Choose RAG Fine-Tuning or the API

Hosted by Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana

Sun, Oct 11, 2026

11:00 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

Match the technique to the problem shape

Run your use case through a decision tree that gives a defensible answer

Estimate the true cost of each option

Include maintenance and drift, not just the build, before you commit.

Recognise when to just call the API

Spot the cases where the simplest option is genuinely the right one.

Why this topic matters

Three options, and teams pick wrong then spend months finding out. One company builtan orchestration layer for nine months and scrapped it, concluding they should have justcalled an API. The decision is not about sophistication, it is about the shape of theproblem, and there is a straightforward way to tell which one you have.

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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