Biography
Michael Kessler is co-founder and CEO of CheckedAgent, a security company building runtime protection for AI agents. CheckedAgent sits inline between an agent and the tools it calls — over MCP, the protocol agents use to reach external systems — and inspects traffic in both directions, catching prompt injection, data exfiltration and compromised tool servers before anything acts. It deploys alongside existing infrastructure, with no changes to agent code. He spends his days looking at what agents actually do in production, not what they do in a demo. Previously he founded and led technology companies across IT service management, hospitality technology and climate tech.
Session
- AI For BuildersSpeaker
Debate 1 — Agents: The Real Platform Shift, or 2026's Most Overhyped Demo?
Tuesday 22 September, 12:00 – 12:55Auditorium StageEvery deck in 2026 says 'agentic.' Most agents still break the moment they touch a real workflow. Side A: agents are the genuine platform shift — the jump from copilots that suggest to systems that actually do the work, and the teams already shipping them in production are pulling ahead. Side B: 'agentic' is this cycle's most oversold demo — brittle, expensive, badly governed, a thin wrapper over the same models we already had. 55 minutes, two builders, one moderator who has actually run agents in prod, and an audience vote before and after.
With Damien Acheson, Maanas Mediratta, Dave Garcia, Simon Bosch, Barnaba Barcellona, Emma Rees