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Experts Defining the AI Frontier
AI Council features the technical pioneers shaping the AI ecosystem.
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Hannes Mühleisen
Co-Creator of DuckDB
DuckDB Labs
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Hannes Mühleisen
Co-Creator of DuckDB
DuckDB Labs
Co-Creator of DuckDB
DuckDB Labs
Hannes Mühleisen is a creator of the DuckDB database management system and Co-founder and CEO of DuckDB Labs. He is a senior researcher at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam. He is also Professor of Data Engineering at Radboud University Nijmegen.
Naveen Rao
VP of AI
Databricks
- Keynotes
Naveen Rao
VP of AI
Databricks
VP of AI
Databricks
Naveen Rao is VP of AI at Databricks, with a unique background bridging neuroscience and computing. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from Brown University and previously co-founded Nervana, where he pioneered hardware for AI. His career focuses on building synthetic intelligence and making it widely accessible. Following Databricks' acquisition of Mosaic ML, Naveen continues driving AI capabilities for enterprise applications. Beyond his primary role, he serves on several advisory boards including the Allen Institute and is a board member for innovative companies like Beacon Biosignals and NeuReality. Naveen describes himself as a "neuroscientist, AI perpetrator, processor architect, entrepreneur, and investor" with a passion for transforming how we interact with large datasets.
Denis Yarats
Co-Founder & CTO
Perplexity
- Keynotes
Denis Yarats
Co-Founder & CTO
Perplexity
Co-Founder & CTO
Perplexity
Denis Yarats is the Co-Founder & CTO of Perplexity, building AI-native search tools since 2022. With a PhD in AI from NYU and experience at Facebook AI Research, Quora, and Microsoft, Denis brings deep technical expertise to his work. He's also an angel investor in AI startups like Cognition Labs (Devin) and Cursor. Currently, he's developing Comet, a new "browser for agentic search" that reflects his ongoing commitment to advancing how we discover information online. His work sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning, natural language processing, and search technology.
Aaron Katz
Co-Founder & CEO
Clickhouse
- Keynotes
Aaron Katz
Co-Founder & CEO
Clickhouse
Co-Founder & CEO
Clickhouse
Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickHouse, Inc., a company focused on high-performance database solutions. With over two decades of experience scaling technology companies, Katz has established himself as a go-to-market expert in enterprise software. Prior to founding ClickHouse in 2021, Katz served as Chief Revenue Officer at Elastic for nearly six years, growing the company from $5M to over $500M in revenue and guiding it through IPO. His earlier career includes twelve years at Salesforce.com, where he rose to Senior Vice President of Enterprise Sales, helping transform the company from a 200-employee startup to a $200B+ market leader. A UC Davis graduate with a BS in Managerial Economics, he recently led ClickHouse's acquisition of HyperDX to enhance the company's observability offerings.
Ryan Blue
Creator of Apache Iceberg, Member of Technical Staff
Databricks
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Ryan Blue
Creator of Apache Iceberg, Member of Technical Staff
Databricks
Creator of Apache Iceberg, Member of Technical Staff
Databricks
Ryan Blue is the original creator of Apache Iceberg and currently serves as Vice President of the project. With over a decade in data engineering, he's an established expert in big data formats and infrastructure. Currently a Member of Technical Staff at Databricks since June 2024, Ryan previously co-founded and served as CEO of Tabular until its acquisition by Databricks. His career includes senior positions at Netflix and Cloudera, where he was a technical lead for data formats. An Apache Software Foundation member since 2017, he's a committer in the Apache Parquet, Avro, and Spark communities and previously served as VP of Apache Avro. Ryan holds dual Bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Idaho and a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
Martin Casado
General Partner
a16z
- Keynotes
Martin Casado
General Partner
a16z
General Partner
a16z
Martin Casado is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz who transformed the networking industry as founder and CTO of Nicira Networks before its acquisition by VMware. With a PhD from Stanford, Casado pioneered software-defined networking and created NOX, an influential open-source controller implemented across research and production environments. His rare combination of technical expertise, academic credentials, and business acumen has established him as a respected venture capital leader who identifies and nurtures breakthrough technologies in enterprise infrastructure. Colleagues praise his ability to elevate those around him while bringing strategic vision to complex technological challenges.
Ethan Rosenthal
Member of Technical Staff
Runway
- Foundation Models
Ethan Rosenthal
Member of Technical Staff
Runway
Member of Technical Staff
Runway
Ethan Rosenthal is a Member of Technical Staff at Runway, an applied AI research company focused on multimedia content creation, where he builds engineering systems to accelerate the work of research scientists. His career spans diverse roles across AI, machine learning, and data science - from training language models at Square to developing recommendation systems at seed-stage ecommerce startups. Before working in tech, Ethan was an actual scientist and got his PhD in experimental physics from Columbia University.
Sharon Zhou
Founder & CEO
Lamini
- Keynotes
Sharon Zhou
Founder & CEO
Lamini
Founder & CEO
Lamini
Sharon Zhou is the Founder and CEO of Lamini, a developer platform focused on reducing AI hallucinations. With a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford where she was advised by Andrew Ng, Sharon's work centers on making AI more accessible and reliable. She serves as CS faculty at Stanford and has taught over a million students through her Generative AI courses. Before focusing on AI, Sharon studied Classics at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a double major. Her mission is to "blend technological wonder with human warmth" by democratizing AI development beyond a small circle of experts. Sharon was recognized in MIT Technology Review's 35 Under 35 and actively invests in AI startups as an angel investor.
Mike Driscoll
Co-Founder & CTO
Rill Data
- Analytics & BI
Mike Driscoll
Co-Founder & CTO
Rill Data
Co-Founder & CTO
Rill Data
Mike has spent over two decades as a technologist, entrepreneur, and investor. He’s currently co-founder and CEO of Rill, a cloud service for operational intelligence. Previously he founded Metamarkets (acquired by Snap, Inc. in 2017), a real-time analytics platform for digital ad firms, and CustomInk.com a leader in custom apparel online. Mike was also a founding partner at the venture capital firm DCVC, which has invested over $2B+ in assets in deep tech. He began his career as a software engineer for the Human Genome Project and later received a Ph.D. in computational biology.
Michele Catasta
President
Replit
- Keynotes
Michele Catasta
President
Replit
President
Replit
Michele Catasta is the President of Replit, where he drives innovation in AI-powered coding environments. Previously serving as VP of AI a Replit, Michele brings extensive expertise in applying artificial intelligence to code generation. Before joining Replit, he held leadership positions at Google Labs and X (the moonshot factory), focusing on AI applications for source code and large language models. Michele completed his PhD in Computer Science at EPFL and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stanford University. Beyond his corporate role, he advises AI initiatives at investment firms like Coatue and serves as an educator, recently co-teaching a course on "vibe coding" with Andrew Ng at DeepLearning.AI.
Jake Brill
Head of Product - Integrity
OpenAI
- Keynotes
Jake Brill
Head of Product - Integrity
OpenAI
Head of Product - Integrity
OpenAI
Jake Brill is Head of Product for Integrity at OpenAI, where he builds technology and teams to protect the platform from financial fraud and account abuse. With over 15 years of experience in product management, Jake previously directed Support & Protect initiatives at Instacart for nearly 5 years and spent almost a decade at Facebook developing critical security features like Login Approvals, Trusted Contacts, and Anti-bullying tools. His expertise spans from site integrity and fraud prevention to building user-centric privacy controls and safety mechanisms. A Bowdoin College graduate with degrees in Psychology and Latin American Studies, Jake combines technical knowledge with user behavior insights to create secure digital experiences. His career reflects a consistent commitment to safeguarding user trust and ensuring reliable experiences across major technology platforms, now applying this expertise at the forefront of artificial intelligence.
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Rachad Alao
Senior Engineering Director
Meta
- Keynotes
Rachad Alao
Senior Engineering Director
Meta
Senior Engineering Director
Meta
As a seasoned technology leader, Rachad brings over two decades of experience in the high-tech industry, with a focus on responsible artificial intelligence, operating systems and embedded systems. Currently, he serves as Senior Director of Engineering at Meta, leading Meta’s Generative AI Trust and Safety organization, which focuses on building safe and responsible GenAI foundation models, including Llama open-source models. Rachad's professional journey spans multiple roles and companies. Before rejoining Meta, he was Senior Director of Engineering at Google, where he led the Applied Responsible AI effort as well as Google Maps User-Generated Content, Trust and Safety AI engineering teams. Previously, he was Director of Engineering at Facebook AI, leading the Facebook Responsible AI effort centered around AI fairness, privacy, security, robustness, and safety, as well as transparency and control. Rachad's experience also includes six years at Google as an Engineering Director, helping Android scale to 3 billion devices. He led Android's multimedia efforts, including Android OS Audio, Video, and Camera teams, contributing to the development of Google's Pixel Camera and a more secure Android multimedia stack. Earlier in his career, Rachad spent nine years at Bluestreak Technology in Montreal, serving as Chief Technology Officer and other engineering leadership roles. As CTO, he helped build the company's embedded Flash and HTML technology, deploying it to millions of devices for Orange France and Time Warner Cable US. Rachad holds a Master's degree in Telecommunication Engineering and Computer Architecture from Telecom ParisTech in Paris. He was born in Benin, West Africa and grew up in Côte d'Ivoire before moving to France at the age of 16 to pursue his studies.
Joseph Gonzalez
Professor
RunLLM & UC Berkeley
- GenAI Applications
- Keynotes
Joseph Gonzalez
Professor
RunLLM & UC Berkeley
Professor
RunLLM & UC Berkeley
Joseph Gonzalez is a Computer Science Professor at UC Berkeley, the co-director of the RISE and Sky Computing Labs, and a member of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) group. He leads the Large Models Systems (LM-Sys) and Gorilla projects which have significantly advanced open research in large language models and their supporting systems. Joseph is also co-founder and Head of AI at RunLLM.com. His research addresses problems in data systems, large language models, scalable machine learning, computer vision, robotics, autonomous driving, and graph analytics. Prior to joining Berkeley, Gonzalez co-founded Turi Inc (formerly GraphLab) based on his thesis work. Gonzalez’s innovative work has earned him significant recognition, including the Okawa Research Grant, the NSF Expedition Award, the VLDB Test-of-Time award, and NSF Early CAREER Award.
Sumti Jairath
Chief Architect
SambaNova Systems
- Keynotes
Sumti Jairath
Chief Architect
SambaNova Systems
Chief Architect
SambaNova Systems
Sumti Jairath is Chief Architect at SambaNova Systems. In his role, Sumti uses his expertise to bridge hardware and software architecture, and ensure the performance of SambaNova’s AI systems. Previously, Sumti worked on PA-RISC-based Superdome servers back at HP, followed by several generations of SPARC multi-threaded processors at Sun Microsystems and Oracle. At Oracle, Sumti worked on SQL, Data-analytics and Machine Learning acceleration in SPARC processors. Sumti has written for several industry publications and holds over 30 U.S. patents in computer architecture and hardware-software co-design.
Pedram Navid
Head of Data Engineering & DevRel
Dagster Labs
- Lightning Talks
Pedram Navid
Head of Data Engineering & DevRel
Dagster Labs
Head of Data Engineering & DevRel
Dagster Labs
Pedram is the Head of Data Engineering and DevRel at Dagster Labs where he manages the devrel, marketing, and data teams with the goal of helping developers be more successful with Dagster. He has built Dagster integrations, the Ask AI agent, and rewritten docs from the ground up. Prior to Dagster, he was the Head of Data at Hightouch, is an avid bird watcher, and a father of twin girls.
Paul Dix
Founder & CTO
InfluxData
- Databases
Paul Dix
Founder & CTO
InfluxData
Founder & CTO
InfluxData
Paul is the creator of InfluxDB. He has helped build software for startups, large companies and organizations like Microsoft, Google, McAfee, Thomson Reuters, and Air Force Space Command. He is the series editor for Addison Wesley’s Data & Analytics book and video series. In 2010 Paul wrote the book Service Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails for Addison Wesley’s. In 2009 he started the NYC Machine Learning Meetup, which now has over 7,000 members. Paul holds a degree in computer science from Columbia University.
Andy Pavlo
Assistant Professor of Databaseology
Carnegie Mellon University
- Databases
Andy Pavlo
Assistant Professor of Databaseology
Carnegie Mellon University
Assistant Professor of Databaseology
Carnegie Mellon University
Andy Pavlo is an Associate Professor with Indefinite Tenure of Databaseology in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He knows some pile about databases which has earned him several distinctions, such as VLDB Early Career Award (2021) and NSF CAREER (2019). He also was the CEO & co-founder of the OtterTune database tuning start-up (2020-2024), but it died an untimely death. Andy earned his Ph.D. in 2013 at Brown University under Stan Zdonik and Mike Stonebraker.
Dhruv Singh
Co-founder & CTO
HoneyHive AI
- AI Engineering
Dhruv Singh
Co-founder & CTO
HoneyHive AI
Co-founder & CTO
HoneyHive AI
Dhruv Singh has a diverse work experience in various roles and companies. He is currently the Co-Founder and CTO at HoneyHive AI. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft as a Software Engineer, where he contributed to the development of frameworks for LLM developers on Microsoft's OpenAI Innovation team and also worked on projects in the Office of the CTO.. Dhruv won the Codex Innovation Challenge organized by the Office of the CTO during his time at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Dhruv had internships at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Companies (U.S.) and Genomic Prediction in 2018. Dhruv also served as a Software Engineering Intern at Microsoft in 2019. Dhruv has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Simon Eskildsen
Co-Founder
Turbopuffer
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Simon Eskildsen
Co-Founder
Turbopuffer
Co-Founder
Turbopuffer
Simon Hørup Eskildsen is co-founder of turbopuffer, a fast search engine on object storage. Previously, Simon was a principal engineer at Shopify, scaling the system from 1K to 1M requests per second. When time allows, he writes about napkin math on his or the turbopuffer blog and maintains a popular reference on the topic on Github: sirupsen/napkin-math.
Mitul Tiwari
Co-founder & CTO
Stealth
- GenAI Applications
Mitul Tiwari
Co-founder & CTO
Stealth
Co-founder & CTO
Stealth
Mitul Tiwari is CTO and Co-founder of a stealth AI startup. Until recently he was a Director of AI and Machine Learning Engineering at ServiceNow leading natural language technologies group. Earlier he was CTO and Co-founder of Passage AI (acquired by Servicenow). His expertise lies in building data-driven products using AI, Machine Learning and big data technologies. Previously he was head of People You May Know and Growth Relevance at LinkedIn, where he led technical innovations in large-scale social recommender systems. Prior to that, he worked at Kosmix (now Walmart Labs) on web-scale text categorization, and its applications. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has also co-authored more than twenty publications in top conferences such as ACL, AAAI, KDD, WWW, RecSys, VLDB, SIGIR, CIKM, and SPAA.
Timothy Chan
Head of Data
Statsig
- Data Sci & Algos
Timothy Chan
Head of Data
Statsig
Head of Data
Statsig
Timothy Chan is an experienced data science professional, currently serving as the Head of Data at Statsig. This cutting-edge platform provides product observability and experimentation services to top companies such as Notion, RecRoom, WhatNot, and OfferUp. Before joining Statsig, Timothy spent 5 years as a Data Scientist at Facebook (now Meta), where he was involved in projects across Facebook App and Reality Labs. Before venturing into the tech industry, Timothy worked in biotech, researching treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, and Cancer. He holds a PhD in Chemistry and an MBA in Entrepreneurship.
David Wilson
Co-Founder & CEO
Hunch Tools
- GenAI Applications
David Wilson
Co-Founder & CEO
Hunch Tools
Co-Founder & CEO
Hunch Tools
Starting in management consulting, David worked with large datasets for companies across Africa and the Middle East. His design journey began earlier, in high school, learning 3D design to mod video games alongside future co-founder Ross. His design interests grew to include usability design, data visualization, and cartography, leading to a featured map in Phaidon’s “Maps” book.
David co-founded Cape Networks, combining his data and design experience to craft a SaaS tool that helped non-experts make sense of complex networking data. Aruba Networks acquired Cape to be the face of their cloud software portfolio.
Drawing from his experience at Cape, David co-founded Hunch—a data tool he’s dreamed of since his consulting days.
Ofer Mendelevitch
Head of Developer Relations
Vectara
- Workshops
Ofer Mendelevitch
Head of Developer Relations
Vectara
Head of Developer Relations
Vectara
Ofer Mendelevitch leads developer relations at Vectara. He has extensive hands-on experience in machine learning, data science and big data systems across multiple industries, and has focused on developing products using large language models since 2019. Prior to Vectara he built and led data science teams at Syntegra, Helix, Lendup, Hortonworks and Yahoo! Ofer holds a B.Sc. in computer science from Technion and M.Sc. in EE from Tel Aviv university, and is the author of "Practical data science with Hadoop" (Addison Wesley).
Lindsay Murphy
Director, Head of Data
Hiive
- AI & Data Culture
Lindsay Murphy
Director, Head of Data
Hiive
Director, Head of Data
Hiive
Lindsay Murphy is a data leader with 13 years of industry experience. She is currently a Director and Head of Data at Hiive, the marketplace for private stock. Before Hiive, Lindsay led data teams at Secoda, Maple and BenchSci. Lindsay is also a co-organizer of the Toronto Modern Data Stack Meetup, an instructor of Advanced dbt with Uplimit and the creator/host of the Women Lead Data podcast.
Jake Thomas
Manager, Data Foundations
Okta
- ML OPs & Platforms
Jake Thomas
Manager, Data Foundations
Okta
Manager, Data Foundations
Okta
Jake currently manages the Data Foundations team at Okta after transitioning from Principal Engineer on Okta's Defensive Cyber Operations team. He previously led data platform teams at Shopify and CarGurus, has taught various O'Reilly courses, and regularly contributes to data-oriented OSS projects.
Tobias Lunt
Co-Founder & Data Scientist
Development Data Lab
- Lightning Talks
Tobias Lunt
Co-Founder & Data Scientist
Development Data Lab
Co-Founder & Data Scientist
Development Data Lab
Tobias is co-founder and Head of Data at Development Data Lab, where his mission is to deliver insights and open data to fight poverty and improve policy around the world. He leads data engineering, analytical, geospatial, and visualization efforts at DDL. In a past life, he was a Fulbrighter to Ethiopia working on agricultural development alongside rural farmers.
Marck Vaisman
Global AI Solutions Architect
Microsoft
- AI Engineering
Marck Vaisman
Global AI Solutions Architect
Microsoft
Global AI Solutions Architect
Microsoft
Marck is a data science expert with 15 years of experience, currently aiding customers in harnessing Azure for their data workloads. As an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown and George Washington University, he integrates industry knowledge into courses like Big Data and Cloud Computing. He's also the founder of Data Community DC, promoting data science in the Washington DC area. An advocate for R programming, Marck has authored several data science publications, including "Analyzing the Analyzers". He holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University.
Elias DeFaria
Co-Founder & VP of Product
SDF
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Elias DeFaria
Co-Founder & VP of Product
SDF
Co-Founder & VP of Product
SDF
Elias DeFaria is the cofounder and VP of Product at SDF Labs, a cutting-edge transformation layer that combines dbt-like capabilities with native SQL understanding and execution. He leads product strategy and development, collaborating closely with customers and engineers to deliver the next generation of data transformation tools.
Mickey Liu
Software Engineer
Notion
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Mickey Liu
Software Engineer
Notion
Software Engineer
Notion
Mickey Liu is a software engineer on the AI & Data Platform team at Notion, helping build and scale data needs for Notion AI. Before Notion, Mickey worked on the ML Platform team at Twitter building the Feature Management system to enable ML model training and serving use cases for ads and recommendations.
Sumedh Sakdeo
Senior Staff Software Engineer
LinkedIn
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Sumedh Sakdeo
Senior Staff Software Engineer
LinkedIn
Senior Staff Software Engineer
LinkedIn
Sumedh Sakdeo is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at LinkedIn. He has 15+ years of experience working in data infrastructure. He previously contributed to a log-structured file system at Tintri and led data infrastructure, engineering, and visualization for Lyft's Autonomous Vehicles division. Notably, at LinkedIn, he spearheaded the development of OpenHouse, an open source control plane for Apache Iceberg Tables, enabling efficient table maintenance and data layout optimization at scale.
Jesus Camacho
Principal Engineering Manager
Microsoft
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Jesus Camacho
Principal Engineering Manager
Microsoft
Principal Engineering Manager
Microsoft
Jesús Camacho Rodríguez is a Principal Engineering Manager at Microsoft, leading a team focused on query optimization and processing for Fabric Data Warehouse. Previously, he led a team in the Gray Systems Lab (GSL), driving innovation in data systems performance, interoperability, and benchmarking across Azure Data's product portfolio. Before Microsoft, he worked at Cloudera on query optimization for SQL data warehouse engines. A member of the Apache Software Foundation, he has made significant contributions to open-source projects like Apache Calcite and Apache Hive, and, more recently, has focused on projects in the table formats space, including LST-Bench and Apache XTable (incubating). He holds a PhD from the University of Paris-Sud and Inria, France.
Anant Agarwal
Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Lead
Instacart
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Anant Agarwal
Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Lead
Instacart
Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Lead
Instacart
Anant Agarwal is a Staff Software Engineer and Technical Lead in Instacart's Data Infrastructure group, leading initiatives for developer and data productivity at scale. During his 4+ years at Instacart, he has developed mission-critical distributed platforms and orchestration systems that power the company's data pipelines, workflow engines, and services ecosystem, processing millions of workflows daily. Previously at VMware, as Staff Software Engineer and one of the early engineers on VMware Cloud on AWS, he built high availability and distributed resource scheduling systems for hybrid cloud environments.
Brenna Buuck
Developer Evangelist
MinIO
- Lightning Talks
Brenna Buuck
Developer Evangelist
MinIO
Developer Evangelist
MinIO
Brenna Buuck is the subject matter expert at MinIO for databases and datalakes. A data engineer turned Developer Evangelist, she is passionate about coding, data and learning. She endeavors to inspire and educate other developers about the latest tools and technologies with the goal of helping them build amazing things through code, tutorials, speaking and writing. She has her undergraduate degree from UC San Diego and her graduate degree from San Diego State.
Colleen Tartow
Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering
Capital One
- AI & Data Culture
Colleen Tartow
Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering
Capital One
Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering
Capital One
Colleen Tartow, Ph.D. is Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering at Capital One and has 20+ years of experience in data, analytics, engineering, and consulting. Adept at assisting organizations in deriving value from a data-driven culture, she has successfully led diverse data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of complex global data management solutions and architecting enterprise data systems. Her demonstrated excellence in data, engineering, analytics, and diversity leadership makes her a trusted senior advisor among executives. An experienced speaker, prolific author, valued mentor, and startup advisor, Colleen holds degrees in astrophysics and lives in Massachusetts.
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Hannes Mühleisen
Co-Creator of DuckDB
DuckDB Labs
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Hannes Mühleisen
Co-Creator of DuckDB
DuckDB Labs
Co-Creator of DuckDB
DuckDB Labs
Hannes Mühleisen is a creator of the DuckDB database management system and Co-founder and CEO of DuckDB Labs. He is a senior researcher at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam. He is also Professor of Data Engineering at Radboud University Nijmegen.
Naveen Rao
VP of AI
Databricks
- Keynotes
Naveen Rao
VP of AI
Databricks
VP of AI
Databricks
Naveen Rao is VP of AI at Databricks, with a unique background bridging neuroscience and computing. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from Brown University and previously co-founded Nervana, where he pioneered hardware for AI. His career focuses on building synthetic intelligence and making it widely accessible. Following Databricks' acquisition of Mosaic ML, Naveen continues driving AI capabilities for enterprise applications. Beyond his primary role, he serves on several advisory boards including the Allen Institute and is a board member for innovative companies like Beacon Biosignals and NeuReality. Naveen describes himself as a "neuroscientist, AI perpetrator, processor architect, entrepreneur, and investor" with a passion for transforming how we interact with large datasets.
Denis Yarats
Co-Founder & CTO
Perplexity
- Keynotes
Denis Yarats
Co-Founder & CTO
Perplexity
Co-Founder & CTO
Perplexity
Denis Yarats is the Co-Founder & CTO of Perplexity, building AI-native search tools since 2022. With a PhD in AI from NYU and experience at Facebook AI Research, Quora, and Microsoft, Denis brings deep technical expertise to his work. He's also an angel investor in AI startups like Cognition Labs (Devin) and Cursor. Currently, he's developing Comet, a new "browser for agentic search" that reflects his ongoing commitment to advancing how we discover information online. His work sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning, natural language processing, and search technology.
Aaron Katz
Co-Founder & CEO
Clickhouse
- Keynotes
Aaron Katz
Co-Founder & CEO
Clickhouse
Co-Founder & CEO
Clickhouse
Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickHouse, Inc., a company focused on high-performance database solutions. With over two decades of experience scaling technology companies, Katz has established himself as a go-to-market expert in enterprise software. Prior to founding ClickHouse in 2021, Katz served as Chief Revenue Officer at Elastic for nearly six years, growing the company from $5M to over $500M in revenue and guiding it through IPO. His earlier career includes twelve years at Salesforce.com, where he rose to Senior Vice President of Enterprise Sales, helping transform the company from a 200-employee startup to a $200B+ market leader. A UC Davis graduate with a BS in Managerial Economics, he recently led ClickHouse's acquisition of HyperDX to enhance the company's observability offerings.
Ryan Blue
Creator of Apache Iceberg, Member of Technical Staff
Databricks
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Ryan Blue
Creator of Apache Iceberg, Member of Technical Staff
Databricks
Creator of Apache Iceberg, Member of Technical Staff
Databricks
Ryan Blue is the original creator of Apache Iceberg and currently serves as Vice President of the project. With over a decade in data engineering, he's an established expert in big data formats and infrastructure. Currently a Member of Technical Staff at Databricks since June 2024, Ryan previously co-founded and served as CEO of Tabular until its acquisition by Databricks. His career includes senior positions at Netflix and Cloudera, where he was a technical lead for data formats. An Apache Software Foundation member since 2017, he's a committer in the Apache Parquet, Avro, and Spark communities and previously served as VP of Apache Avro. Ryan holds dual Bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Idaho and a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
Martin Casado
General Partner
a16z
- Keynotes
Martin Casado
General Partner
a16z
General Partner
a16z
Martin Casado is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz who transformed the networking industry as founder and CTO of Nicira Networks before its acquisition by VMware. With a PhD from Stanford, Casado pioneered software-defined networking and created NOX, an influential open-source controller implemented across research and production environments. His rare combination of technical expertise, academic credentials, and business acumen has established him as a respected venture capital leader who identifies and nurtures breakthrough technologies in enterprise infrastructure. Colleagues praise his ability to elevate those around him while bringing strategic vision to complex technological challenges.
Ethan Rosenthal
Member of Technical Staff
Runway
- Foundation Models
Ethan Rosenthal
Member of Technical Staff
Runway
Member of Technical Staff
Runway
Ethan Rosenthal is a Member of Technical Staff at Runway, an applied AI research company focused on multimedia content creation, where he builds engineering systems to accelerate the work of research scientists. His career spans diverse roles across AI, machine learning, and data science - from training language models at Square to developing recommendation systems at seed-stage ecommerce startups. Before working in tech, Ethan was an actual scientist and got his PhD in experimental physics from Columbia University.
Sharon Zhou
Founder & CEO
Lamini
- Keynotes
Sharon Zhou
Founder & CEO
Lamini
Founder & CEO
Lamini
Sharon Zhou is the Founder and CEO of Lamini, a developer platform focused on reducing AI hallucinations. With a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford where she was advised by Andrew Ng, Sharon's work centers on making AI more accessible and reliable. She serves as CS faculty at Stanford and has taught over a million students through her Generative AI courses. Before focusing on AI, Sharon studied Classics at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a double major. Her mission is to "blend technological wonder with human warmth" by democratizing AI development beyond a small circle of experts. Sharon was recognized in MIT Technology Review's 35 Under 35 and actively invests in AI startups as an angel investor.
Mike Driscoll
Co-Founder & CTO
Rill Data
- Analytics & BI
Mike Driscoll
Co-Founder & CTO
Rill Data
Co-Founder & CTO
Rill Data
Mike has spent over two decades as a technologist, entrepreneur, and investor. He’s currently co-founder and CEO of Rill, a cloud service for operational intelligence. Previously he founded Metamarkets (acquired by Snap, Inc. in 2017), a real-time analytics platform for digital ad firms, and CustomInk.com a leader in custom apparel online. Mike was also a founding partner at the venture capital firm DCVC, which has invested over $2B+ in assets in deep tech. He began his career as a software engineer for the Human Genome Project and later received a Ph.D. in computational biology.
Michele Catasta
President
Replit
- Keynotes
Michele Catasta
President
Replit
President
Replit
Michele Catasta is the President of Replit, where he drives innovation in AI-powered coding environments. Previously serving as VP of AI a Replit, Michele brings extensive expertise in applying artificial intelligence to code generation. Before joining Replit, he held leadership positions at Google Labs and X (the moonshot factory), focusing on AI applications for source code and large language models. Michele completed his PhD in Computer Science at EPFL and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stanford University. Beyond his corporate role, he advises AI initiatives at investment firms like Coatue and serves as an educator, recently co-teaching a course on "vibe coding" with Andrew Ng at DeepLearning.AI.
Jake Brill
Head of Product - Integrity
OpenAI
- Keynotes
Jake Brill
Head of Product - Integrity
OpenAI
Head of Product - Integrity
OpenAI
Jake Brill is Head of Product for Integrity at OpenAI, where he builds technology and teams to protect the platform from financial fraud and account abuse. With over 15 years of experience in product management, Jake previously directed Support & Protect initiatives at Instacart for nearly 5 years and spent almost a decade at Facebook developing critical security features like Login Approvals, Trusted Contacts, and Anti-bullying tools. His expertise spans from site integrity and fraud prevention to building user-centric privacy controls and safety mechanisms. A Bowdoin College graduate with degrees in Psychology and Latin American Studies, Jake combines technical knowledge with user behavior insights to create secure digital experiences. His career reflects a consistent commitment to safeguarding user trust and ensuring reliable experiences across major technology platforms, now applying this expertise at the forefront of artificial intelligence.
Rachad Alao
Senior Engineering Director
Meta
- Keynotes
Rachad Alao
Senior Engineering Director
Meta
Senior Engineering Director
Meta
As a seasoned technology leader, Rachad brings over two decades of experience in the high-tech industry, with a focus on responsible artificial intelligence, operating systems and embedded systems. Currently, he serves as Senior Director of Engineering at Meta, leading Meta’s Generative AI Trust and Safety organization, which focuses on building safe and responsible GenAI foundation models, including Llama open-source models. Rachad's professional journey spans multiple roles and companies. Before rejoining Meta, he was Senior Director of Engineering at Google, where he led the Applied Responsible AI effort as well as Google Maps User-Generated Content, Trust and Safety AI engineering teams. Previously, he was Director of Engineering at Facebook AI, leading the Facebook Responsible AI effort centered around AI fairness, privacy, security, robustness, and safety, as well as transparency and control. Rachad's experience also includes six years at Google as an Engineering Director, helping Android scale to 3 billion devices. He led Android's multimedia efforts, including Android OS Audio, Video, and Camera teams, contributing to the development of Google's Pixel Camera and a more secure Android multimedia stack. Earlier in his career, Rachad spent nine years at Bluestreak Technology in Montreal, serving as Chief Technology Officer and other engineering leadership roles. As CTO, he helped build the company's embedded Flash and HTML technology, deploying it to millions of devices for Orange France and Time Warner Cable US. Rachad holds a Master's degree in Telecommunication Engineering and Computer Architecture from Telecom ParisTech in Paris. He was born in Benin, West Africa and grew up in Côte d'Ivoire before moving to France at the age of 16 to pursue his studies.
Joseph Gonzalez
Professor
RunLLM & UC Berkeley
- GenAI Applications
- Keynotes
Joseph Gonzalez
Professor
RunLLM & UC Berkeley
Professor
RunLLM & UC Berkeley
Joseph Gonzalez is a Computer Science Professor at UC Berkeley, the co-director of the RISE and Sky Computing Labs, and a member of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) group. He leads the Large Models Systems (LM-Sys) and Gorilla projects which have significantly advanced open research in large language models and their supporting systems. Joseph is also co-founder and Head of AI at RunLLM.com. His research addresses problems in data systems, large language models, scalable machine learning, computer vision, robotics, autonomous driving, and graph analytics. Prior to joining Berkeley, Gonzalez co-founded Turi Inc (formerly GraphLab) based on his thesis work. Gonzalez’s innovative work has earned him significant recognition, including the Okawa Research Grant, the NSF Expedition Award, the VLDB Test-of-Time award, and NSF Early CAREER Award.
Sumti Jairath
Chief Architect
SambaNova Systems
- Keynotes
Sumti Jairath
Chief Architect
SambaNova Systems
Chief Architect
SambaNova Systems
Sumti Jairath is Chief Architect at SambaNova Systems. In his role, Sumti uses his expertise to bridge hardware and software architecture, and ensure the performance of SambaNova’s AI systems. Previously, Sumti worked on PA-RISC-based Superdome servers back at HP, followed by several generations of SPARC multi-threaded processors at Sun Microsystems and Oracle. At Oracle, Sumti worked on SQL, Data-analytics and Machine Learning acceleration in SPARC processors. Sumti has written for several industry publications and holds over 30 U.S. patents in computer architecture and hardware-software co-design.
Pedram Navid
Head of Data Engineering & DevRel
Dagster Labs
- Lightning Talks
Pedram Navid
Head of Data Engineering & DevRel
Dagster Labs
Head of Data Engineering & DevRel
Dagster Labs
Pedram is the Head of Data Engineering and DevRel at Dagster Labs where he manages the devrel, marketing, and data teams with the goal of helping developers be more successful with Dagster. He has built Dagster integrations, the Ask AI agent, and rewritten docs from the ground up. Prior to Dagster, he was the Head of Data at Hightouch, is an avid bird watcher, and a father of twin girls.
Paul Dix
Founder & CTO
InfluxData
- Databases
Paul Dix
Founder & CTO
InfluxData
Founder & CTO
InfluxData
Paul is the creator of InfluxDB. He has helped build software for startups, large companies and organizations like Microsoft, Google, McAfee, Thomson Reuters, and Air Force Space Command. He is the series editor for Addison Wesley’s Data & Analytics book and video series. In 2010 Paul wrote the book Service Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails for Addison Wesley’s. In 2009 he started the NYC Machine Learning Meetup, which now has over 7,000 members. Paul holds a degree in computer science from Columbia University.
Andy Pavlo
Assistant Professor of Databaseology
Carnegie Mellon University
- Databases
Andy Pavlo
Assistant Professor of Databaseology
Carnegie Mellon University
Assistant Professor of Databaseology
Carnegie Mellon University
Andy Pavlo is an Associate Professor with Indefinite Tenure of Databaseology in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He knows some pile about databases which has earned him several distinctions, such as VLDB Early Career Award (2021) and NSF CAREER (2019). He also was the CEO & co-founder of the OtterTune database tuning start-up (2020-2024), but it died an untimely death. Andy earned his Ph.D. in 2013 at Brown University under Stan Zdonik and Mike Stonebraker.
Dhruv Singh
Co-founder & CTO
HoneyHive AI
- AI Engineering
Dhruv Singh
Co-founder & CTO
HoneyHive AI
Co-founder & CTO
HoneyHive AI
Dhruv Singh has a diverse work experience in various roles and companies. He is currently the Co-Founder and CTO at HoneyHive AI. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft as a Software Engineer, where he contributed to the development of frameworks for LLM developers on Microsoft's OpenAI Innovation team and also worked on projects in the Office of the CTO.. Dhruv won the Codex Innovation Challenge organized by the Office of the CTO during his time at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Dhruv had internships at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Companies (U.S.) and Genomic Prediction in 2018. Dhruv also served as a Software Engineering Intern at Microsoft in 2019. Dhruv has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Simon Eskildsen
Co-Founder
Turbopuffer
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Simon Eskildsen
Co-Founder
Turbopuffer
Co-Founder
Turbopuffer
Simon Hørup Eskildsen is co-founder of turbopuffer, a fast search engine on object storage. Previously, Simon was a principal engineer at Shopify, scaling the system from 1K to 1M requests per second. When time allows, he writes about napkin math on his or the turbopuffer blog and maintains a popular reference on the topic on Github: sirupsen/napkin-math.
Mitul Tiwari
Co-founder & CTO
Stealth
- GenAI Applications
Mitul Tiwari
Co-founder & CTO
Stealth
Co-founder & CTO
Stealth
Mitul Tiwari is CTO and Co-founder of a stealth AI startup. Until recently he was a Director of AI and Machine Learning Engineering at ServiceNow leading natural language technologies group. Earlier he was CTO and Co-founder of Passage AI (acquired by Servicenow). His expertise lies in building data-driven products using AI, Machine Learning and big data technologies. Previously he was head of People You May Know and Growth Relevance at LinkedIn, where he led technical innovations in large-scale social recommender systems. Prior to that, he worked at Kosmix (now Walmart Labs) on web-scale text categorization, and its applications. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has also co-authored more than twenty publications in top conferences such as ACL, AAAI, KDD, WWW, RecSys, VLDB, SIGIR, CIKM, and SPAA.
Timothy Chan
Head of Data
Statsig
- Data Sci & Algos
Timothy Chan
Head of Data
Statsig
Head of Data
Statsig
Timothy Chan is an experienced data science professional, currently serving as the Head of Data at Statsig. This cutting-edge platform provides product observability and experimentation services to top companies such as Notion, RecRoom, WhatNot, and OfferUp. Before joining Statsig, Timothy spent 5 years as a Data Scientist at Facebook (now Meta), where he was involved in projects across Facebook App and Reality Labs. Before venturing into the tech industry, Timothy worked in biotech, researching treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, and Cancer. He holds a PhD in Chemistry and an MBA in Entrepreneurship.
David Wilson
Co-Founder & CEO
Hunch Tools
- GenAI Applications
David Wilson
Co-Founder & CEO
Hunch Tools
Co-Founder & CEO
Hunch Tools
Starting in management consulting, David worked with large datasets for companies across Africa and the Middle East. His design journey began earlier, in high school, learning 3D design to mod video games alongside future co-founder Ross. His design interests grew to include usability design, data visualization, and cartography, leading to a featured map in Phaidon’s “Maps” book.
David co-founded Cape Networks, combining his data and design experience to craft a SaaS tool that helped non-experts make sense of complex networking data. Aruba Networks acquired Cape to be the face of their cloud software portfolio.
Drawing from his experience at Cape, David co-founded Hunch—a data tool he’s dreamed of since his consulting days.
Ofer Mendelevitch
Head of Developer Relations
Vectara
- Workshops
Ofer Mendelevitch
Head of Developer Relations
Vectara
Head of Developer Relations
Vectara
Ofer Mendelevitch leads developer relations at Vectara. He has extensive hands-on experience in machine learning, data science and big data systems across multiple industries, and has focused on developing products using large language models since 2019. Prior to Vectara he built and led data science teams at Syntegra, Helix, Lendup, Hortonworks and Yahoo! Ofer holds a B.Sc. in computer science from Technion and M.Sc. in EE from Tel Aviv university, and is the author of "Practical data science with Hadoop" (Addison Wesley).
Lindsay Murphy
Director, Head of Data
Hiive
- AI & Data Culture
Lindsay Murphy
Director, Head of Data
Hiive
Director, Head of Data
Hiive
Lindsay Murphy is a data leader with 13 years of industry experience. She is currently a Director and Head of Data at Hiive, the marketplace for private stock. Before Hiive, Lindsay led data teams at Secoda, Maple and BenchSci. Lindsay is also a co-organizer of the Toronto Modern Data Stack Meetup, an instructor of Advanced dbt with Uplimit and the creator/host of the Women Lead Data podcast.
Jake Thomas
Manager, Data Foundations
Okta
- ML OPs & Platforms
Jake Thomas
Manager, Data Foundations
Okta
Manager, Data Foundations
Okta
Jake currently manages the Data Foundations team at Okta after transitioning from Principal Engineer on Okta's Defensive Cyber Operations team. He previously led data platform teams at Shopify and CarGurus, has taught various O'Reilly courses, and regularly contributes to data-oriented OSS projects.
Tobias Lunt
Co-Founder & Data Scientist
Development Data Lab
- Lightning Talks
Tobias Lunt
Co-Founder & Data Scientist
Development Data Lab
Co-Founder & Data Scientist
Development Data Lab
Tobias is co-founder and Head of Data at Development Data Lab, where his mission is to deliver insights and open data to fight poverty and improve policy around the world. He leads data engineering, analytical, geospatial, and visualization efforts at DDL. In a past life, he was a Fulbrighter to Ethiopia working on agricultural development alongside rural farmers.
Marck Vaisman
Global AI Solutions Architect
Microsoft
- AI Engineering
Marck Vaisman
Global AI Solutions Architect
Microsoft
Global AI Solutions Architect
Microsoft
Marck is a data science expert with 15 years of experience, currently aiding customers in harnessing Azure for their data workloads. As an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown and George Washington University, he integrates industry knowledge into courses like Big Data and Cloud Computing. He's also the founder of Data Community DC, promoting data science in the Washington DC area. An advocate for R programming, Marck has authored several data science publications, including "Analyzing the Analyzers". He holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University.
Elias DeFaria
Co-Founder & VP of Product
SDF
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Elias DeFaria
Co-Founder & VP of Product
SDF
Co-Founder & VP of Product
SDF
Elias DeFaria is the cofounder and VP of Product at SDF Labs, a cutting-edge transformation layer that combines dbt-like capabilities with native SQL understanding and execution. He leads product strategy and development, collaborating closely with customers and engineers to deliver the next generation of data transformation tools.
Mickey Liu
Software Engineer
Notion
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Mickey Liu
Software Engineer
Notion
Software Engineer
Notion
Mickey Liu is a software engineer on the AI & Data Platform team at Notion, helping build and scale data needs for Notion AI. Before Notion, Mickey worked on the ML Platform team at Twitter building the Feature Management system to enable ML model training and serving use cases for ads and recommendations.
Sumedh Sakdeo
Senior Staff Software Engineer
LinkedIn
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Sumedh Sakdeo
Senior Staff Software Engineer
LinkedIn
Senior Staff Software Engineer
LinkedIn
Sumedh Sakdeo is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at LinkedIn. He has 15+ years of experience working in data infrastructure. He previously contributed to a log-structured file system at Tintri and led data infrastructure, engineering, and visualization for Lyft's Autonomous Vehicles division. Notably, at LinkedIn, he spearheaded the development of OpenHouse, an open source control plane for Apache Iceberg Tables, enabling efficient table maintenance and data layout optimization at scale.
Jesus Camacho
Principal Engineering Manager
Microsoft
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Jesus Camacho
Principal Engineering Manager
Microsoft
Principal Engineering Manager
Microsoft
Jesús Camacho Rodríguez is a Principal Engineering Manager at Microsoft, leading a team focused on query optimization and processing for Fabric Data Warehouse. Previously, he led a team in the Gray Systems Lab (GSL), driving innovation in data systems performance, interoperability, and benchmarking across Azure Data's product portfolio. Before Microsoft, he worked at Cloudera on query optimization for SQL data warehouse engines. A member of the Apache Software Foundation, he has made significant contributions to open-source projects like Apache Calcite and Apache Hive, and, more recently, has focused on projects in the table formats space, including LST-Bench and Apache XTable (incubating). He holds a PhD from the University of Paris-Sud and Inria, France.
Anant Agarwal
Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Lead
Instacart
- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Anant Agarwal
Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Lead
Instacart
Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Lead
Instacart
Anant Agarwal is a Staff Software Engineer and Technical Lead in Instacart's Data Infrastructure group, leading initiatives for developer and data productivity at scale. During his 4+ years at Instacart, he has developed mission-critical distributed platforms and orchestration systems that power the company's data pipelines, workflow engines, and services ecosystem, processing millions of workflows daily. Previously at VMware, as Staff Software Engineer and one of the early engineers on VMware Cloud on AWS, he built high availability and distributed resource scheduling systems for hybrid cloud environments.
Brenna Buuck
Developer Evangelist
MinIO
- Lightning Talks
Brenna Buuck
Developer Evangelist
MinIO
Developer Evangelist
MinIO
Brenna Buuck is the subject matter expert at MinIO for databases and datalakes. A data engineer turned Developer Evangelist, she is passionate about coding, data and learning. She endeavors to inspire and educate other developers about the latest tools and technologies with the goal of helping them build amazing things through code, tutorials, speaking and writing. She has her undergraduate degree from UC San Diego and her graduate degree from San Diego State.
Colleen Tartow
Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering
Capital One
- AI & Data Culture
Colleen Tartow
Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering
Capital One
Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering
Capital One
Colleen Tartow, Ph.D. is Senior Director, Enterprise Data Engineering at Capital One and has 20+ years of experience in data, analytics, engineering, and consulting. Adept at assisting organizations in deriving value from a data-driven culture, she has successfully led diverse data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of complex global data management solutions and architecting enterprise data systems. Her demonstrated excellence in data, engineering, analytics, and diversity leadership makes her a trusted senior advisor among executives. An experienced speaker, prolific author, valued mentor, and startup advisor, Colleen holds degrees in astrophysics and lives in Massachusetts.
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Past AI Council Talks
Ideas That Become Industry Standard
Billion-Scale Vector Search on Object Storage
Simon Hørup Eskildsen, Co-Founder, turbopuffer
Mickey Liu, Software Engineer, Notion
The Future of Data Engineering in a Post-AI World
Michelle Ufford Winters, Distinguished MTS - Data & Analytics, eBay (ex- Netflix, GoDaddy, Noteable)
Data Meets Intelligence: Where the Data Infra & AI Stack Converge
Naveen Rao | VP of AI, Databricks
George Mathew | Managing Director, Insight Partners
What Every Data Scientist Needs To Know About GPUs
Charles Frye, Developer Advocate, Modal Labs
2026 Technical Tracks
Inference Systems
This track explores the systems and infrastructure powering real-time multimodal AI—from audio and video to vision, speech and mixed-modal interfaces. Talks focus on accelerating inference, reducing latency, scaling new modalities, and designing next-generation model-serving pipelines. Perfect for engineers building the frontier of interactive AI experiences.
AI Engineering
AI Engineering covers the practical workflows, tools and methodologies for evaluating, monitoring and improving AI systems in production. Topics include eval frameworks, observability stacks, guardrails, prompt testing and reliability engineering. For practitioners who keep AI systems correct, safe and performant in the wild.
AI Security & Safety
Dive deep into security, red-teaming, privacy, safety frameworks and governance for modern AI systems. Expect highly technical sessions on identifying vulnerabilities, mitigating model-level risks and building defensible enterprise AI. The right place for anyone serious about safe, trustworthy and compliant AI deployment.
Agent Frameworks & Tools
Breaks down the architectures, planning systems, memory representations and tool-use loops that make agents work. Talks highlight emerging platforms, orchestration layers and runtime environments for agentic workflows. Ideal for developers building the next generation of intelligent, autonomous systems.
Coding Agents & Autonomous Dev
This track focuses on agents that write, modify and ship software: autonomous PR systems, IDE-integrated agents, code execution sandboxes and fully automated development flows. Sessions explore how coding agents collaborate with humans, reason over large repositories and safely produce production-grade code. For builders at the intersection of AI and software engineering.
Model Systems
Model Systems covers the full lifecycle of model development: pre-training pipelines, fine-tuning strategies, adapters, distillation, small-model architectures and RLE-adjacent techniques. Talks emphasize efficiency, scaling laws, post-training improvements and practical engineering around model quality. Designed for teams building or adapting their own custom models.
Data Engineering & Databases
This track examines the data infrastructure that fuels modern AI—vector databases, retrieval engines, pipelines, feature stores and storage systems. Talks highlight how teams architect data layers for speed, quality and relevance across multimodal and agentic workloads. Essential for everyone who believes great AI starts with great data.
Applied AI
Applied AI showcases real AI applications across productivity, workflow automation, customer support, slide building, media generation and creative tooling. Talks focus on end-to-end product design, UX, system integration and how AI transforms real user workflows. For founders and engineers building AI products that ship.
Analytics & Data Science
This track covers experimentation, causal inference, statistical modeling, testing frameworks and data-driven decision systems. Sessions explore how teams measure model performance, validate behavior, run controlled experiments and generate actionable insights. Perfect for data scientists building the analytical backbone of data & AI-driven organizations.
Lightning Talks
A rapid-fire showcase of cutting-edge ideas, tools, experiments, and prototypes across the entire AI Council ecosystem. These fast, high-density sessions surface emerging concepts and bold technical work that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Come ready to learn something new every few minutes.
Wes McKinney: The Future Roadmap for the Composable Data Stack
Wes reviews the progress we have made in the last 10 years developing composable, interoperable open standards for the data processing stack
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Dhruv Singh: Strategies for Assessing LLMs in Real-World Applications
Dhruv discusses practical solutions that will unlock faster iteration & more safety in GenAI, such as using tiny evaluators in an online setting & making efficient use of human feedback offline.
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DJ Patil & Joey Gonzalez: Why it Takes Billions
DJ Patil and Joey Gonzalez discuss how to navigate the AI landscape with OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and Everyone Else with Billions to Spare
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Dan Mejia & Michael Bullington: the Journey to FigJam AI
Learn about the unique development process of FigJam AI, from the inception at a hackathon to fine-tuning for specific use cases.
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Pete Hunt: Why You’ve Been Thinking About the Wrong DAG the Entire Time
Pete explains how declarative orchestration goes beyond improved developer ergonomics: it has profound consequences for the entire data platform.
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Jordan Tigani: Big Data is Dead
Jordan makes the case that the era of Big Data is over. Now we can stop worrying about data size and focus on how we’re going to use it to make better decisions.
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