TWiST 500 interviews with Cortical Labs, Turing, AND Mercor | E2159

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s show:

Alex is back with three more awesome interviews with founders on the bleeding edge of innovative tech.

Dr. Hon Weng Chong walks us through the basics of biological computing and Cortical Labs’ first-ever commercial computer running on living human cells.
Turing founder Jonathan Siddarth unpacks the secrets of LLM benchmarking, and explains why even our most advanced tests need to get much much harder right away.
Finally, Mercor founder Brendan Foody on how AI is about to reinvent the hiring process, and marrying the effectiveness of recruiters with the ease of online job boards.

It’s three — count ’em, three — can’t miss TWiST interviews guaranteed to make you smarter

Timestamps:

(0:00) OpenAI’s GPT-5: When is it coming out? Is it going to be TOO smart?

(08:06) Cortical Labs’ Hon Weng Chong on the electric connection between neuroscience and machine learning

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(11:27) Show Continues…

(15:17) The extreme difficulty of going from the lab to a shippable product

(20:00) .TECH: Say it without saying it. Head to www.get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today.

(21:05) Show Continues…

(28:15) Why data is a factor of time

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(31:16) Show Continues…

(42:44) Turing CEO Jonathan Siddarth explains why it’s so important to keep benchmarking our LLMs

(47:24) What it means when a model “saturates” a test, and why benchmarks need to get HARDER

(50:22) What happens with the LLMs can answer all of our smartest questions?

(53:44) AI Agents train in gyms? Wait, really?

(01:01:33) Coding teaches models how to think, and more training mysteries don’t understand

(01:03:11) Brendan Foody from Mercor explains the “matching problem” that makes hiring such a pain

(01:07:02) How Mercor combines a job board’s distribution with the value of a recruitment agency

(01:10:49) Brendan recalls building his first AI interviewer in his college dorm

(01:20:16) Mercor has the opposite of a retention problem and crazy growth

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Thank you to our partners:

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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's really important to benchmark LLMs to figure out where they are good at, where
0:08.0	are gaps in the models, so that you can generate data that could help the LLMs get better
0:12.9	at those specific tasks.
0:14.9	One big challenge, Alex, that I see today in the overall evaluation and benchmarking market
0:20.6	is that a lot of the evaluations
0:22.8	are somewhat academic and somewhat synthetic and don't connect to real-world applications
0:28.3	or real-world use.
0:30.1	Ideally, you want AGI to progress in a way where the models get better at useful tasks.
0:37.6	This Week in Startups is brought to you by Northwest Registered Agent. Starting your business
0:44.2	should be simple. With Northwest Registered Agent, you can form your entire business identity
0:49.8	in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. From LLCs to trademarks, domains to custom websites, they've got you covered.
0:57.6	Get more privacy, more options, and more done.
1:01.2	Visit northwest registeredagent.com slash twist today.
1:06.7	Dot tech.
1:07.7	Say it without saying it.
1:09.6	Head to get.com slash twist or your favorite registrar
1:13.5	to get a clean, sharp dot tech domain today. And AWS Activate. AWS Activate helps
1:21.5	startups bring their ideas to life. As you build and scale your business, activate credits grow
1:27.2	with you to support your
1:28.4	changing needs. Apply to AWS Activate today and receive up to $100,000 in credits. Visit
1:36.5	aWS.m. Amazon.com slash startups slash credits. Hey, welcome to this week at startups. You may notice I am not Jason Kalakanis.
1:46.5	He is on the road this week. We're going to do a quick show without him. I am your host,
	...

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