Agents After Dark, powered by Prefactor

Matt Doughty

Agents After Dark is a podcast exploring what actually happens when AI agents move from demos into real-world production environments. Hosted by Matt Doughty, the show features conversations with founders, enterprise leaders, engineers, and operators building the next generation of agentic systems, AI infrastructure, and runtime platforms. We go beyond the hype to unpack the technical, operational, and organisational challenges behind deploying AI agents at scale — from governance and security to orchestration, observability, MCP, evaluation, and production readiness. If you're building, deploying, or managing AI agents inside modern organisations, this is where the real conversations happen.

Episodes

  1. Jun 9

    What Does an AI Agent Buy? | Andrew Bird, Head of AI at Affinda

    What happens when software becomes the customer? For decades, products have been designed, marketed, and sold to humans. But as AI agents become increasingly capable of researching, evaluating, and making decisions on our behalf, a new question emerges: What does an AI agent actually buy? In this episode of Agents After Dark, Matt Doughty sits down with Andrew Bird, Head of AI at Affinda, to explore how AI is changing the way products are discovered, evaluated, and purchased. Together they discuss: What happens when agents become decision-makers rather than assistantsHow software discovery changes in an agent-driven worldWhy traditional go-to-market motions may need to evolveHow trust, reputation, and verification influence agent decisionsThe future of procurement in a world of autonomous systemsWhat founders and product teams should be building for as AI adoption accelerates As agents move from copilots to autonomous actors, the way products are bought, sold, and evaluated may fundamentally change. This conversation explores what that future could look like and what it means for businesses today. About AndrewAndrew Bird is Head of AI at Affinda, where he helps organisations apply AI to automate and extract value from complex, unstructured information. Having worked at the forefront of AI adoption through multiple technology waves, Andrew brings a practical perspective on how agents, automation, and AI-driven decision making are changing the way software is built, evaluated, and purchased. About PrefactorPrefactor helps enterprises trust AI in production. As organisations deploy more AI agents, maintaining visibility into performance, risk, and operational quality becomes increasingly difficult. Prefactor gives engineering, product, and security teams a single platform to monitor AI systems, evaluate outcomes, identify risks, and take action when things go wrong. Learn more at prefactor.ai

    32 min

About

Agents After Dark is a podcast exploring what actually happens when AI agents move from demos into real-world production environments. Hosted by Matt Doughty, the show features conversations with founders, enterprise leaders, engineers, and operators building the next generation of agentic systems, AI infrastructure, and runtime platforms. We go beyond the hype to unpack the technical, operational, and organisational challenges behind deploying AI agents at scale — from governance and security to orchestration, observability, MCP, evaluation, and production readiness. If you're building, deploying, or managing AI agents inside modern organisations, this is where the real conversations happen.