LevelUp Labs

Chai And AI Community

A curated, invite-only group where we cut through the AI hype, stay updated on what truly matters, and connect over expert-led discussions, workshops, and hands-on sessions.

Chai and AI is an invite-only community of AI practitioners from leading companies including Google, Amazon, Meta, Anthropic, Cohere, OpenAI, and 90+ others.

Builders shipping production systems, founders scaling AI companies, engineering and product leaders, researchers, and executives from top companies and VCs.

Logos of member companies: Anthropic, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Cohere

The name says it all. We’re here to get the chai (the tea) on what’s actually happening in AI. It’s a space to debate and talk about AI with people building at the forefront.

What Happens in the Community

We have a number of initiatives within the community:

A lot of these happen as unstructured conversations or weekly build sessions where we go over things together.

  1. 01.

    Discussions on the latest applied AI papers

  2. 02.

    Patterns in production

  3. 03.

    AMAs with experts in the network

  4. 04.

    How to be AI-augmented (tutorials, what people have been building)

Featured Speakers

Francisco D'souza

Former CEO of Cognizant, Co-Founder of Recognize

Leading Through Uncertainty & The Future of AI-Enabled Services

  • Uncertainty: create options, avoid single bets
  • Strategy: portfolio approach (bet, cut losers, double winners)
  • AI impact: all services moving toward automation
  • Model: services + SaaS + heavy R&D (10–30%)
  • Economics: higher margins needed to fund tech
  • Playbook: high-touch services + proprietary tech (Palantir model)

Jaya Gupta

Partner, Foundation Capital

The Future of Services Software & What VCs Actually Look For

  • Shift: LLMs enable full workflow automation (not just tasks)
  • Moat: forward-deployed engineering → pricing power
  • Pricing: usage-based beats outcome-based
  • Founders: young ICs (<32) outperform managers
  • Opportunities: healthcare + supply chain workflows
  • Challenge: scaling quality & handling edge cases

Gajen Kandiah

President & COO, Hitachi Digital

Driving AI Strategy for Fortune-Scale Companies

  • Approach: break processes to atomic level → place AI for max value
  • Execution: short cycles + RAID framework (experiment, measure, go/no-go)
  • Strategy: AI as growth engine, tied to core business
  • Principle: don’t “bolt AI” → redesign from the ground up
  • Focus: prioritize customer value over internal efficiency
  • Shoutouts: Iskriyana Vasileva & Gary Wong

Gabriel Almeida

Founder & CTO, Langflow

Building a Wildly Successful AI Startup in 2025

  • Product: modular AI agents + start small & specialize
  • Speed: iterate fast (fail often, focus on one thing)
  • GTM: open source as launch strategy
  • System: flexible infra + integrate (not build everything)
  • Challenge: efficiency (tokens) + usability (non-technical users)
Read full insights →

Jyothi Nookula

Product Director, Netflix

The AI PM Hype & Building AI-Native Products in 2025

  • Definition: AI-native = AI as core capability (everything built around it)
  • Approach: problem-first, not “add AI” thinking
  • PM role: no need to code → understand AI limits & boundaries
  • Data & use cases: large datasets + automation, personalization, augmentation
  • Execution: practical checklists + focus on product fundamentals
Read full discussion →

Vikash Rungta

Ex-Meta (Llama team), Founder

The AI PM Hype & Building AI-Native Products in 2025

  • Shift: deterministic → probabilistic AI systems
  • Decisions: trade-offs (precision vs breadth) + SSR framework
  • Core skill: managing non-determinism
  • Execution: parallel experiments + fast learning (avoid over-analysis)
  • Insight: explore latent product value with AI
Read full discussion →

Joining Chai and AI

Right now, the community is invite-only. Our LevelUp Labs team sources from our network and nominates people who can join.

We’ve been very intentional about this because we deeply care about community culture. The conversations we have, the debates we get into, the way we help each other—all of that depends on having the right people in the room. We’re looking for people who contribute meaningfully, who are generous with what they’re learning, who show up not just to take but to give.

Right now, members of our cohort programs get temporary access to the community and can apply to stay. We’re planning to open an external application process soon that will incorporate our values and make sure we’re bringing in the right kind of people.

You can see some of our discussions

View discussions