
Nov 28, 2025 · 53m, Episode 980
How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning
From The a16z Show
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In this episode, a16z GP Martin Casado sits down with Sherwin Wu, Head of Engineering for the OpenAI Platform, to break down how OpenAI organizes its platform across models, pricing, and infrastructure, and how it is shifting from a single general-purpose model to a portfolio of specialized systems, custom fine-tuning options, and node-based agent workflows. They get into why developers tend to stick with a trusted model family, what builds that trust, and why the industry moved past the idea of one model that can do everything. Sherwin also explains the evolution from prompt engineering to...
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