What happens when you try to build the “General Electric of AI” with just 14 people? In this episode, Jeremy Howard reveals the radical inside story of Answer AI — a new kind of AI R&D lab that’s not chasing AGI, but instead aims to ship thousands of real-world products, all while staying tiny, open, and mission-driven.

Jeremy shares how open-source models like DeepSeek and Qwen are quietly outpacing closed-source giants, why the best new AI is coming out of China. You’ll hear the surprising truth about the so-called “DeepSeek moment,” why efficiency and cost are the real battlegrounds in AI, and how Answer AI’s “dialogue engineering” approach is already changing lives—sometimes literally.

We go deep on the tools and systems powering Answer AI’s insane product velocity, including Solve It (the platform that’s helped users land jobs and launch startups), Shell Sage (AI in your terminal), and Fast HTML (a new way to build web apps in pure Python). Jeremy also opens up about his unconventional path from philosophy major and computer game enthusiast to world-class AI scientist, and why he believes the future belongs to small, nimble teams who build for societal benefit, not just profit.

Fast.ai

Website - https://www.fast.ai

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/fastdotai

Answer.ai

Website - https://www.answer.ai/

X/Twitter - https://x.com/answerdotai

Jeremy Howard

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/howardjeremy

X/Twitter - https://x.com/jeremyphoward

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(01:39) Highlights and takeaways from ICLR Singapore

(02:39) Current state of open-source AI

(03:45) Thoughts on Microsoft Phi and open source moves

(05:41) Responding to OpenAI’s open source announcements

(06:29) The real impact of the Deepseek ‘moment’

(09:02) Progress and promise in test-time compute

(10:53) Where we really stand on AGI and ASI

(15:05) Jeremy’s journey from philosophy to AI

(20:07) Becoming a Kaggle champion and starting Fast.ai

(23:04) Answer.ai mission and unique vision

(28:15) Answer.ai’s business model and early monetization

(29:33) How a small team at Answer.ai ships so fast

(30:25) Why Devin AI agent isn't that great

(33:10) The future of autonomous agents in AI development

(34:43) Dialogue Engineering and Solve It

(43:54) How Answer.ai decides which projects to build

(49:47) Future of Answer.ai: staying small while scaling impact

Jeremy Howard on Building 5,000 AI Products with 14 People (Answer AI Deep-Dive)

The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck