Engineering @Uber | Ironman 70.3 | Spartan Trifecta | Inventor | 2x dad | 🐕 🧘♂️ 🏕 🏊♂️ 🚲 🏃
San Francisco
Joined January 2008
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Everyone has a story to tell.
In this podcast with @HackerEarth, I talk about my professional journey, highlight exciting software development innovations and share what brings me true joy.
hackerearth.com/blog/talent-… #technology #programmer #techie #podcast – at San Francisco, CA
Ajay Sampat retweeted
Great to host @gautam_adani, @jeet_adani1 from @AdaniOnline at @Uber. We’re partnered at 7 Adani airports, incl Navi Mumbai, that handle a quarter of India's air traffic. We talked about what’s next: AI, AVs + an even better airport experience for travelers across India, one of the world’s most exciting markets.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
From food delivery to grocery, retail and now catering - we’re expanding what you can get through Uber
Excited to welcome @ezCater to Uber, helping restaurants grow and @Uber_Business customers better serve their employees and clients
Uber to Acquire Business Catering Platform ezCater for $2.3 Billion on.wsj.com/4ARXTDZ
Ironman 70.3 Santacruz
1.2 miles 🏊♂️
56 miles 🚴♂️
13.1 miles🏃♂️
Gorgeous coastal course & incredible energy. I genuinely enjoyed every minute.
Having three generations there, my mom, dad, our boys, all under the wing of my ever-supporting wife, Ushma, made this truly special.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
Since I previously shared how we are scaling AI usage so quickly without costs rising at the same rate, there’s been a lot of interest in the engineering details.
So I asked the team to open up the hood and share what we’ve learned.
One thing we’ve always been very good at @Uber is understanding the economics of a system at a deep level. And I’ve always believed that constraints drive innovation. We took the opportunity to turn the cost problem into an engineering problem. We broke AI spend down into its underlying levers and started systematically attacking each one:
• Scaling vendor-neutral managed agents
• Building Uber SWE benchmarks to measure what actually works
• Optimizing prompt caching
• Making tool and MCP usage more efficient
• Grounding trajectories in our context graph
• Building efficient, reusable agent skills
• Giving engineers real-time cost visibility and optimization tips
There’s a lot more work to do in this space: scaling more autonomous agents, dynamic model routing, a self-evolving context graph, and continuously updating efficient agent skills. There's still a tremendous amount to invent here, and we’ll keep sharing what we learn as we build and deploy it at Uber.
This is an incredible time to be an engineer. The economics of software are changing, the way we build is changing, and engineers have an opportunity to help define what comes next.
Read the deep dive here: uber.com/us/en/blog/efficien… and let us know what you think.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
In 2020 when I joined @kunalb11 at CRED, I was drawn to the incredible team and a contrarian idea – “not everyone gets it”
we had ~1M members & $750M TPV
fast forward to 2026, CRED’s impact among India’s most creditworthy is clear, we now serve 17M members & process $100B in TPV
we’ve built with taste, always keeping our members' trust & financial progress as our north star
this momentum is the outcome of ambition, craft, ownership and relentless standards of our team at CRED.
Meta’s $900M minority investment is a booster in our plans to build an enduring institution with an eventual public listing. Meta will be a passive financial investor with no-access to customer data.
Kunal: thanks for being thankless and always 5x-ing each target.
proud to build the next phase of CRED with the best team in Indian fintech.
back to work 🚀
It’s been a minute.
2015–2018
- Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing.
- Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital.
- Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time.
2019–2025
- Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft.
- Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour.
- Built several products during COVID lockdowns.
- Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks.
- Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting.
- Received a full stack of regulatory licences.
- Lost 35 kilos.
- Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards.
2026
- First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is)
- Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital.
- Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback.
Today
CRED is ready for its next phase. I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role.
Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction.
Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves.
As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally.
Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data.
While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth.
Onwards.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
On the back of the recently proposed (now paused) Karnataka bill mandating reservations for locals in the private sector, the ensuing criticism, and the criticism of the criticism, here comes a heartwarming new ad for WhatsApp made by BBDO India and directed by Shimit Amin. In fact, the film itself has a mild whiff of his film, Rocket Singh!
Ikbir, the young Sardar chef, who comes to Bengaluru to join a hotel, is shown to be lost, initially, because he is unable to relate to the cultural milieu, but his mother's words inspire him to use food as a route to win over his colleagues. Food is a universal language by itself, and his effort to make a local cuisine (Bisi Bele Bath) helps bridge the first step.
But he doesn't stop with food. He makes an effort to learn and speak Kannada too. So, while he may not be fluent in Kannada, or familiar with the local culture, he makes an earnest effort to explore, understand, and appreciate them (including celebrating Ugadi), instead of assuming that the local population needs to learn a language that he is comfortable with (Hindi, as a bridge) and that he can continue to ignore/overlook the local culture. In his line of work, the local culture manifests in the form of food, thankfully.
The locals are not shown to be intolerant. They bond among themselves, but they also make an attempt to get Ikbir to feel welcome (asking the chat group to keep the conversation in English) once they understand that he is making an honest effort to adapt.
The human story in this ad is truly wonderful. Where I felt it fell short is its link with WhatsApp. Except 'Verified Business' (the 'Spoken Kannada' business handle), the other features don't seem to be explored adequately. Shwetha's WhatsApp message comes with added context ('Block', 'Add', 'Not a contact. No common groups') but the story has no context to explore them. Ditto with the 2-step authentication or end-to-end encryption that are shown when Ikbir opens his voice messages or does a video-call with his mother. Most users take these for granted, so unless these are explored further, their presence in the script seem perfunctory.
#advertising #marketing #creative
Meeting one of my role models, @milindrunning, and his wonderful family at the “Keep Moving” book signing was an absolute delight! They are a true inspiration, showing us all how to stay young in both mind and body. 🏊 🚴🏃🧘♂️
Ajay Sampat retweeted
My favorite speech about America was Reagan's last speech as president. He talks about what makes America great - immigrants.
I tear up watching it, especially the last bit.
highly recommend spending 4 mins to watch
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Truly inspired by Jensen Huang's insightful discussion on topics ranging from failure to greatness, accelerated computing, and AI. His explanation of 'token factories' particularly resonated with me. #stripesessions24 @stripe
Jensen, the founder of NVIDIA, said something that triggered me today at the Stripe event.
He compared the Industrial Revolution's conversion of water (atoms) to electricity (electrons) to a modern process of converting electricity to tokens.
He introduced the concept of 'token factories' where electricity is the input, and tokens (text, large language models, images, etc.) are the output.
Wild to see how he’s thinking many steps ahead to a future we’re about to enter.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
Jensen, the founder of NVIDIA, said something that triggered me today at the Stripe event.
He compared the Industrial Revolution's conversion of water (atoms) to electricity (electrons) to a modern process of converting electricity to tokens.
He introduced the concept of 'token factories' where electricity is the input, and tokens (text, large language models, images, etc.) are the output.
Wild to see how he’s thinking many steps ahead to a future we’re about to enter.
Good review!
San Francisco post-mortum.
Tl;dr: Absolute top-tier city if you pretend downtown doesn’t exist.
Literally, just never set your set a feet into the inner-city part and you’re going to have an amazing time.
❌ The bad:
• Downtown (Tenderloin & SoMa) is a zombie wasteland and depressing to be in.
• You could feel the vibe in the surrounding areas was off too by the people living there, which I can’t blame the honestly lol.
✅ The good:
• The energy here is infectious. Everyone’s building something and trying to make a name for themself and it feels very inclusive.
• There are parks EVERYWHERE. I dont think I’ve ever visited a city with this many parks. Then you head “out” of the city and there are even more parks and nature areas.
• It feels super cycle friendly. I cycled from the North to the West to the South for like 30+ miles and it was either bike lanes (because parks) or roads with dedicated bike lanes. There are Lyft bike racks almost anywhere in the city to pick one up or swap for freshly charged one.
• When I think about America, I think of big roads and huge cars. SF has sidewalks everywhere and honestly felt very European in that way.
• It’s alive. There are people everywhere, but not in a crowded bad way. Everyone’s doing their own activities, working out, walking with their family.
• Foods delicious and super fresh, but hella expensive! There are barely any fast-food joint anywhere too which was so odd.
• Everything in the city is like a 20 minute drive and you’re in some other part of town that feels completely different. From huge towers and big hills, to suddenly on the beach.
• People are hella friendly.
📍Locations I loved
• Marina/Fort Mason: North part of town, beautiful Victorian houses at the water front with view over Golden Gate bridge surrounded by parks.
• Russian Hill: Super high hills with stunning views over the city.
• Haight: Very walkable, young vibes with lots feeling very alive. Bonus points for the beautiful Victorian houses.
• Mission: Great food over here.
• Golden Gate Park area: I just loved to watch old people play with their miniature boats at the park. Very relaxed low key + gorgeous beach on the west side.
• Pacifica (technically not part of the beach, but WOW)
Honestly, I’ve been having an absolute blast and kinda sad to leave after 7 days. I’ll be back!
If you’re skipping on coming here because of some anon on Twitter is posting bad stuff, you’re really missing out.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
I found a guy who goes around the US asking 70 to 100-year-olds their:
• Biggest Regrets
• Biggest Lessons
• Advice to their younger self
Oddly enough, most of their answers are the same…
Here are my top 8:
Ajay Sampat retweeted
Full video on Invest America from @CNBC today. 🇺🇸🚀
Ajay Sampat retweeted
Your health is being destroyed by chronic inflammation and insulin resistance.
Big Pharma led you to believe engineered medications were the only answer.
Here's 7 natural herbs and spices to fight inflammation and improve your sugar levels:
Ajay Sampat retweeted
What mechanical engineer Anand Malligavad is doing for #Bengaluru — and now for UP and Odisha — is simply astonishing.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
The Rise of Dopamine Culture
You’ll know that everything on the left is real and offline. whereas everything on the right is virtual and online. Perhaps obvious but it seems like the endpoint for digital experiences is the give people what they want. And coupled with an engagement-driven business model (online ads) and access to real-time metrics/dashboards, it means we are constantly driving towards making it even more efficient to give people what they want.
Image h/t @AlecStapp
Ajay Sampat retweeted
🚨 PM Modi visited Lakshadweep island. Potential as big as Maldives as a tourist destination if concentrated.
Ajay Sampat retweeted
Ok gang, this one is simple, but one of the most important.
Get ready. Smash RT.
The Dan Go types will plat you to death with “bleh drink water”.
But hydration is so much more than that - and it’s the simplest health hack you can do.
Hydration is crucial for overall health and well-being, and it plays a significant role in fitness, training, and weight loss.
Here are some key benefits of staying well-hydrated in the context of fitness:
1. Optimal Exercise Performance:
Adequate hydration helps maintain blood volume and supports nutrient transport, ensuring that your muscles receive the oxygen and nutrients they need during exercise.
This is essential for optimal performance, whether it's endurance training, strength training, or any other physical activity.
2. Temperature Regulation:
Hydration is vital for regulating body temperature, especially during exercise.
Sweating is the body's natural cooling mechanism, and proper fluid intake helps prevent overheating and heat-related illnesses.
3. Energy Levels:
Dehydration can lead to fatigue and decreased energy levels, impacting your ability to perform well during workouts.
Staying hydrated helps maintain energy levels and reduces the perception of effort during exercise.
4. Muscle Recovery:
Hydration is crucial for the recovery process after exercise.
It helps transport nutrients to muscle cells, removes waste products, and supports the repair and rebuilding of tissues.
Proper hydration can reduce muscle soreness and enhance recovery.
5. Joint Lubrication:
Hydration contributes to the lubrication of joints, reducing friction and supporting joint function.
This is particularly important during weight-bearing exercises and activities that put stress on the joints.
6. Appetite Regulation:
Sometimes, the body can misinterpret signals of dehydration as feelings of hunger.
Staying adequately hydrated may help regulate appetite, potentially supporting weight loss efforts by preventing unnecessary calorie consumption.
7. Metabolism Support:
Hydration is essential for various metabolic processes, including those involved in fat metabolism.
Staying hydrated may contribute to the efficiency of metabolic reactions, which can be relevant for weight loss and overall health.
8. Electrolyte Balance:
Proper hydration helps maintain the balance of electrolytes, including sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
Electrolytes are essential for muscle contractions, nerve impulses, and overall cellular function.
For weight loss specifically, drinking water before meals may contribute to a feeling of fullness, potentially reducing calorie intake.
Additionally, staying hydrated can support the body's natural processes of breaking down stored fat for energy.
It's important to note that individual hydration needs can vary based on factors such as age, activity level, climate, and overall health.
The general recommendation is to drink an adequate amount of water throughout the day, and individual needs can be assessed by paying attention to thirst cues and monitoring urine color (pale yellow is usually an indicator of adequate hydration).
