Barrchives Datadog’s AI Story, with Olivier Pomel, Founder and CEO of Datadog
11 snips
Sep 2, 2025 
Olivier Pomel, co-founder and CEO of Datadog, shares insights into the future of observability and the transformative role of AI in software development. He discusses how Datadog evolved alongside cloud computing and highlights innovative features like voice interfaces for incident management. The conversation also addresses the complexities of AI in coding, real-time monitoring, and the importance of user feedback in shaping technology. Joined by Sunil Dhaliwal, they delve into the balance of talent acquisition in the competitive AI landscape.
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Build At The Ends Of The Stack
- When you see a thick stack to deliver value, position at the ends close to customers rather than the middle.
- Do focus on direct customer problems where you can reliably predict adoption and impact.
Early AI Was A Dirty Word At Datadog
- Early Datadog avoided marketing-jargon 'AI' because prior systems promised AI but delivered rules and regex.
- Behind the scenes they still relied on classic ML to scale observability decisions like retention and anomaly detection.
Ship Speculatively, Then Learn Fast
- For AI features Datadog had to build more speculatively because customer expectations were vague.
- Olivier emphasizes shipping, observing usage, and iterating quickly as the correct discovery loop.