---
title: "On \"AI Brendans\" or \"Virtual Brendans\""
url: https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-brendans-or-virtual-brendans--17awlctl4
source_url: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2025-11-28/ai-virtual-brendans.html
type: article
source: "Brendan Gregg's Blog"
published: 2025-11-28T02:28:12.569Z
updated: 2025-11-28T02:28:43.928Z
tags: ["ai", "linux", "observability"]
reading_time: 18
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# On "AI Brendans" or "Virtual Brendans"

**[Brendan Gregg's Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/brendangregg)** · 18 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Brendan Gregg discusses the emergence of AI performance engineering agents built on his work, distinguishing between helper agents that interpret flame graphs and eBPF metrics versus "Virtual Brendan" systems trained on his publications. He explores challenges including pricing models, the limited scope of automation (only ~15% of actual performance engineering work), and the difficulty of commercializing such tools. The post covers Intel's $650M acquisition and subsequent shutdown of Granulate, an AI auto-tuner based on his work, and argues that while AI agents can help with previously-seen performance issues, they struggle with novel problems and quickly become outdated without continuous training.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2025-11-28/ai-virtual-brendans.html>

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---

Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-brendans-or-virtual-brendans--17awlctl4)