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Dwarkesh Podcast

Dwarkesh Podcast

Reiner Pope – The math behind how LLMs are trained and served

Apr 29, 2026 · 2h 14m

Coming soon to iPhone. Already have it? “Listen in Starcast” takes you straight there.

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About this episode

Did a very different format with Reiner Pope - a blackboard lecture where he walks through how frontier LLMs are trained and served. It’s shocking how much you can deduce about what the labs are doing from a handful of equations, public API prices, and some chalk. It’s a bit technical, but I encourage you to hang in there – it’s really worth it. There are less than a handful of people who understand the full stack of AI, from chip design to model architecture, as well as Reiner. It was a real delight to learn from him. Recommend watching this one on YouTube so you can see the chalkboard. Reiner is CEO of MatX , a new chip startup (full disclosure - I’m an angel investor). He was previously…