Behind Latent Space: A Rare Look Inside the Pod | AIEi Shanghai

Galen Gao (substack.com/@linkloud1, x.com/Ninggao88) interviews Shawn Wang (swyx) ahead of AIEi Shanghai, the first AI Engineer conference in China. They talk about how a blog on open-source AI became Latent Space, how the AI Engineer community grew, and what local builders brought to Shanghai. Then they get into Kill My SaaS. An agent can rebuild a tool and pass the entry checks. Choosing a winner still takes someone who knows what an organizer needs to get done. The conversation also covers OpenClaw adoption in China and what Thinking Machines' interaction models change about talking to AI. Chapters 0:00 AIEi Shanghai 2:31 Cold open 3:28 Galen Gao and swyx 8:01 Learn in Public 10:54 How Latent Space started 13:05 The idea for AI Engineer 25:10 The conference as a dataset 29:57 Kill My SaaS 39:31 What the contest judge measured 46:45 Jev and System One models 52:49 Writing and founder stories 1:02:13 Legora and product taste 1:03:29 OpenClaw adoption in China 1:07:35 Thinking Machines and interaction models 1:10:02 Reading and listening recommendations AI Engineer Shanghai — ai.engineer/shanghai/2026 The Rise of the AI Engineer — latent.space/p/ai-engineer/ Kill My SaaS — youtube.com/watch?v=zlD-CkLVKtU Latent Space — latent.space