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Alessio Fanelli

Partner · Decibel

Claims
224
Episodes
65
Shows
1
Named items
3

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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tool / uses

Zo

“I think there’s been one thing, I use another thing called zo, which is kinda like a cloud computer plus agent.”

Latent Space · 17 Mar 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

tool / likes

VCR

“First of all, you have very good support for mocking in unit tests, which is something that a lot of other frameworks don't do. So, you know, my favorite Ruby library is VCR because it just, you know, it just lets me store the HTTP requests and replay them.”

Latent Space · 6 Feb 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

other / likes

Simulative AI

“Yeah, I'm a big fan of Simulative AI. We had a summer of Simulative AI. Another term we're trying to coin.”

Latent Space · 27 Sept 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Alessio said.

125 transcript-backed records

01 / belief

I think most people have heard of Applied Intuition tied to YC when it was first started, and then you were kinda in stealth for a long time, so maybe just give people the high-level overview of what it is today, and then we’ll dive into the different pieces.

“I think most people have heard of Applied Intuition tied to YC when it was first started, and then you were kinda in stealth for a long time, so maybe just give people the high-level overview of what it is today, and then we’ll dive into the different pieces.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

02 / belief

You’ve not mentioned hardware at all, like sensors or obviously we you mentioned you don’t do chips. I think even in AV there’s, like, a big, cameras versus lidars.

“You’ve not mentioned hardware at all, like sensors or obviously we you mentioned you don’t do chips. I think even in AV there’s, like, a big, cameras versus lidars.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

03 / belief

I remember initially, I think people put you and Scale AI very similarly for some things about being kinda like on the data infrastructure side of things.

“I remember initially, I think people put you and Scale AI very similarly for some things about being kinda like on the data infrastructure side of things.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

04 / belief

” I think a lot of founders are in a similar way where they wanna raise a lot of money to signal they’re strong, and you raise a lot of money without spending it.

“” I think a lot of founders are in a similar way where they wanna raise a lot of money to signal they’re strong, and you raise a lot of money without spending it.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

05 / belief

Definition of Turbo puffer, because I think you could be a Vector db, which is maybe a bad word now in some circles, you could be a search engine.

“Definition of Turbo puffer, because I think you could be a Vector db, which is maybe a bad word now in some circles, you could be a search engine.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

06 / belief

You know, I think sometimes it’s like, well, these are the tradeoffs, but the three nines, it’s like, actually it’s not a real trade off because we can make something that nobody has ever made before and actually make it work.

“You know, I think sometimes it’s like, well, these are the tradeoffs, but the three nines, it’s like, actually it’s not a real trade off because we can make something that nobody has ever made before and actually make it work.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

07 / belief

Can I do it with a hundred, if I need a trillion healthcare tokens, it’s like, they’re probably not out there that you don’t have, you know, I think that’s really like the.

“Can I do it with a hundred, if I need a trillion healthcare tokens, it’s like, they’re probably not out there that you don’t have, you know, I think that’s really like the.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

08 / belief

Doubling, tripling every year in size is not like, uh, you know, and I think today you kind of see that with LLMs too, where like every year the jumps in size and like capabilities are just so big.

“Doubling, tripling every year in size is not like, uh, you know, and I think today you kind of see that with LLMs too, where like every year the jumps in size and like capabilities are just so big.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

10 / belief

I think now you can start to infer semantics from things that are beyond just like simple recognition to like understanding why certain things are happening a certain way.

“I think now you can start to infer semantics from things that are beyond just like simple recognition to like understanding why certain things are happening a certain way.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

11 / belief

You know, in the, as anything changed, like since you, because you updated this in 2022 and I think now we're kind of like, you know, five years removed from COVID and all of that.

“You know, in the, as anything changed, like since you, because you updated this in 2022 and I think now we're kind of like, you know, five years removed from COVID and all of that.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

14 / belief

I've run a lot of engineering teams in the past, and I think the product versus engineering tension has always been more about effort than like whether or not the feature is buildable.

“I've run a lot of engineering teams in the past, and I think the product versus engineering tension has always been more about effort than like whether or not the feature is buildable.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

17 / belief

I think that's kind of like the, that's the, you know, Sam is always talking about incremental deployments and kind of like getting, having people getting used to it.

“I think that's kind of like the, that's the, you know, Sam is always talking about incremental deployments and kind of like getting, having people getting used to it.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

18 / belief

Before we go into the inference, some of the deeper stuff, can you give people an overview of like some of the numbers? So I think last I checked, you have like 1.

“Before we go into the inference, some of the deeper stuff, can you give people an overview of like some of the numbers? So I think last I checked, you have like 1.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

19 / belief

Um, and so I think if you remove that whole, like, oh, that's impossible, and you just think really clearly about like, what's now possible with like what, what they've done with O1, it's easy to see how that scales.

“Um, and so I think if you remove that whole, like, oh, that's impossible, and you just think really clearly about like, what's now possible with like what, what they've done with O1, it's easy to see how that scales.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

20 / belief

I'm like, I'm sure there's not what event, you know, but I'm curious, like, just like how people there's always like this, I think for a little bit, it went away about like startups and kind of like hustle culture and like all of that.

“I'm like, I'm sure there's not what event, you know, but I'm curious, like, just like how people there's always like this, I think for a little bit, it went away about like startups and kind of like hustle culture and like all of that.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

23 / belief

I think in AI you see this a lot, which is like a lot of stars, a lot of interest at a rate that you didn't really see in the past in open source, where nobody's running to start.

“I think in AI you see this a lot, which is like a lot of stars, a lot of interest at a rate that you didn't really see in the past in open source, where nobody's running to start.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

28 / belief

I think the point of the talk was like everybody, we're scaling these chips, we're scaling the compute, but like the second ingredient which is data is not scaling at the same rate.

“I think the point of the talk was like everybody, we're scaling these chips, we're scaling the compute, but like the second ingredient which is data is not scaling at the same rate.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

32 / belief

I mean, I'm curious, I think Dylan, At the debate he said SweetBench 80 percent was like a soap for end of next year as a kind of like, you know, watermark that the moms are still improving.

“I mean, I'm curious, I think Dylan, At the debate he said SweetBench 80 percent was like a soap for end of next year as a kind of like, you know, watermark that the moms are still improving.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

34 / belief

How did you get, you joined Anthropic, did you already know you were going to work on of the stuff you publish or you kind of join and then you figure out where you land? I think people are always curious to learn more.

“How did you get, you joined Anthropic, did you already know you were going to work on of the stuff you publish or you kind of join and then you figure out where you land? I think people are always curious to learn more.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

39 / belief

I think the thing about ad-generated content, if we look at YouTube, like we do videos on YouTube and it's like, you know, a lot of people like screaming in the thumbnails to get clicks.

“I think the thing about ad-generated content, if we look at YouTube, like we do videos on YouTube and it's like, you know, a lot of people like screaming in the thumbnails to get clicks.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

44 / belief

Then once you get to thought generation, people start to think, what is going on here? So I think everybody, well, not everybody, but people that were tweaking with these things early on saw the take a deep breath, and things step-by-step, and all these different techniques that the people had.

“Then once you get to thought generation, people start to think, what is going on here? So I think everybody, well, not everybody, but people that were tweaking with these things early on saw the take a deep breath, and things step-by-step, and all these different techniques that the people had.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

48 / belief

Especially for newer folks that have like a lot more training data out there, so to speak. I think of like, you know, Sean Carroll.

“Especially for newer folks that have like a lot more training data out there, so to speak. I think of like, you know, Sean Carroll.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

50 / belief

I think to me, the most interesting thing has been hiring and some of the awesome people that you've been bringing on that maybe don't fit the central casting of Silicon Valley, so to speak.

“I think to me, the most interesting thing has been hiring and some of the awesome people that you've been bringing on that maybe don't fit the central casting of Silicon Valley, so to speak.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

60 / belief

I think maybe a lot of people initially wrote them off, but between some of the Gemini Nano stuff, like Gemma 2, PolyGemma, we'll talk about some of the KV cache and context caching.

“I think maybe a lot of people initially wrote them off, but between some of the Gemini Nano stuff, like Gemma 2, PolyGemma, we'll talk about some of the KV cache and context caching.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

64 / belief

If you think about the evolution of the models, I think up until Llama3, with Meta AI and some of these things, I'm like, it makes sense that they want to build their own models and they're multi-modal.

“If you think about the evolution of the models, I think up until Llama3, with Meta AI and some of these things, I'm like, it makes sense that they want to build their own models and they're multi-modal.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

69 / belief

Any other things that you want to bring up, maybe how people are using gradient, anything like that, I think that will help have a clearer picture for people.

“Any other things that you want to bring up, maybe how people are using gradient, anything like that, I think that will help have a clearer picture for people.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

71 / belief

People are running the same thing when they're building sales agents, when they're building customer support agents, like it all comes down to how do you make the thing sound like how you want it to sound? And I think most folks out there do prompt engineering, but I feel like you figure out something that is much better than a good prompt.

“People are running the same thing when they're building sales agents, when they're building customer support agents, like it all comes down to how do you make the thing sound like how you want it to sound? And I think most folks out there do prompt engineering, but I feel like you figure out something that is much better than a good prompt.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

73 / belief

I think that's, that's like what I'm most interested to figure out because with the browsers, it's like, it's the entry point to the thing.

“I think that's, that's like what I'm most interested to figure out because with the browsers, it's like, it's the entry point to the thing.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

74 / belief

I think when you do a new Silicon, you're like, Oh, we're going to be so much better at this thing or like much faster, much cheaper.

“I think when you do a new Silicon, you're like, Oh, we're going to be so much better at this thing or like much faster, much cheaper.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

75 / belief

I think like the, what is possible today and like what is worth investing in, you know? And I think like, I mean, people look at you and say, well, these guys are building agents.

“I think like the, what is possible today and like what is worth investing in, you know? And I think like, I mean, people look at you and say, well, these guys are building agents.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

79 / belief

I think to me the most interesting thing about long inference is like, You're shifting the cost to the customer depending on how much they care about the end result.

“I think to me the most interesting thing about long inference is like, You're shifting the cost to the customer depending on how much they care about the end result.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

82 / belief

You know I think, I mean, obviously the Voyager paper is like the most basic example where like, now their artifact is like the best planning to do a diamond pickaxe in Minecraft.

“You know I think, I mean, obviously the Voyager paper is like the most basic example where like, now their artifact is like the best planning to do a diamond pickaxe in Minecraft.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

83 / belief

I think the The challenge, well not the challenge, what they need to figure out is like how do you keep the rag piece always up to date constantly, you know, I feel like the models, you put all this work into pre training them, but then at least you have a fixed artifact.

“I think the The challenge, well not the challenge, what they need to figure out is like how do you keep the rag piece always up to date constantly, you know, I feel like the models, you put all this work into pre training them, but then at least you have a fixed artifact.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

87 / belief

Like this is a concept that I hadn't heard before reading about this. So I think most people's mental models, like transformers or something else, it’s not transformers AND something else.

“Like this is a concept that I hadn't heard before reading about this. So I think most people's mental models, like transformers or something else, it’s not transformers AND something else.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

88 / belief

When you were building retool vectors, how do you think about, yeah, leveraging a startup to do it, putting vectors into one of the existing data stores that you already had? I think like, you're really a quite large customer scale.

“When you were building retool vectors, how do you think about, yeah, leveraging a startup to do it, putting vectors into one of the existing data stores that you already had? I think like, you're really a quite large customer scale.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

91 / belief

Obviously, there's like all these different things like privacy, you know, if an internal tool hallucinates, that's fine, because you're paying people to use it basically, versus if it hallucinates to your customer, there's a different bar. Because for you, if people build internal tool with retool, there are external customers to you, you know, so I think you're on the flip side of it.

“Obviously, there's like all these different things like privacy, you know, if an internal tool hallucinates, that's fine, because you're paying people to use it basically, versus if it hallucinates to your customer, there's a different bar. Because for you, if people build internal tool with retool, there are external customers to you, you know, so I think you're on the flip side of it.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

94 / belief

I think the other interesting thing that you have is this inline assist UX that I wouldn't say async, but like it works while you can also do work.

“I think the other interesting thing that you have is this inline assist UX that I wouldn't say async, but like it works while you can also do work.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

96 / belief

Uh, yeah, I think one of the things that Swyx said when he was opening the AI engineer summit a couple of weeks ago was like, look, most people here don't know much about the space because it's so new and like being open and welcoming.

“Uh, yeah, I think one of the things that Swyx said when he was opening the AI engineer summit a couple of weeks ago was like, look, most people here don't know much about the space because it's so new and like being open and welcoming.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

97 / belief

I think the startup's point is the most interesting, right? You mentioned companies that are GPU poor, they raise a lot of money, and there's a lot of startups out there that are GPU poor and did not raise a lot of money.

“I think the startup's point is the most interesting, right? You mentioned companies that are GPU poor, they raise a lot of money, and there's a lot of startups out there that are GPU poor and did not raise a lot of money.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

98 / belief

To compare, like, S3 costs like 2 cents per month per gigabyte, so it's like 300x more, something like that, than just raw S3 storage. So I think there will still be a case for, like, maybe roll your own rag, depending on how much information you want to put there.

“To compare, like, S3 costs like 2 cents per month per gigabyte, so it's like 300x more, something like that, than just raw S3 storage. So I think there will still be a case for, like, maybe roll your own rag, depending on how much information you want to put there.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

99 / belief

I think that would be quite, quite interesting. But yeah, I think a lot of excitement and, you know, we just announced the, the Linux based launchpad, so we're on the side of the, of the builders.

“I think that would be quite, quite interesting. But yeah, I think a lot of excitement and, you know, we just announced the, the Linux based launchpad, so we're on the side of the, of the builders.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

103 / belief

You know, the data is not good for anything. And I think like now, at least with these models, they have some knowledge of their own and they can also tell you if your data is bad, which I think is like something that before you didn't have.

“You know, the data is not good for anything. And I think like now, at least with these models, they have some knowledge of their own and they can also tell you if your data is bad, which I think is like something that before you didn't have.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

104 / belief

Now that's an important message. And yeah, that's why we've been promoting a lot of open source developers, open source communities, I think, letting the builders build and explore.

“Now that's an important message. And yeah, that's why we've been promoting a lot of open source developers, open source communities, I think, letting the builders build and explore.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

105 / belief

The difference I think at the Databricks keynote, you said chains are like predetermined steps and agents is models reasoning to figure out what steps to take and what actions to take.

“The difference I think at the Databricks keynote, you said chains are like predetermined steps and agents is models reasoning to figure out what steps to take and what actions to take.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

108 / belief

I think a lot of times the focus is on tokens parameter ratio in the training dataset and people don't think as much about the actual flops per GPU, which you're going to mention later in the blog post too, in terms of how much you can get out.

“I think a lot of times the focus is on tokens parameter ratio in the training dataset and people don't think as much about the actual flops per GPU, which you're going to mention later in the blog post too, in terms of how much you can get out.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

113 / belief

I think you, right now the math was that for the price of the most expensive thing we build, which is the International Space Station, we could build one Tampa of.

“I think you, right now the math was that for the price of the most expensive thing we build, which is the International Space Station, we could build one Tampa of.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

118 / belief

You know, we mentioned some of the podcasts you had done, Jonathan, I think in one of them you mentioned Mosaic was not planning on building a model and releasing and obviously you eventually did.

“You know, we mentioned some of the podcasts you had done, Jonathan, I think in one of them you mentioned Mosaic was not planning on building a model and releasing and obviously you eventually did.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

119 / belief

I think fast training in inference was like one of the goals, right? So there's always the trade off between doing the hardest thing and like.

“I think fast training in inference was like one of the goals, right? So there's always the trade off between doing the hardest thing and like.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

124 / belief

How do you see the engineer, I, I think Sean, you said copilot is everybody gets their own junior engineer to like write some of the code and then you fix it For me, a lot of it is the junior engineer gets a senior engineer to actually help them write better code.

“How do you see the engineer, I, I think Sean, you said copilot is everybody gets their own junior engineer to like write some of the code and then you fix it For me, a lot of it is the junior engineer gets a senior engineer to actually help them write better code.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space

125 / belief

Zero to like a million users in five days and everybody, I, I think there's like dozens of ChatGPT API wrappers on GitHub that are unofficial and clearly people want the product.

“Zero to like a million users in five days and everybody, I, I think there's like dozens of ChatGPT API wrappers on GitHub that are unofficial and clearly people want the product.”
Speaker
Alessio Fanelli
Publisher
Latent Space
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