Ramchand Kumaresan believes that the only way to truly understand an AI system is to build it, break it, and benchmark the wreckage. While he currently manages enterprise projects at Procore he wasn't always deep in the math. Eighteen months ago, he realized he could ship API-driven applications but couldn't explain the underlying architecture—and that most of the industry was in the same boat. He wrote Under the Hood to bridge that gap, distilling hundreds of hours of autograd building, model-breaking, and research into a single, no-nonsense guide.