Decagon’s Playbook for Building Enterprise AI Applications

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

July 31, 2026

Duration

1h 20m

Channel

a16z

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Sarah Wang and Kimberly Tan are joined by Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas, co-founders of Decagon, to discuss the evolution of enterprise AI agents, why the company increasingly relies on open-source models, and how it is helping some of the world’s largest companies deploy AI in production. Decagon has become one of the fastest-growing AI companies by building agents that automate customer support, sales, and operational workflows. Jesse, Decagon’s CEO, and Ashwin, its president, explain how the company is building enterprise AI at scale. They unpack why Decagon moved most of its inference to open-source models, how latency, evaluation, and fine-tuning shape production AI systems, and why enterprise AI requires far more than simply plugging into frontier models. The conversation also explores forward-deployed engineering, enterprise sales, AI’s impact on jobs, and why application companies will continue to thrive alongside the foundation model labs. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:07 - Decagon's Journey from Frontier APIs to 90% Open-Source 05:00 - The False Trade-off: Why Fine-Tuned Small Models Win 09:26 - Decagon Labs as a Model Factory 15:07 - Are Frontier AI Labs the Last Startups? 21:21 - The Forward Deployed Trap: Product vs Consulting Truck 28:36 - Duet Autopilot: The Agent That Builds the Agent 37:02 - Winning Enterprise: Glass Box vs Black Box (and Beating Sierra) 47:55 - From Customer Support to AI Concierge 01:14:45 - Will AI Kill Jobs? Jevons Paradox in Customer Support Resources: Follow Jesse Zhang on X: https://x.com/thejessezhang Follow Ashwin Sreenivas on X: https://x.com/AshwinSreenivas Follow Sarah Wang on X: https://x.com/sarahdingwang Follow Kimberly Tan on X: https://x.com/kimberlywtan Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Jesse Zhang

  guest

  Co-founder of Decagon focused on building enterprise AI agent applications.

• Sarah Wang

  host

  a16z investor who hosts and interviews founders about enterprise AI applications and go-to-market.

• Ashwin Sreenivas

  guest

  Co-founder of Decagon; formerly a deployment strategist at Palantir.

• Kimberly Tan

  host

  a16z team member who appears as a co-host asking occasional follow-up questions.

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of a16z, featuring Jesse Zhang and Sarah Wang, Decagon’s Playbook for Building Enterprise AI Applications explores decagon’s enterprise AI playbook: open-source models, productized deployment, iterating fast Decagon migrated from frontier-model APIs to a stack that is ~90% open-source to achieve lower latency (especially for voice), better controllability, and cheaper inference at scale.

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