Sharadh Krishnamurthy is an engineering manager at Stripe, where he helped build Kai, the company’s internal AI agent used by more than 10,000 employees every week. He’s worked across several of Stripe’s core infrastructure teams, including data and developer experience, which gives him a grounded, systems-level perspective on what it actually takes to make AI work at enterprise scale. He’s currently focused on the governance, skills, and infrastructure layers that let every Stripe employee use AI safely and effectively, regardless of their technical background.
Listen or watch on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts
What you’ll learn:
- Why Stripe built Kai from scratch instead of buying, and what tipped the decision
- What Kai knows about you by default and what you actually control
- Why “projects” at Stripe are a governance mechanism, not just a folder
- How Stripe structured its data layer so agents can query safely at scale
- Why the infrastructure Stripe built for human developers turned out to be exactly what agents needed
- How Kai’s skills platform lets any employee package a workflow, and what happens when you have 2,000 of them
- What Sharadh learned the hard way when agents nearly took down production systems
Brought to you by:
**[DX](https://getdx.com/howiai)**—Engineering intelligence for the AI era
**[Hyperagent](https://hyperagent.com/howiai)**—Deploy fleets of agents that handle real work
In this episode, we cover:
([00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM)) Introducing Sharadh
([02:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=166s)) Why Stripe built an AI agent (Kai) instead of buying tools
([05:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=318s)) What Kai knows about you (and what you can turn off)
([06:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=411s)) Projects as a governance layer
([10:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=604s)) Live demo: Kai builds a dashboard
([12:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=738s)) Tools, skills, and the secure sandbox
([17:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=1042s)) Why Stripe has benefited so much from AI
([19:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=1160s)) Agentic identity, load shedding, and rogue agents
([20:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=1241s)) Iterating on the dashboard
([25:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=1501s)) How they rolled out Kai across the team
([29:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=1747s)) How projects work
([34:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=2058s)) Bespoke agents for bespoke use cases
([35:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=2158s)) The skill builder workflow
([40:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=2440s)) Skill quality, evals, and telemetry
([43:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=2581s)) Recap
([45:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZODZ_4VaM&t=2713s)) Lightning round
Tools referenced:
• Trino: [https://trino.io/](https://trino.io/)
• Anthropic: [https://www.anthropic.com/](https://www.anthropic.com/)
• Gemini: [https://gemini.google.com/](https://gemini.google.com/)
• Cursor: [https://www.cursor.com/](https://www.cursor.com/)
Where to find Sharadh Krishnamurthy:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharadhk
Where to find Claire Vo:
ChatPRD: [https://www.chatprd.ai/](https://www.chatprd.ai/)
Website: [https://clairevo.com/](https://clairevo.com/)
LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/)
Production and marketing by [https://penname.co/](https://penname.co/). For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [\[email protected\]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection).
source & further reading
lennysnewsletter.com — original article
GPT-6 Astra is a banger - here’s everything I’ve built
How to turn your AI into a world-class designer
🎙️ How I AI: How this PM uses Claude to handle 70% to 80% of his workday