--- schema: 1 type: video title: >- Building Turbopuffer: Gergely Orosz (@pragmaticengineer ) × Simon Eskildsen (CEO) description: >- This fireside chat between Gergely Orosz and Simon Eskildsen explores the technical journey and engineering philosophy behind the database company Turbopuffer. Video Timestamps 0:00 Introduction and Simon’s early history with computers 3:02 The International Olympiad in Informatics and early competitive programming 4:13 How Simon was recruited by Shopify while still in high school 8:46 Engineering challenges and scaling infrastructure at Shopify 14:56 Decision to leave Shopify and the creation of the "napkin math" project 20:40 The origin and technical motivations behind Turbopuffer 24:46 Design challenges of building a database on top of S3 28:41 Cursor becoming the first major customer 35:36 The meeting with Jensen Huang and Nvidia’s push for GPUs 39:01 The competitive reality of cloud infrastructure and CPU scarcity 43:06 Philosophical perspective on venture capital and funding 51:45 Building a remote-first culture with the "campfire" concept Quotes (19:49) "Because you batch. So an f-sync happens on usually a 4K... it's not intuitive. It's actually—I got caught—I just got obsessed with this question." (30:33) "Yeah, you could do a million vectors for a dollar. And before that, I think the cheapest was maybe $100 per million for something that actually worked." (36:56) "[Jensen Huang] said, 'Judging by your slide, maybe you should [pivot into vapes].'" (43:53) "I promised Cursor that Justine and I could get their bill to 4K a month... that's the pricing we ship with." (49:54) "The third reason to raise capital is for the founder's ego... I wish that it was more talked about because you're diluting all of your employees when you do it." ## Speakers ### Gergely Orosz Author / Founder, The Pragmatic Engineer · The Pragmatic Engineer [X/Twitter](https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gergelyorosz/) · [Website](https://pragmaticengineer.com) Software engineer, engineering leader, and author of The Software Engineer's Guidebook; best known for The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter and blog covering software engineering practices, engineering leadership, and the tech industry. Previously held engineering leadership roles at Uber and worked at companies including Skype and Skyscanner. ### Simon Eskildsen CEO and co-founder · turbopuffer [X/Twitter](https://x.com/Sirupsen) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirupsen/) · [Website](https://sirupsen.com) · [Blog](https://sirupsen.com/napkin) Co-founder and CEO at turbopuffer. Formerly Principal Engineer at Shopify, where he helped scale infra from 1K → 1M RPS. — [View on the schedule](https://www.ai.engineer/worldsfair/schedule?session=asn_slot_2026_06_30_main_stage_1230_2026_06_25t07_57_06_000z) --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/jQDXzEVHMSE-building-redacted-username-gergely-orosz-simon-eskildsen Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- canonical: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE' markdown: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE.md' llms: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE/llms.txt' parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-24T06:28:45.405Z' language: null children: [] videoId: jQDXzEVHMSE durationSeconds: 3390 publishedAt: '2026-08-03T18:26:07.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 37 endSeconds: 135 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=37' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 145 endSeconds: 253 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=145' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 265 endSeconds: 390 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=265' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 390 endSeconds: 400 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=390' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 502 endSeconds: 613 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=502' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 613 endSeconds: 623 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=613' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 623 endSeconds: 715 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=623' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 715 endSeconds: 726 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=715' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 726 endSeconds: 840 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=726' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 940 endSeconds: 1021 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=940' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 1032 endSeconds: 1113 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1032' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 1124 endSeconds: 1225 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1124' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 1347 endSeconds: 1455 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1347' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 1467 endSeconds: 1546 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1467' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 1636 endSeconds: 1647 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1636' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 1647 endSeconds: 1736 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1647' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 16 text: null startSeconds: 1844 endSeconds: 1922 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1844' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 17 text: null startSeconds: 1933 endSeconds: 2030 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=1933' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 18 text: null startSeconds: 2030 endSeconds: 2041 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=2030' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 19 text: null startSeconds: 2355 endSeconds: 2366 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=2355' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 20 text: null startSeconds: 2467 endSeconds: 2546 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=2467' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 21 text: null startSeconds: 2557 endSeconds: 2644 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=2557' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 22 text: null startSeconds: 2655 endSeconds: 2753 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=2655' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 23 text: null startSeconds: 2869 endSeconds: 2978 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=2869' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 24 text: null startSeconds: 2988 endSeconds: 3096 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=2988' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 25 text: null startSeconds: 3205 endSeconds: 3291 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE?t=3205' heldReason: rights --- # Building Turbopuffer: Gergely Orosz (@pragmaticengineer ) × Simon Eskildsen (CEO) This fireside chat between Gergely Orosz and Simon Eskildsen explores the technical journey and engineering philosophy behind the database company Turbopuffer. Video Timestamps 0:00 Introduction and Simon’s early history with computers 3:02 The International Olympiad in Informatics and early competitive programming 4:13 How Simon was recruited by Shopify while still in high school 8:46 Engineering challenges and scaling infrastructure at Shopify 14:56 Decision to leave Shopify and the creation of the "napkin math" project 20:40 The origin and technical motivations behind Turbopuffer 24:46 Design challenges of building a database on top of S3 28:41 Cursor becoming the first major customer 35:36 The meeting with Jensen Huang and Nvidia’s push for GPUs 39:01 The competitive reality of cloud infrastructure and CPU scarcity 43:06 Philosophical perspective on venture capital and funding 51:45 Building a remote-first culture with the "campfire" concept Quotes (19:49) "Because you batch. So an f-sync happens on usually a 4K... it's not intuitive. It's actually—I got caught—I just got obsessed with this question." (30:33) "Yeah, you could do a million vectors for a dollar. And before that, I think the cheapest was maybe $100 per million for something that actually worked." (36:56) "\[Jensen Huang] said, 'Judging by your slide, maybe you should \[pivot into vapes].'" (43:53) "I promised Cursor that Justine and I could get their bill to 4K a month... that's the pricing we ship with." (49:54) "The third reason to raise capital is for the founder's ego... I wish that it was more talked about because you're diluting all of your employees when you do it." ## Speakers ### Gergely Orosz Author / Founder, The Pragmatic Engineer · The Pragmatic Engineer \[X/Twitter]\(https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz) · \[LinkedIn]\(https://www.linkedin.com/in/gergelyorosz/) · \[Website]\(https://pragmaticengineer.com) Software engineer, engineering leader, and author of The Software Engineer's Guidebook; best known for The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter and blog covering software engineering practices, engineering leadership, and the tech industry. Previously held engineering leadership roles at Uber and worked at companies including Skype and Skyscanner. ### Simon Eskildsen CEO and co-founder · turbopuffer \[X/Twitter]\(https://x.com/Sirupsen) · \[LinkedIn]\(https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirupsen/) · \[Website]\(https://sirupsen.com) · \[Blog]\(https://sirupsen.com/napkin) Co-founder and CEO at turbopuffer. Formerly Principal Engineer at Shopify, where he helped scale infra from 1K → 1M RPS. — \[View on the schedule]\(https://www.ai.engineer/worldsfair/schedule?session=asn_slot_2026_06_30_main_stage_1230_2026_06_25t07_57_06_000z) --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/jQDXzEVHMSE-building-redacted-username-gergely-orosz-simon-eskildsen Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/watch/jQDXzEVHMSE · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks > Missing: no stored document chunks are available.