About this episode
This is a special episode, highlighting a session from ELC Annual 2025! OpenAI evolved from a pure research lab into the fastest-growing product in history, scaling from 100 million to 700 million weekly users in record time. In this episode, we deconstruct the organizational design choices and cultural bets that enabled this unprecedented velocity. We explore what it means to hire "extreme generalists," how AI-native interns are redefining productivity, and the real-time trade-offs made during the world's largest product launches. Featuring Sulman Choudhry (Head of ChatGPT Engineering) and Samir Ahmed (Technical Lead), moderated by Lawrence Bruhmeller (Eng Management @ Sigma). ABOUT SULMAN CHOUDHRYSulman leads ChatGPT Engineering at OpenAI, driving the development and scaling of one of the world’s most impactful AI products. He pushes the boundaries of innovation by turning cutting?edge research into practical, accessible tools that transform how people interact with technology. Previously at Meta, Sulman founded and scaled Instagram Reels, IGTV, and Instagram Labs, and helped lead the early development of Instagram Stories.He also brought MetaAI to Instagram and Messenger, integrating generative AI into experiences used by billions. Earlier in his career, Sulman was on the founding team that built and launched UberEATS from the ground up, helping turn it into a global food delivery platform. With a track record of marrying technical vision, product strategy, and large?scale execution, Sulman focuses on building products that meaningfully change how people live, work, and connect.ABOUT SAMIR AHMEDSamir is the Technical Lead for ChatGPT at OpenAI, where he currently leads the Personalization and Memory efforts to scale adaptive, useful, and human-centered product experiences to over 700 million users. He works broadly across the OpenAI stack—including mobile, web, services, systems, inference, and product research infrastructure.Previously, Samir spent nine years at Snap, working across Ads, AR, Content, and Growth. He led some of the company’s most critical technical initiatives, including founding and scaling the machine learning platform that powered nearly all Ads, Content, and AR workloads, handling tens of billions of requests and trillions of inferences daily.ABOUT LAWRENCE BRUHMELLERLawrence Bruhmuller has over 20 years of experience in engineering management, much of it as an overall head of engineering. Previous roles include CTO/VPE roles at Great Expectations, Pave, Optimizely, and WeWork. He is currently leading the core query compiler and serving teams at Sigma Computing, the industry leading business
