From Vibe Coding to Vibe Researching: OpenAI’s Mark Chen and Jakub Pachocki

What comes after vibe coding? Maybe vibe researching. OpenAI’s Chief Scientist, Jakub Pachocki, and Chief Research Officer, Mark Chen, join a16z general partners Anjney Midha and Sarah Wang to go deep on GPT-5—how they fused fast replies with long-horizon reasoning, how they measure progress once benchmarks saturate, and why reinforcement learning keeps surprising skeptics. They explore agentic systems (and their stability tradeoffs), coding models that change how software gets made, and the bigger bet: an automated researcher that can generate new ideas with real economic impact. Plus: how they prioritize compute, hire “cave-dweller” talent, protect fundamental research inside a product company, and keep pace without chasing every shiny demo. Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction 0:25 The Launch of GPT-5 2:28 Evaluating Progress: Evals & Milestones 5:07 Surprising Capabilities of GPT-5 7:10 The Future of Automated Research 8:59 Agency, Reasoning, and Model Planning 10:18 Extending Progress Beyond Verifiable Domains 12:11 The Role and Success of Reinforcement Learning 14:44 Reward Modeling and Best Practices 15:54 The Evolution of Coding with AI 21:39 What Makes a Great Researcher? 27:20 Building and Sustaining a Winning Research Culture 31:40 Balancing Product and Fundamental Research 38:36 Prioritization, Compute, and Resource Allocation 41:19 The Intersection of Academia and Frontier AI 46:56 Maintaining Speed and Learning at Scale 48:52 Trust and Collaboration at OpenAI Resources: Find Jakub on X: https://x.com/merettm Find Mark on X: https://x.com/markchen90 Find Sarah on X: https://x.com/sarahdingwang Find Anjney on X: https://x.com/AnjneyMidha Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX