Kevin Weil

Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, previously VP Product at Instagram (scaled to 1B+ users) and VP Product at Twitter. Sits at the absolute center of AI development, with direct visibility into model capabilities months before the public. Their core argument: Yes — iterative deployment and model maximalism replace traditional product playbooks. Evals become the defining PM skill. The evidence is specific: OpenAI shipped image generation features that went viral (Ghibli-style images) by leaning into model capabilities rather than constraining them. Furthermore, deep Research product was co-developed with evals — the team designed hero use cases, turned them into evals, and hill-climbed model performance against them. OpenAI explicitly does not require product reviews with Weil or Sam Altman before launches, to avoid blocking shipping speed. In Kevin Weil's own words: "The AI models that you're using today is the worst AI model you will ever use for the rest of your life, and when you actually get that in your head, it's kind of wild." (Opening statement on the pace of AI model improvement.)

CPO at OpenAI overseeing ChatGPT, the fastest-growing consumer product in history; previously led product at Instagram and Twitter Their core argument: Speed and iteration ARE the moat in AI — the underlying technology changes too fast for traditional moats. Iterative deployment and model maximalism create compounding advantages. The evidence is specific: ChatGPT maintaining dominance despite competitors sometimes having better models on specific benchmarks. Furthermore, deep Research as an example of shipping a new paradigm (25-minute wait for a response) before knowing if users would accept it. 3 million developers on the API creating usage-based feedback loops. In Kevin Weil's own words: "We really try not to be blocked on launching something. We want to empower teams to move quickly, and I think it's more important to ship and iterate." (On why OpenAI never blocks launches waiting for executive review.)

Kevin Weil is CPO of OpenAI, previously VP of Product at Instagram and head of data at Twitter, giving him the rare combination of traditional big-tech product leadership and daily immersion in the frontier of AI capabilities. Their core argument: The must-have skill is writing evals, not writing code -- the ability to test and measure AI quality is becoming the core PM competency. The evidence is specific: Building OpenAI's deep research product: designing evals and product simultaneously, hill-climbing on eval performance. Furthermore, the difference between building a product for 60% accuracy vs. 95% vs. 99.5% -- each requires a fundamentally different approach. The Lenny & Friends Summit panel where the eval-writing comment resonated most with the audience. In Kevin Weil's own words: "Writing evals is going to become a core skill for product managers." (At the Lenny & Friends Summit panel with Mike Krieger and Sarah Guo.)

As CPO of OpenAI--the company behind ChatGPT, the fastest-growing product in history--Weil operates at the absolute frontier of AI product development and has direct visibility into model improvement trajectories that inform his ship-fast philosophy. Their core argument: Ship fast and iterate publicly -- model maximalism over excessive scaffolding. The evidence is specific: OpenAI's Deep Research product where evals were co-designed with the product from day one. Furthermore, bolt/StackBlitz working on their product for seven years until Sonnet 3.5 made it suddenly viable. The ChatGPT image model launch with Ghibli-style images going viral as an example of iterative deployment creating cultural moments. In Kevin Weil's own words: "We have this philosophy, we call iterative deployment, and the idea is we're all learning about these models together. So there's a real sense in which it's way better to ship something even when you don't know the full set of capabilities and iterate together in public." (On OpenAI's iterative deployment philosophy.)