Ship AI

John is Head of AI & Developer Relations at Itential, a Google Developer Expert, former Cisco AI Technical Leader, former Senior Network Architect for the Parliament of Canada — and a fellow Canadian. He's the creator of NetClaw, an open-source AI agent that lets you talk to your network infrastructure in natural language, and the founder of VibeOps Forum, which grew from zero to 400+ members...

Alex Seymour is a contributor to IBM's open-source agent infrastructure (BAI framework, Agent Stack, and the Relay project), exploring what it takes to build general-purpose agentic systems at enterprise scale. Kyle Sava took a different path — he identified a real pain point as a tech seller, built a conversational AI roleplay tool on the side, and grew it into WatsonX Workshop : an internal AI-p...

AI Governance Isn't an Afterthought — It's a Kill Switch Logan Kelly, founder of Waxel, built AI agents for sales automation, shipped them to production, and immediately realized he had no control over cost, quality, or behavior. That experience became the foundation for Waxell.ai — a control plane for governing enterprise agents. Key takeaways from the conversation: Observability alone is an auto...

Alex LaPlante is VP of Cash Management Technology at RBC, former Interim Head of Borealis AI, co-author in Harvard Business Review, and a member of Canada's federal AI Strategy Task Force. In this conversation, she unpacks what separates organizations that actually ship AI from those stuck in demo mode — and why the answer is less about technology than culture, cross-functional collaboration, and...

Seven Minutes to Midnight: AGI Is Coming   What is AGI? When is it arriving? And what does it mean for your career, your organization, and humanity? In this episode of Ship AI, Manav Gupta delivers one of the most comprehensive, honest, and practical breakdowns of artificial general intelligence available today. No hype. No sci-fi. Just the data, the frameworks, and the hard questions. Chapters 00...

In this episode, Manav sits down with Mihai Criveti — IBM Distinguished Engineer and the creator of Context Forge , IBM's open-source agentic middleware — for a candid, technical conversation about what it actually takes to ship AI in the enterprise. 00:58 Navigating AI for Students 05:41 Context Forge and Scaling AI Agents 13:24 Understanding Context Forge 18:30 The Role of Middleware in AI 19:47...

The episode explores the rise of AI agents, their evolution from chatbots, and the challenges and opportunities in deploying and scaling AI agents. It delves into the characteristics of AI agents, the React pattern, advanced reasoning patterns, multi-agent orchestration, frameworks and protocols, governance, security implications, and the skills premium in the age of agency. Takeaways AI agents ar...

The conversation with Ozge Yeloglu covers her journey to becoming the VP of Advanced Analytics and AI at CIBC, her approach to deploying AI at scale, and the framework she built for success. It also delves into the concept of AI governance by design and the unique model of balancing AI governance and delivery, as well as leveraging the approach to change management for a large organization.  Chapt...

Episode Summary: When AI Gets a Body This episode explores the paradigm shift from digital AI to physical AI—what happens when chatbots become robots. We trace the evolution from Karel Čapek's 1920 coining of "robot" to today's Cambrian explosion of humanoids, autonomous vehicles, drones, and brain-computer interfaces. Chapters: 00:00 The Dawn of Physical AI 11:32 The $50 Trillion Opportunity 15:5...

Episode Overview Lawrence Wan, Chief Architect and Innovation Officer at Bank of Montreal, shares insights on how one of Canada's largest financial institutions approaches technology transformation, AI adoption, and the future of agentic systems in a heavily regulated industry. 00:00 Introduction to Lawrence Van and BMO 05:01 The Role of Technology in Banking 11:19 Designing for Scale and Future T...

AI In Banking - Vinh Tran, VP Data & AI, RBC In this episode, Vinh Tran—VP of Data and AI Platforms at RBC and an RBC Fellow—shares how one of the world's largest banks is approaching AI at enterprise scale. Key Takeaways "You have to control AI in order to scale it." Vinh explains that governance isn't about going slow—it's about building confidence. RBC invests heavily upfront in platforms,...

The conversation explores the impact of AI adoption on the labor market, job tasks, disruption, and fluency. It delves into the Jevons Paradox, AI maturity gap, CEO mandates, labor market divergence, and productivity evidence, highlighting the reshaping of the labor market and the baseline expectation of AI proficiency at organizations. Slides can be found at: https://manavgup.github.io/shipai/sta...

Sanctions didn't kill Chinese AI—they mutated it into something more formidable: a leaner, inference-optimized, vertically-integrated competitor. In this episode, we unpack how US export controls forced Chinese AI labs to innovate "up the stack," producing breakthroughs like DeepSeek's R1 model that matched frontier performance at a fraction of the cost. We explore China's $47.5 billion sovereign...

In 2014, the largest tech companies spent $44 billion on capital investments. By 2024, that number passed $200 billion—almost all of it tied to AI. This isn't an innovation budget. This is the largest concentrated capital investment in corporate history. In this episode, we follow the actual dollars: where they're going, why they're going there, and what has to be true for this multi-trillion doll...

The conversation delves into the exponential growth of AI models, the impact of compute abundance, global adoption of AI, and the comparison of AI performance with human capability. It explores the rapid evolution of AI technology and its implications on various aspects of society and industry. All slides can be found at: https://manavgup.github.io/shipai/state-of-ai/ep01/1 Takeaways Exponential G...

In this first episode, Manav Gupta and Mihai Criveti put the latest AI models through their paces in a head-to-head coding challenge. Watch as Claude Opus 4.1, GPT-5, and the open-source GPT OSS 20 billion compete to build interactive games and applications from simple prompts. Highlights: Live coding challenges including Snake, Minesweeper, and a Prince of Persia clone Real-time comparison of how...