AI agents with memory and retrieval give leaders clairvoyance — seeing ground truth across the entire organization
Tan describes how Pedro at Brex uses AI agents to analyze meeting transcripts across the organization, giving leaders visibility into conflicts and ground truth two levels down — something previously impossible due to human cognitive limits. ✦ AI generated
Garry Tan · a16z Podcast · 2026-08-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 29:13
“I also think that if you've had some experience in the enterprise there are these dynamics that you know you can seek to kind of mirror and explore.”
He has his agent look at the meeting transcripts from like all of his direct reports. And he like can see that like two levels down. And then the thing that really jumped out at me is like he can use meetings that he's not in now to figure out like what's broken, what's in conflict, like who's in conflict with who. And then sometimes he can show up at a meeting. He has perfect context from the last three weeks of that one compliance team. And then he can walk in and he's like, 'Actually, you're right. We're doing it your way.' And then he can leave... that is actually one of the defining reasons why startups or businesses fail. It's actually a management challenge. The business becomes too big to fit in one person's head. And then this is the most profound form — you have agents, you have memory, you have retrieval. It can actually look at the ground truth from the data. That's clairvoyance.
verbatim transcript · starts at 29:13
29:06doing was like building an entire open-source layer, which he actually has open-source called Craptrack. >> Okay. >> But it's like an agent that watches all the network traffic and all the things that uh OpenClaw does. >> Nice. >> And then that's how he squares the circle. Like, Brex is one of the most regulated, you know, fintech. Of course. Of course. Um And then the upshot of what he got is that um he has his agent
29:30look at the meeting transcripts from like all of his direct reports. And he like can see that like two levels down. Yeah. And then the thing that really jumped out at me is like he can use uh meetings that he's not in now to figure out like what's broken, what's in conflict, like who's who's in conflict with who. >> Yes. >> Uh and then sometimes he can show up at
29:53a meeting. He has perfect context from like the last 3 weeks of like that one compliance team. >> Yes. >> And then he can walk in and he's like, "Actually, you're right. We're doing it your way." And then he can leave. >> That's so badass. >> Yeah. And it's like, can you imagine like that is actually one of the defining reasons why um startups or businesses fail.
30:13>> Yes. >> It's like it's actually like a a management challenge. Like, the business becomes too big to fit in one person's head. And then this is like the most profound form of you have you have agents, you have memory, you have retrieval. Um you like zap the rocks more, the rocks give you like raw intelligence about like what's happening. And it can actually introspect not just on the opinion of
30:36like someone two levels down in your organization, but it can actually look at the ground truth from the data, right? And it's like that, you know, that's clairvoyance, right? Like >> Yes. >> You I mean if you once you have that in your brain, like actually every business in the world is available for you to take their business. >> Yes. >> Yes. Yes. >> like the world is basically built on
31:01things that are built around human beings and human beings can only keep seven plus or minus two things in their head at any given time. >> And you know, guess what? You plus an agent can keep basically three Harry Potter books in your head. You can like rifle shot >> come. >> Yeah, I mean and more to come, right? Like this is as this is as bad there's