In 2025 AI is not some sci-fi fantasy premise set in the near future. It’s here, it’s loud, and it’s bulldozing its way through every part of the U.S. business world. According to a new survey from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Teneo, a staggering 98% of small businesses are using AI tools right now. Forty percent are already playing with generative AI—chatbots, image generators, the works. The impact? Massive boosts in efficiency, lower costs, and yes, actual innovation. Not the buzzword kind—the real, useful, game-changing kind.
And in this electric storm of change, we encounter Nazarii Ferbei—not merely a technocrat but an engineer with the bearing of an entrepreneur and the vision of a builder—is establishing himself as one of those rare polymaths capable of both designing the code and reading the cultural moment. He is the founder and chief architect of Code & Cakes, a curiously named but formidably positioned firm in the Bay Area, where digital disruption is as common as a gluten-free latte.
Ferbei’s approach to engineering is refreshingly unorthodox in an age where many CEOs wouldn’t recognize a command line if it bit them on the neck. He remains—not just ceremonially but substantively—deeply engaged with both the intricacies of system architecture and cutting-edge AI technologies. Rather than merely overseeing from a distance, he actively leverages modern AI-driven tools to optimize development workflows, enhance productivity, and drive meaningful transformation in real-time. One suspects he views the AI “revolution” not as a spectator sport but as a daily skirmish in which one must get one’s hands (and syntax) dirty. His creed? One might summarize it thus: Lead from the front, and build with your own damn hands.
Exhibit A in this gallery of practical ingenuity is VT.News, an AI-driven news platform constructed for the mercurial and omnipresent Patrick Bet-David. This is not another glorified RSS feed in sheep’s clothing; it is a genuine attempt at objectivity in a media ecosystem increasingly drunk on its own biases. The platform exploits large language models to deliver fact-driven reportage to a demographic consuming over two billion podcast listens a year—yes, billion. That Ferbei can architect such a system while also understanding its sociopolitical implications places him in rarefied air.
Then there is AiSDR, which bills itself—rightly—as the world’s first AI-native sales development platform. That such a thing was conceived, built, and launched within a span of two months is impressive enough. That it helped secure $25 million during Y Combinator’s notoriously cutthroat program is proof that Ferbei is not simply writing code—he is writing cheques with it. Earlier still, at Axdraft (YC W19), he helped fashion a legal automation platform that eventually reached that holy grail of startup success: acquisition. Again, note the pattern—speed, scale, and substance.
Ferbei is not done. Far from it. He is expanding Code & Cakes further into the American marketplace, offering AI integration services to startups desperate not to be left behind by the tsunami of algorithmic change. And lest one think he’s merely fiddling with backend systems, he’s simultaneously launching a new venture in the Marketing Tech sphere, aimed squarely at reimagining customer engagement via AI-powered campaigns. It is here that the true breadth of his ambition is laid bare—this is a man not interested in simply surfing the wave. He intends to shape the tide itself.
What animates Ferbei, one suspects, is not some adolescent infatuation with shiny gadgets but a deeper, more philosophical conviction: that the line between idea and execution must disappear entirely. Influenced early on by generative AI technologies and hardened by his experiences alongside visionaries like Bet-David in Silicon Valley’s gladiatorial arena, Ferbei embodies a principle that has long been neglected—that good engineering is not ancillary to leadership; it is leadership.
“I’m not just watching the AI revolution,” he says. “I’m building it, line by line of code, turning ambitious ideas into real products that shape industries.”
That, one feels compelled to add, is not hyperbole. It is a manifesto.
