Can AI actually reduce cloud costs — or does it just create better dashboards?

In Episode 27 of Built This Week, Sam Nadler and Jordan Metzner are joined by Ben, CEO of Espresso AI, to break down a real production system that uses machine learning to actively optimize data warehouse compute in real time.

We walk through a live demo built specifically to expose hidden inefficiencies inside Snowflake and Databricks environments — from over-refreshing dashboards to duplicated queries and underutilized clusters. Then we go deep on how Espresso AI works under the hood: proxy-based routing, workload-aware ML models, and fine-grained compute orchestration that runs without changing application code.

This is not FinOps theater. This is AI actively rewriting how compute is allocated.

We also discuss:

• Why most teams overpay for convenience in the cloud
• How real-time query routing beats manual cost controls
• Where AI helps engineers — and where it absolutely does not
• The limits of vibe coding for serious infrastructure
• Gemini powering Siri and what it means for voice assistants
• Meta’s massive GPU buildout and the future of hyperscalers

No hype.
No theory.
Just what happens when you put AI in control of real infrastructure.

New episodes every Friday.

Timestamps

(0:00) Why modern AI understands code differently
(0:45) Episode 27 kickoff and guest introduction
(1:30) Live demo: diagnosing hidden warehouse inefficiencies
(3:00) Why dashboards refresh far more than they are viewed
(4:30) The real cost of duplicated queries across teams
(6:00) What Espresso AI actually does (in plain English)
(7:45) Kubernetes for data warehouses, powered by ML
(9:30) How real-time query routing works
(11:30) Why most companies are not “doing it wrong”
(13:00) Transformers and deep code understanding
(15:00) Where AI helps engineers today
(16:30) Why AI cannot yet run core infrastructure autonomously
(18:00) Productivity gains without replacing engineers
(19:30) Gemini, Siri, and the next generation of voice assistants
(21:00) Meta’s massive GPU investments explained
(23:00) Will Meta become a hyperscaler
(24:30) Final thoughts and closing

Links Section

Built This Week
New episodes every Friday

Jordan Metzner
https://x.com/mrjmetz

Sam Nadler
https://x.com/Gravino05

Espresso AI
https://espresso.ai