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Episode 44 · Monday, 27 July 2026 · 67 min

Why the Best AI Teams Stopped Chasing Models

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In this episode

90% of companies can’t point to a single sustained dollar of value from AI. The ones that can are seeing a 3.7x median return. The difference isn’t the model, it’s measurement discipline, harness engineering, and how you actually deploy at scale.

My co-founder Jonathan and I break down the Kimi K3 release and the US vs China model race, then dig into our brief on AI engineering at scale: the AI gateway pattern Stripe, Uber, and DoorDash use to control token spend, the “company brain” from YC’s latest RFS, spec-driven development, and how you actually get a whole org to adopt AI.

If you’re a builder, engineer, or tech executive trying to prove ROI on AI and figure out where the real moat is, this one’s for you.

Hosted by Robert Ta and Jonathan McCoy, co-founders of Clarity, reporting from the front lines of building an AI company.

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AI clarity for founders, builders and tech executives. News with real takes, the memes that made us laugh, and the tactical meta we are testing on ourselves.