Sundar Pichai: “Sergey is spending more time in the office. He's literally coding, and some of my fondest memories over the last year is sitting with Sergey on large screen looking at loss curves as we train these models.” When Sergey is back to coding and watching training loss... curves, you know he is in founder mode. That’s how Sergey Brin saved Google.show more

The TPU timeline is key. Built hardware before the model breakthroughs even happened. That's the kind of conviction that pays off. Now he's back in code while everyone else is still debating compute economics.

TPU was Jeff Dean’s idea. Back in 2013, he found that if users spoke to Google’s voice recognition model for just 3 minutes/day, Google needs 2x the data centers. The choice: A) Go bankrupt buying CPUs. B) Invent a new type of processor. Jeff Dean chose B.

this is what it means to be passionate about something

@lalitmadan The OpenAI guy Dan sparked his passion. Sergey is always passionate about computer science and winning the game.

yeah I saw this. Funny how google has done so much after this. Btw did you try Antigravity? I tried it the first day it launched and I kept rate limits and I tried it again yesterday. I loved it. The experience was much better. Google products are really coming through

Founder mode >>>

Companies where the suits can also code are something else

The fact that Google's co-founder is personally coding on AI models tells you everything about where the real leverage is right now. What other companies have founder-level attention on AI like this?

i must know, why are they so vigilantly watching train curves.

Watching training loss curve is the most addictive thing in training.

true, but sundar makes it sound like watching the curves is improving training. Sundar and Sergey: oh look it went down, AGI AGI oh no it went up, what happening (loop)

The current CEO seems quite redundant then

this sounds super simple but likely works primarily because "founder mode" collapses decision latency to near zero so when Sergey sits in front of loss curves, the feedback loop between observation and strategic pivot has no translation overhead. no reports → summaries → presentations → meetings → decisions

The only way for Google to make a comeback was to, get in the Founder mode. And they did it. But there is a harmless lie to it. - The Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) were already built. - DeepMind was acquired in 2014. - The Attention Is All You Need paper was published by Google Brain in 2017. Sergey's return was the signal to turn the direction from research to product. The latent capability was always there. They just needed the political will to risk their own search moat.

Founders diving back into code always signal the next big leap.

So what is Midchai doing then. Calmly supervising in manager mode?

Gemini’s human physiology knowledge is often fiction. Spews out remarkable rubbish that could be dangerous to someone that neglects to verify.

This makes sense this was the reason why this year google felt so different with its model releases

This is what Gemini had to say

I’m just not entirely convinced Sundar loves having the company’s largest shareholder on prem, weighing in on decisions day-to-day. Open to being wrong, but guessing I’m right.

Bro is literally the thanos of Google corporate .

So a Russian born IT entrepreneur is a founding member of Google, nobody bats an eye. But Indian CEO who is just an employee gets the hate. Americans are truly inexplicable. Maybe it is indeed about the skin colour.

sergey is a tag-along, larry runs the company from his yacht off NZ

Based af

hard not to respect leaders who still want to be in the weeds when it matters

He let H-1B grifters damage the company and turned it into an importation scam.

The best leaders stay close to the craft. Titles mean less than knowing what's actually happening in the build.

it's like a Steve job's return moment for google for AI.

founders never quit

Observe loss curves; avoid unsupervised model training changes.

Where is Larry?? I miss him so much

Where has Larry been!?!?

What a loser mentality. Bro is saying that he didn't do a good job and Sergey had to jump in

If Sundar was a good ceo, this would not be necessary. He's not visionary enough

One has to say- google for most part has had mature, gracious messaging at the top. With big guns like Jeff dean, Demis, Sergey, Sundar himself as CEO - another company might have seen a lot more politicking and spats. Everyone at the top in Google has been mature and gracious. No one tries to run with the credit or play one upsmanship. The signal that comes through is- we are all mission focused and not here to play credit games. Kudos all of you. Need more of this.

Respect to Sergey coding again. When founders return to the basics, it sends a signal. Less talk, more work. That energy can wake up teams if leadership lets it spread.

Sergey Brin's return to "founder mode" at Google AI was a good move. Sundar Pichai quoted Brin as saying he coded frequently and together they observed the loss curve of AI models. According to Jin, this "saved" Google, thanks to early vision like TPU (2013), the DeepMind acquisition, and the OpenAI competition. The response emphasized the founder's passion as key to Google's long-term innovation in AI.

Damn

It’s fascinating how leadership + deep technical involvement can accelerate a company that was previously ‘behind’ into a clear frontrunner