Cut Your LLM Costs by 60%

Hosted by Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana

Mon, Sep 7, 2026

5:30 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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AI Engineering Bootcamp and Certificate: Build and Ship Production AI Agents
Dr. Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana
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What you'll learn

Work out what a token really costs you

Build a cost model from your own traffic mix rather than list pricing.

Apply model tiering and caching safely

Route cheap work to cheap models without users noticing a quality drop

Set usage controls that fail safely

Add limits that degrade gracefully instead of breaking mid-request.

Why this topic matters

Cost moved from an afterthought to something interviewers grade explicitly and financeteams ask about every month. Around a third of engineers now hit usage limits, andbudget holders assume the number only goes up. Most of that spend is avoidable, andthe levers that move it are architectural rather than clever.

You'll learn from

Aki Wijesundara

AI Advisor | Educator | Google AI Accelerator Alum

Aki Wijesundara is an AI leader with a PhD in Machine Learning and extensive experience mentoring startups at Google’s AI Accelerator. With a career spanning both research and applied AI, Aki has taught 5,000+ students worldwide how to design and deploy production-ready AI systems.

He has worked across cutting-edge areas of applied AI, from LangChain and RAG pipelines to observability and large-scale deployment. As a researcher and educator, Aki bridges the gap between theory and practice, making complex systems approachable and actionable for engineers, founders, and product leaders.

Aki is also a frequent speaker and advisor to organizations adopting AI, helping them transition from experimentation to production at scale.

Manu Jayawardana

AI Founder | CEO at TAI Labs | Co-Founder of Snapdrum

Manu Jayawardana is a serial entrepreneur with multiple AI startup successes.

He is also the Co-Founder of Snapdrum, an AI consultancy helping companies integrate and automate their businesses using AI. Through Snapdrum, Manu has worked with top startups and enterprises across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, advising on automation, product development, and AI strategy.

Currently, Manu is the Co-Founder & CEO of Krybe, an AI voice agent startup in London transforming how businesses automate customer interactions. His experience spans fundraising, scaling products, and leading teams to deliver production-grade AI solutions adopted globally.

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