# The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew

**Author:** Y Combinator
**Type:** Video
**URL:** https://www.ycombinator.com/library/Mt-the-fde-playbook-for-ai-startups-with-bob-mcgrew
**YouTube ID:** Zyw-YA0k3xo

---

Bob McGrew helped build some of the most influential technologies of the past two decades. Bob was an early engineer at
PayPal, an early executive at Palantir and was recently Chief Research Officer at OpenAI - where he led the development
of ChatGPT, GPT-4 and the o1 reasoning model.

During his time at Palantir he was a pioneer of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) model, a strategy that is at the
heart of the AI boom today.

On this episode of The Lightcone, he explains how FDEs became central to today's startups, why "doing things that don't
scale at scale" works, and where he sees the biggest opportunities for founders working in AI.

