The PRQL: Exploring the Evolution of AI and ML with Rishabh Bhargava of refuel

Eric Dodds 00:05
Welcome to The Data Stack Show prequel. This is a short bonus episode where we preview the upcoming show. You’ll get to meet our guests and hear about the topics we’re going to cover. If they’re interesting to you, you can catch the full length show when it drops on Wednesday. We are here on The Data Stack Show with Rish Bhargava. Rish, thank you for giving us some of your time.

Rishabh Bhargava 00:29
Thank you for having me.

Eric Dodds 00:32
All right, well give us the overview. You are running a company that is in a space that is absolutely insane right now, which is AI and LLMs. But give us the brief background? How did you get into this? And then give us a quick overview of refuel?

Rishabh Bhargava 00:49
Awesome, yeah, so look, I’m currently the CEO and co founder of refuel. But been generally in the space of data, machine learning and AI for about eight years, I was at grad school at Stanford, studying computer science, researching machine learning, and then spent a few years at a company called parameter AI, where I was an early ml engineer, the problems we were trying to solve back then were, you know, how do you take in the world’s unstructured text? You know, ask people, you know, allow people ask any questions, get a two pager to read, you know, so all of these kinds of interesting NLP problems, and then spent a few years after that solving data infrastructure problems, how do you move terabytes of data point A to point B, lots of data pipeline stuff. And that led into starting refuel? You know, one of the key reasons why we started was just how do you make good, clean, reliable data accessible to teams and businesses. And that’s, that’s the genesis of the company. And here we are.

Kostas Pardalis 01:45
And Eric, you know, I know Reese from, like, COVID days. So it’s, for me, it’s like, very exciting to see like the evolution like through all these, and see him like today like building in the space. I remember, like talking like, almost like two and a half years ago about like, what he was thinking. But then, a lot of times, we’re not like the thing that the up to date. So it’s, for me at least, like it’s very fascinating, because I have like, the journey of the person in front of me here. And I’m really like, happy to get into more details about that. So definitely, we have like to chat about it. But also, like, I think we have like the personal person here to talk about what it means like to build a product and the company. In such an explosive almost environment, like things are changing, like literally from day to day, when it comes like to these technologies like LLM ‘s and like AI and machine learning. And just like keeping up with the pace, from the perspective of a founder, I think it’s it’s a very unique, like, experience. So I’d love to talk also, like above that with theories like and here also what’s happening, we are probably have a much better understanding of what is going on with all these technologies out there. But also like how you experienced that, like trying to build something right? And of course, like talk about the product itself. What about you? What are like some topics that you’re really excited about, like talking? Today with us?

Rishabh Bhargava 03:14
You’re gonna be super excited to talk about justice, you know, to the world of generative AI, how quickly it’s evolving. But you know, the cost is right. Both of you have spent so much time talking to folks in data and how the world of LLM impacts the world of data, right? How do you get better data cleaner data, all those fun topics? And, frankly, what does it mean, right? What are the opportunities for businesses and enterprises? When this? As you said explosive technology is really taking off so excited to dig into these topics? Yep,

Kostas Pardalis 03:42
I think we’re ready for an amazing episode here. What do you think?

Eric Dodds 03:46
Let’s do it. It’s good. All right. That’s a wrap for the prequel. The full length episode will drop Wednesday morning. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it.