Last Year's Speakers
Congratulations to last year’s winners: Quesma, TopK, Guilde, Tower, Mooncake, and Nao — recognized as the six most promising startups building the next wave of AI infrastructure. Applications are now open to take the stage at AI Council 2026 in SF.
All
AI Engineering
Inference Systems
Model Systems
Data Eng & Databases
Analytics & Data Sci
AI & Data Culture
Coding Agents & Autonomous Dev
AI Security & Safety
Agent Infrastructure
Applied AI
Data Eng & Infrastructure
Data Sci & Algos
ML OPs & Platforms
Analytics & BI
Lightning Talks
Workshops
Databases
Foundation Models
GenAI Applications
Christophe Blefari
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Nao
Christophe Blefari is Co-founder of nao Labs, developing an AI code editor specifically designed for data teams. An experienced data and software engineer, he shares industry insights through his popular blog at blef.fr, reaching over 14,000 followers. As a lecturer at ENSAI and co-founder of Forward Data Conference, Christophe actively contributes to the data community. With an engineering degree from TELECOM Nancy, he has worked with companies like Qonto and BlaBlaCar, and now invests in startups through blef.ventures.
Claire Gouze
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Nao
Claire Gouze is the Co-founder & CEO of nao Labs, creating an AI code editor to reinvent the analytics engineering experience. With a background at BCG as a Data Scientist and as Head of Data at Sunday. In her transition from data scientist turned entrepreneur, Claire brings technical expertise and business acumen to data challenges. She is an ESSEC Business School graduate with a focus on Strategic Business Analytics, she's passionate about empowering non-technical people in data roles. Claire advocates for women in tech through mentorship and community involvement, and was recently selected for STATION F's Female Founders Fellowship.
Jacek Migdal
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Quesma
Jacek Migdał is CEO and Co-founder of Quesma, leveraging his extensive experience in database technologies and engineering leadership. Previously a Senior Director at Sumo Logic for nearly 11 years, he drove the company from pre-revenue to a $2B+ IPO while establishing their Warsaw office and reducing AWS costs by 50%. A Computer Science and Mathematics graduate from the University of Warsaw, Jacek's expertise spans algorithms, data mining, AWS optimization, and transforming engineering teams from 0 to $300M ARR.
Piotr Migdal
Founding Engineer
Founding Engineer
Quesma
Piotr Migdał leads ggPrompt at Quesma, an AI-powered chart generation tool. He earned his PhD in quantum optics theory from ICFO, Barcelona, and previously worked as a data visualization and deep learning consultant. Piotr co-founded Quantum Flytrap, developing intuitive user interfaces for quantum computing. He created Virtual Lab, an educational quantum mechanics simulation and explorable explanation nominated for the Webby Awards. He also developed livelossplot, a widely-used Python library for visualizing deep learning training. Piotr blogs about data science, visualization, AI, and related topics at p.migdal.pl. Outside of data, Piotr enjoys creating sauna rituals and dancing Zouk.
Marek Galovic
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
TopK
Marek likes to break assumptions and push the boundaries of what's possible when building from first principles. Before founding TopK, Marek spent three years at Pinecone where he led data plane and control plane engineering. Prior to that, he worked on fraud detection and forecasting algorithms at Shopify and researched applications of game theory to make malware classifiers more robust at CTU/Avast.
Jerguš Lejko
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
TopK
Jerguš cares about developer experience, fast feedback loops, and efficient delivery. At Pinecone, he built developer tooling, optimized CI/CD for snappy builds, and managed cloud infrastructure across all major hyperscalers. Before that, he worked with ML and bioinformatics teams, building data pipelines and automation for large-scale processing. Now, Jerguš is building TopK, a data infrastructure company to radically simplify search and make it more accessible to developers.
Schuyler Brown
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Guilde
Schuyler Brown is a serial founder who loves the scrappy, early days. Before founding Guilde, he co-founded StrongDM where he served as Chief Customer Officer and Chairman of the Board. As a student of startups, Schuyler hosts Founders@Fail and authors Inc.com's "Failing Forward" column interviewing entrepreneurs about the bumps, bruises, and reality of life in the startup trenches. He holds a B.A. and M.B.A. from Columbia University.
John Tokash
CTO
CTO
Guilde
John Tokash is CTO of Guilde and specializes in AI and engineering leadership with extensive experience in developing agentic systems and generative AI tools. Currently leading an unannounced AI startup, he previously served as VP of Engineering at Flowspace where he developed AI command center capabilities. John's background includes leadership roles at Booster and co-founding Curious.com as CTO. John is currently hiring full-stack developers who share his enthusiasm for creating cutting-edge AI tools and building at the forefront of technological innovation.
Serhii Sokolenko
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Tower
Serhii Sokolenko is the CEO and co-founder of Tower.dev, a platform for Data + AI apps that run on open Iceberg storage and play nicely with other engines. Before founding Tower, Serhii worked at Databricks in the Unity Catalog compute group, at Snowflake on a high-concurrency, low-latency version of the data warehouse, and at Google Cloud Dataflow, building a unified batch and streaming data platform. His first startup was about opinion and emotion identification in natural text, and his second startup introduced NLP to LegalTech.
Brad Heller
Co-Founder & CTO
Co-Founder & CTO
Tower
Brad Heller is the CTO and co-founder of Tower.dev, a next generation data platform for Data + AI apps that use Iceberg storage. Tower.dev is a platform as a service that solves infrastructure problems for data engineering teams. Prior to founding Tower.dev, Brad worked on the control plane at Snowflake. Brad is located in Berlin, Germany, but was born and raised on the west coast of the US.
Pranav Aurora
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Pranav Aurora is Co-Founder at Mooncake Labs, a systems company backed by Khosla Ventures that's reimagining data infrastructure with object store technology. Previously, he served as Senior Product Manager at SingleStore, where he contributed numerous articles and product innovations. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a BSE in Computer Science and Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude), Pranav also held roles at Microsoft working on Project xCloud and Azure Networking, and was a Fellow at Fusion Fund focusing on early-stage deep tech.
Zhou Sun
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Zhou Sun is Co-Founder and CEO of Mooncake Labs, building innovative data infrastructure with a focus on open data stack solutions. Previously, he served as Director of Engineering at SingleStore for over 9 years, where he led the query team specializing in query execution, storage engines, and code generation frameworks. With deep expertise in columnstore technology, LLVM-based query compilation, and database optimization, Zhou is passionate about creating seamless solutions that handle both analytical and transactional workloads. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.
CURATING TRACK SPEAKERS. STAY TUNED.
×
Last Year's Speakers
Congratulations to last year’s winners: Quesma, TopK, Guilde, Tower, Mooncake, and Nao — recognized as the six most promising startups building the next wave of AI infrastructure. Applications are now open to take the stage at AI Council 2026 in SF.
All
AI Engineering
Inference Systems
Model Systems
Data Eng & Databases
Analytics & Data Sci
AI & Data Culture
Coding Agents & Autonomous Dev
AI Security & Safety
Agent Infrastructure
Applied AI
Data Eng & Infrastructure
Data Sci & Algos
ML OPs & Platforms
Analytics & BI
Lightning Talks
Workshops
Databases
Foundation Models
GenAI Applications
Christophe Blefari
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Nao
Christophe Blefari is Co-founder of nao Labs, developing an AI code editor specifically designed for data teams. An experienced data and software engineer, he shares industry insights through his popular blog at blef.fr, reaching over 14,000 followers. As a lecturer at ENSAI and co-founder of Forward Data Conference, Christophe actively contributes to the data community. With an engineering degree from TELECOM Nancy, he has worked with companies like Qonto and BlaBlaCar, and now invests in startups through blef.ventures.
Claire Gouze
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Nao
Claire Gouze is the Co-founder & CEO of nao Labs, creating an AI code editor to reinvent the analytics engineering experience. With a background at BCG as a Data Scientist and as Head of Data at Sunday. In her transition from data scientist turned entrepreneur, Claire brings technical expertise and business acumen to data challenges. She is an ESSEC Business School graduate with a focus on Strategic Business Analytics, she's passionate about empowering non-technical people in data roles. Claire advocates for women in tech through mentorship and community involvement, and was recently selected for STATION F's Female Founders Fellowship.
Jacek Migdal
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Quesma
Jacek Migdał is CEO and Co-founder of Quesma, leveraging his extensive experience in database technologies and engineering leadership. Previously a Senior Director at Sumo Logic for nearly 11 years, he drove the company from pre-revenue to a $2B+ IPO while establishing their Warsaw office and reducing AWS costs by 50%. A Computer Science and Mathematics graduate from the University of Warsaw, Jacek's expertise spans algorithms, data mining, AWS optimization, and transforming engineering teams from 0 to $300M ARR.
Piotr Migdal
Founding Engineer
Founding Engineer
Quesma
Piotr Migdał leads ggPrompt at Quesma, an AI-powered chart generation tool. He earned his PhD in quantum optics theory from ICFO, Barcelona, and previously worked as a data visualization and deep learning consultant. Piotr co-founded Quantum Flytrap, developing intuitive user interfaces for quantum computing. He created Virtual Lab, an educational quantum mechanics simulation and explorable explanation nominated for the Webby Awards. He also developed livelossplot, a widely-used Python library for visualizing deep learning training. Piotr blogs about data science, visualization, AI, and related topics at p.migdal.pl. Outside of data, Piotr enjoys creating sauna rituals and dancing Zouk.
Marek Galovic
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
TopK
Marek likes to break assumptions and push the boundaries of what's possible when building from first principles. Before founding TopK, Marek spent three years at Pinecone where he led data plane and control plane engineering. Prior to that, he worked on fraud detection and forecasting algorithms at Shopify and researched applications of game theory to make malware classifiers more robust at CTU/Avast.
Jerguš Lejko
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
TopK
Jerguš cares about developer experience, fast feedback loops, and efficient delivery. At Pinecone, he built developer tooling, optimized CI/CD for snappy builds, and managed cloud infrastructure across all major hyperscalers. Before that, he worked with ML and bioinformatics teams, building data pipelines and automation for large-scale processing. Now, Jerguš is building TopK, a data infrastructure company to radically simplify search and make it more accessible to developers.
Schuyler Brown
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Guilde
Schuyler Brown is a serial founder who loves the scrappy, early days. Before founding Guilde, he co-founded StrongDM where he served as Chief Customer Officer and Chairman of the Board. As a student of startups, Schuyler hosts Founders@Fail and authors Inc.com's "Failing Forward" column interviewing entrepreneurs about the bumps, bruises, and reality of life in the startup trenches. He holds a B.A. and M.B.A. from Columbia University.
John Tokash
CTO
CTO
Guilde
John Tokash is CTO of Guilde and specializes in AI and engineering leadership with extensive experience in developing agentic systems and generative AI tools. Currently leading an unannounced AI startup, he previously served as VP of Engineering at Flowspace where he developed AI command center capabilities. John's background includes leadership roles at Booster and co-founding Curious.com as CTO. John is currently hiring full-stack developers who share his enthusiasm for creating cutting-edge AI tools and building at the forefront of technological innovation.
Serhii Sokolenko
Co-Founder & CEO
Co-Founder & CEO
Tower
Serhii Sokolenko is the CEO and co-founder of Tower.dev, a platform for Data + AI apps that run on open Iceberg storage and play nicely with other engines. Before founding Tower, Serhii worked at Databricks in the Unity Catalog compute group, at Snowflake on a high-concurrency, low-latency version of the data warehouse, and at Google Cloud Dataflow, building a unified batch and streaming data platform. His first startup was about opinion and emotion identification in natural text, and his second startup introduced NLP to LegalTech.
Brad Heller
Co-Founder & CTO
Co-Founder & CTO
Tower
Brad Heller is the CTO and co-founder of Tower.dev, a next generation data platform for Data + AI apps that use Iceberg storage. Tower.dev is a platform as a service that solves infrastructure problems for data engineering teams. Prior to founding Tower.dev, Brad worked on the control plane at Snowflake. Brad is located in Berlin, Germany, but was born and raised on the west coast of the US.
Pranav Aurora
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Pranav Aurora is Co-Founder at Mooncake Labs, a systems company backed by Khosla Ventures that's reimagining data infrastructure with object store technology. Previously, he served as Senior Product Manager at SingleStore, where he contributed numerous articles and product innovations. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a BSE in Computer Science and Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude), Pranav also held roles at Microsoft working on Project xCloud and Azure Networking, and was a Fellow at Fusion Fund focusing on early-stage deep tech.
Zhou Sun
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Co-Founder
Mooncake Labs
Zhou Sun is Co-Founder and CEO of Mooncake Labs, building innovative data infrastructure with a focus on open data stack solutions. Previously, he served as Director of Engineering at SingleStore for over 9 years, where he led the query team specializing in query execution, storage engines, and code generation frameworks. With deep expertise in columnstore technology, LLVM-based query compilation, and database optimization, Zhou is passionate about creating seamless solutions that handle both analytical and transactional workloads. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.
CURATING TRACK SPEAKERS. STAY TUNED.
×
Step Into the AI Spotlight
Zero Prime Ventures, the team behind AI Council, is proud to announce our 3rd annual AI Launchpad where six exceptional AI startups will be chosen to showcase at AI Council 2026 to builders and investors.
This isn't just another pitch competition. Instead, we're hand-selecting and recognizing AI's most promising startups based on team, technical implementation and market potential.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
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The Details
Who Should Apply?
- Engineer-founders building B2B AI companies
- Pre-seed and seed stage (raised between $0-$5M)
- Focus on AI infrastructure & applications
- Strong technical foundation and demo-ready product
Presentation Format
- 10-minute demo slot
- Show technical innovation / product demo
- Optional call-to-action for beta users, design partners or funding
- Supportive, no-pressure environment with no judges or competition
Why Being at AI Council Matters
Since 2015, our annual conference has been the launchpad for breakout companies in AI & data. Being recognized as an AI Launchpad startup gives you the opportunity to present in front of:
- Other engineer-founders who are also building data & AI companies
- Investors focused on scouting promising AI startups
- Potential customers, talent and business development partners
Winners Will Receive
Event Access
Up to 2 passes to AI Council ($1499 value per ticket)
Stage Time
Dedicated demo slot in front of AI & data leaders
Media Package
Professional stage photos and videos of your presentation
Conference Presence
Rub shoulders with other founders, engineers and investors
Brand Exposure
We extend your reach post-conference to our 100K-strong network
Expanded Network
Connect with potential customers, partners and mentors