Code Story episode
S12 E22: The Million-Token Context Mirage: Why RAG is Far From Dead in High-Stakes, Zero-Error Global Tax Compliance with Alex Bowcut, Head of Engineering at Sphere
Jun 9, 2026 · Season 12 · Episode 22 · 29 min
Building the best assessment model for tax internationally
Alex Bowcut is from Salt Lake City, Utah originally, but has been in the Bay Area for the last 4 years. He's always been interested in computers, and was in middle school when smartphones were blooming. He took part in jailbreaking gadgets and such, and all of these things led to a natural interest in CS, mathematics - and eventually, startups. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 Australian shepherds. He and his wife enjoy hiking with the dogs, and skiing - unfortunately, without the dogs.
Alex was approached by the founder of his current venture. He was approached while he was working at another startup, to tackle the creation of AI control and scaling within the company internally. When he joined, he immediately started changing the game in creating the initial version of their assessment model, TRAM.
This is Alex's creation story at Sphere.
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https://www.getsphere.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/abowcut/
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