the 90s to shaping the next generation of AI-native tools. He reveals how open source innovation and AI-driven creativity are merging to make data storytelling more human—and more powerful. The conversation dives into the philosophy behind building transparent tech that empowers rather than replaces. It’s a visionary look at the f...

Practical AI and the One-Click Shift: Making Tech Effortless ft. Derek Crager 30.09.2025 56min

Derek Crager, founder of Practical AI, joins AI Rebels to explain how voice is set to become the next one-click revolution. Derek shares his journey from industrial construction to Amazon, weaving in lessons about simplicity, usability, and the power of capturing tribal knowledge. We dive into how voice AI can transform the workplace by making expertise instantly accessible and breaking down barriers to learning. Derek also unpacks the “AI gold rush,” explaining why the real winners will be t...