---
title: "What’s next for tabular ML devs"
newsletter: "MLOps Community"
date: 2025-09-04
source: https://aaif.live/newsletters/mlopscommunity/2025-09-04-what-s-next-for-tabular-ml-devs
---

# What’s next for tabular ML devs

*Plus, MCP agent workflows, lean infra stacks, Coval TTS tests, and scaling with vLLM*

*MLOps Community — Agentic AI Foundation, 2025-09-04*

With $13B in fresh funding [https://go.mlops.community/int1sep4], Anthropic is safe - at least until OpenAI finishes “reorganizing” Statsig [https://go.mlops.community/in2sep4].

## The Tabular Shift

Chatting with Nikolaos in this week's podcast got me thinking: XGBoost isn’t dead yet - but its days as the tabular data king are numbered.

Are you still using it, or have you switched to models like TabPFN, FT-Transformers, or SAINT?

## PRESENTED WITH JFROG

## Coming up: MLOps Days London

https://luma.com/fc1cm6v5

We’re teaming up with JFrog for the next MLOps Days - this time in London on Thursday, September 18. Expect sharp talks, good conversation, and the usual mix of practitioners sharing what actually works in production.

The lineup is strong: Heiko Hotz (Google), Yuval Fernbach (JFrog), and Michelle Conway (Lloyds Banking Group) are on deck, covering everything from prompt automation for voice assistants to securing ML systems and getting GenAI live in financial services.

Spots are limited, so register now [https://luma.com/fc1cm6v5].

## Hidden Gems

## Job of the Week

[https://go.mlops.community/jobsnl](https://go.mlops.community/jobsnl)

## Distilling 200+ Hours of NeurIPS: What’s Next for AI

XGBoost’s crown is wobbling. NeurIPS signals the first tabular models that edge it out - not cheap yet, but real - plus a push toward LMs trained on actual databases.

 * Tabular shift: early wins over XGBoost on tables, with cost tradeoffs, and new efforts to build public tabular corpora for pre-training.
 * Agents with brakes: useful for decision support, not execution - reliability comes from external verifiers and knowledge graphs.
 * Frontier still leads: despite small-model buzz, top systems remain ahead; RL-style reasoning continues to improve them.

Bottom line: practical gains arrive when speed meets safeguards.

Video [https://go.mlops.community/pnv4sep] || Spotify [https://go.mlops.community/snv4sep] || Apple [https://go.mlops.community/anv4sep]


THE ERA OF AI AGENTS IN MARKETING

Agents now run the SDR playbook at machine speed - spotting intent, drafting founder-voice notes, and spinning up account-specific pages before humans step in.

 * Workflow: detect trials or job posts, crawl LinkedIn and public signals, craft multichannel outreach, route replies to a unified inbox, and ping AEs in Slack for handoff.
 * Measurement: UTMs show rising ChatGPT/Gemini referrals; replace brittle MQL/SQL rules with AI-qualified scoring from multi-signal context, plus LLM-assisted negative keyword pruning.

Result: agents handle the grind, humans build trust - response rates climb.

Video [https://go.mlops.community/pjh4sep] || Spotify [https://go.mlops.community/sjh4sep] || Apple [https://go.mlops.community/ajh4sep]


SECURING AI AGENTS: THE FUTURE OF MCP AUTHENTICATION & AUTHORIZATION

When your AI agent can pull sensitive Salesforce or Workday data, security isn’t optional - it’s urgent.

 * Why the naive “one admin key for everything” approach collapses the moment you scale
 * How OAuth 2.1 with token exchange creates user-scoped, auditable access without storing credentials
 * The shift toward Proof-of-Possession tokens to stop stolen keys from being reused

This architecture isn’t just theory - it’s becoming the enterprise standard for secure, scalable AI agent deployments.

Read the blog [https://go.mlops.community/blog4sep]


IN PERSON EVENTS

 * Frankfurt [https://luma.com/lntqh2kq] - September 11
 * Lisbon [https://luma.com/bszaz8e3] - September 11
 * London [https://lu.ma/fc1cm6v5] - September 18
 * Austin [https://lu.ma/rnxflhkz] - September 18
 * Seattle [https://luma.com/g42ppkok] - September 25
 * Denver [https://luma.com/kebs46ij] - September 25
 * Miami [https://luma.com/49ev1qh5] - September 25

[Video](https://go.mlops.community/pnv4sep)

## Fixed by Proxy

[https://go.mlops.community/MLConfess](https://go.mlops.community/MLConfess)

## Making the hard stuff simpler

Working on something tricky or planning ahead? Here’s how we can help - just hit reply:

 * Custom workshops tailored to your company’s needs
 * Hiring? I know some quality folks looking for a new adventure
 * Want to connect with someone tackling similar problems? I can introduce you

Thanks for reading, catch you next time!

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Source: https://aaif.live/newsletters/mlopscommunity/2025-09-04-what-s-next-for-tabular-ml-devs