In conversation with Richie Artoul, co-founder of WarpStream Labs

In a podcast episode of Tractable, Kshitij Grover and Richie Artoul discuss the development and advantages of WarpStream, a Kafka-compatible streaming platform designed to be more cost-effective and manageable than traditional Kafka systems. Built on Richie's experience with large-scale data systems at Datadog and Uber, WarpStream offers a stateless architecture that reduces inter-AZ costs and simplifies management while maintaining generally acceptable latency levels. The conversation also highlights WarpStream's integration with S3 and its serverless pricing model, which positions it as a critical infrastructure component for other companies. Richie shares his background in distributed storage and observability technology, recounting his work on Uber's internal metrics platform, M3, and explaining how the need for a cost-effective solution for massive data throughput inspired the development of WarpStream.