The 2026 speakers

Sergi Bastardas is co-founder and CEO of Orbio, an AI-native HR platform he launched in 2025 alongside Nacho Travesí and Antonio Melé. Before Orbio he co-founded Colvin, one of Europe's leading digital flower brands, which he helped scale across multiple markets, and began his career at Amazon in Spain working on marketplace, advertising and retail.

He brings a repeat founder's perspective on building AI agents for a function that has historically resisted automation. Orbio deploys conversational and voice agents across the employee lifecycle, from recruitment and onboarding through to retention, and has raised a Series A to expand across European and Latin American markets. His public commentary focuses on why leadership hesitation, rather than the technology itself, is the real constraint on enterprise AI adoption.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in agentic AI in the enterprise, AI-native company building, and how automation reshapes HR and the future of hiring.

Roshan Manjaly leads forward deployed engineering at Vapi, the voice AI platform used by companies from YC startups to the Fortune 500 to put production voice agents in front of real callers. He holds a Master's in Artificial Intelligence from Georgia Tech and worked as a principal software engineer at Capital One before founding two startups of his own.

His work sits at the point where a voice agent stops being a demo and becomes infrastructure: mapping a customer's real workflows, handling latency and interruption, making tool calls reliable enough to trust in production, and turning each deployment into something the next one can reuse. Having built companies himself, he treats enterprise deployment as a product problem rather than a support one.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in applied AI, voice agents in production, and the engineering gap between a working prototype and a system that survives real users.

Barbara Stanelli Thomas leads Vapi's EMEA business, building the company's European presence as voice AI moves from developer experiment to enterprise deployment.

She works where technical capability meets commercial reality: what enterprise buyers in healthcare, retail, hospitality and financial services actually need before they will put an AI agent on a customer call, how European buying cycles and developer communities differ from those in the US, and why so many voice projects stall between pilot and production.

Bernard Kavanagh is Principal Solutions Architect (EMEA) at TiDB, a distributed database company focused on real-time analytics and AI infrastructure. He specialises in high-performance data systems and helps organisations move from fragmented data stacks to unified platforms that can support modern AI and agentic workflows.

At TiDB, he works on “Agent-First” memory stores that combine vector search, hybrid SQL, and real-time analytics in a single platform, aiming to reduce the complexity and cost of multi-service AI stacks. His production experience includes building a real-time multi-agent platform for 200,000+ IoT devices that significantly cut infrastructure costs and LLM token usage while improving diagnostic accuracy.

His profile is especially relevant for sessions on AI infrastructure, real-time data systems, agentic AI architectures, vector databases, and the practical challenges of scaling AI applications in production.

Alex Booker works on Developer Experience at Mastra, the open-source TypeScript AI agent framework built by the team behind Gatsby. Mastra, a Y Combinator W25 company, gives developers the primitives to build, evaluate, and deploy production AI agents, and Alex regularly teaches hands-on workshops on agent development with the framework. At AI Summit Barcelona 2026 he brings a builder's perspective on agent frameworks and developer tools.

Jaime Zornoza is Director of AI Innovation and Head of AI for Manufacturing and Supply at Aily Labs, the enterprise decision intelligence company, where he leads applied AI work for global manufacturers and pharmaceutical clients. An industrial engineer by training, he joined Aily Labs as a Principal Data Scientist and previously worked in data science at Alantra and in advanced analytics at The Cocktail, across finance, insurance and retail.

He brings a practitioner's view of agentic AI inside large enterprises, where models have to connect to real supply chain and manufacturing decisions rather than sit in isolated pilots. His background spans research at Aalto University and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid through to deploying decision intelligence for Fortune 500 organisations.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in enterprise AI adoption, AI in manufacturing and supply chains, and how decision intelligence translates data into operational outcomes.

Albert Franquesa is co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Quality Clouds, a governance platform for enterprise SaaS development teams that he co-founded in 2016. He has worked in the IT industry since the mid-1990s, beginning as a software developer at IBM before moving into analyst and project management roles at Deutsche Bank and delivery leadership at GFT Group.

He brings a governance-first perspective on AI-assisted software delivery, focused on the practical problem of what happens when AI-generated code reaches production. His recent work centres on automated quality gates, audit trails and certification for code produced by both humans and AI tools, applied across Salesforce and ServiceNow environments in Fortune 500 organisations.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI code governance, enterprise SaaS platform quality, and how engineering and compliance teams keep control as low-code and AI-native development accelerate.

Carla Carvajal leads go-to-market for EMEA at Hilbert, an AI-native growth infrastructure platform for B2C companies backed by a16z and Asylum Ventures. She brings more than 15 years in sales and operations leadership, most recently as Managing Director for Spain at TOUS, where she owned full market P&L, and previously leading operations across Spain and Portugal at Getir. Earlier in her career she built Calzedonia Group's retail network in Brazil from scratch.

She brings an operator's perspective rather than a technologist's, arguing that the AI shift is a business story before it is a technical one and that human judgement and customer intuition are what make it land. At Hilbert she works with customers to uncover new use cases across departments and geographies, feeding what she learns in the field back into product and go-to-market strategy.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI for consumer growth, data-driven decision-making in retail, and how commercial leaders adopt AI in practice.

Rubén Hernández is Head of BlueTechPort at World Trade Center Barcelona. With more than 25 years of experience in ports and infrastructure, he leads the development of the Port of Barcelona's blue innovation ecosystem, connecting startups, corporates, research institutions and public authorities to accelerate the blue economy.

Laura Tissot is a Product Manager specializing in AI-driven product development, with experience building and scaling digital products across sustainability, consultancy, and banking. At Ecosia, she works on AI Chat vertical and brings a strong mix of product strategy, cross-functional leadership, and strategic design thinking.

She offers a practical perspective on how AI products are shaped, shipped, and improved in real-world environments. Her background makes her especially relevant for discussions about AI product design, user experience, and the role of product teams in turning AI into useful, scalable experiences.

She would be a strong fit for conversations around AI product innovation, search, and the future of digital experiences.

Alan Záruba is Chief Digital Content Officer at Livesport, with a long background in creative direction, art direction, and digital media leadership. He has spent years shaping large-scale content and news experiences, combining strong visual thinking with operational responsibility for digital products.

He brings a valuable perspective on how content, design, and digital platforms evolve in an AI-driven environment, especially where audience experience and media workflows matter. His profile is particularly relevant for conversations about the future of content creation, digital storytelling, and AI’s impact on media organizations.

He is well suited to audiences exploring how AI is changing media, content operations, and the way digital experiences are created and delivered. His background makes him a relevant voice for discussions about the future of content creation and the role of creative leadership in large digital organizations.

30 Years in Tech Sales. From SDR to VP. Helping Founders Scale. Ex Salesforce.com, Ex Linkedin
I have spent the last three decades mastering the art of B2B sales. I’ve worked with massive global tech giants and learned the ropes from the bottom up—from cold calling as a Sales Developer to strategizing as a VP of Sales.

Rory O'Driscoll is VP of Data at AirHelp, the air passenger rights company, where he leads the data organisation behind claim assessment and automation at scale. Based in Barcelona, he has held data and analytics leadership roles at wefox and across the Vista and Cimpress group, and holds an MSc in Applied Mathematics from the London School of Economics.

He brings an operator's perspective on applying data science and machine learning to high-volume, rules-heavy consumer processes, where models must work against real legal and regulatory constraints rather than in isolation. His work sits at the intersection of data platform design, automation and measurable commercial outcomes.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in applied AI in consumer services, data leadership, and the operational realities of automating complex decision-making at scale.

Charlie Hills is a London-based AI content creator and entrepreneur, and the founder of MarTech AI, a weekly newsletter read by more than 50,000 marketers and founders. A former food tech founder, he began posting about AI on LinkedIn at the end of 2023 with no following and passed 200,000 followers within two years, leaving employment to build the operation full time.

He brings a hands-on systems perspective on applying AI to marketing and content, focused on workflows people can copy rather than commentary. He runs his entire content operation on tooling he built himself, including custom agent workflows for scripting, reviewing, repurposing and publishing, and has partnered with companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Zapier, Notion and Airtable.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in applied AI for marketing, personal brand building, and how individuals and small teams operationalise AI into repeatable systems.

Jacob Zangel is the founder of Flourish with AI, where he helps non-technical B2B founders, marketers and creators get real business results from AI through gamified challenges, content and live experiences. Based in Berlin, he works as a growth marketing consultant with both Fortune 500 companies and startups.

He brings an enablement perspective rather than a technical one, focused on the gap between AI's promise and what non-technical operators can actually put to work. His format leans on hands-on, playful learning experiences rather than theory, on the premise that adoption follows practice.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in practical AI adoption, growth marketing, and how non-technical teams build confidence and capability with AI tools.

Damien Acheson is a Barcelona-based marketing executive and advisor working across deep tech, AI and generative AI. He has spent his career in B2B technology go-to-market, most recently as Chief Marketing Officer at Qatium, and previously in marketing leadership roles at Cien, Scytl, Klink and LivePerson. He studied at MIT Sloan School of Management and Sciences Po.

He brings a go-to-market perspective spanning both early-stage and enterprise contexts, from helping startups reach product-market fit to shaping digital strategy for established brands, with a focus on market positioning, demand generation and product-led growth. He is also an active connector in Barcelona's technology ecosystem as head liaison of the MIT Club of Spain in Catalonia.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in go-to-market strategy for AI and deep tech companies, marketing leadership, and the European startup ecosystem.

Anna Via is Head of AI at InfoJobs, where she leads AI strategy, adoption, and the core ML and GenAI team. She has over 10 years of experience across data science, AI, and digital products, with a career that moved from data science into AI product management.

She brings a practical product perspective on how AI gets built, tested, and integrated into real digital products, with a strong focus on evaluation, governance, and user impact. Her public writing and talks show a clear interest in applied AI, responsible deployment, and the connection between product thinking and technical execution.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI product strategy, GenAI in consumer platforms, and how teams can build useful AI systems without losing sight of quality and accountability.

Sophie Cornay is Business Unit Manager of the AI Lab at Qonto, where she leads the initiative for integrating agentic AI into financial operations for SMEs and self-employed workers across Europe. Before joining Qonto, she founded and ran Chosen for eight years, a B2B2C SaaS marketplace she grew to over 90,000 monthly users and €1M+ in annual revenue. That entrepreneurial experience gave her direct insight into operational friction points for business owners, particularly around daily cash flow and financial management.

At Qonto, she leads a startup embedded within the company, shipping AI agents directly into the product with a mission to eliminate the "second job" that administrative overhead creates for entrepreneurs. Her team is building on top of one of the most advanced in-house agent platforms in European fintech. Her work centers on agentic AI applied to concrete workflows: invoice management, payment tracking, operation categorization, and real-time financial visibility for SME operators. She emphasizes that AI assists, prepares, and clarifies, but does not displace human responsibility, especially in financial decisions.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI agents in financial services, product thinking around AI-native workflows, European fintech innovation, and how teams build AI that solves genuine operational pain rather than chasing conference applause.

Bruno Barbagli leads Amplitude's Southern Europe team, working with product and growth organisations across Spain, Italy, and France on digital analytics, experimentation, and product decision-making. His work sits at the point where product teams have to turn behavioural data into decisions they can defend.

He brings a practitioner's view of experimentation as an organisational capability rather than a tooling question: how teams define hypotheses, set guardrails, and agree decision criteria before they look at a result. He works regularly with the Southern European product community, including workshops and teaching at business schools, and has helped build Amplitude's presence across the region's product ecosystem.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in product analytics, experimentation and growth strategy, and how AI is changing the loop between shipping a product and understanding how it is actually used.

Dr. Jordina Torrents Barrena is a globally recognized AI researcher and senior leader at HP Inc., where she leads innovation in advanced generative AI algorithms and edge AI deployment. She holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she developed computational tools for surgical planning and navigation. With more than 60 scientific publications and multiple patents, Dr. Torrents Barrena bridges academic excellence with real-world industrial impact. She has received numerous national and international awards, including the Google Women Techmakers, McKinsey's Next Generation Women Leaders, Ada Byron Award for Young Technologists, etc. In addition to her industry leadership, Dr. Torrents Barrena teaches courses in AI, Computer Science, and Business Leadership at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Universitat Ramon Llull, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Through her research, innovation, and teaching, she is helping shape a future in which intelligent systems empower both people and machines.

Alberto Valero Cayón is a Tech Expansion Manager at Tether.io, where he works at the intersection of decentralized infrastructure, AI, and digital assets. He holds a background from IE Business School and has been actively involved in advancing open-source, locally-run AI systems, including commentary on decentralized medical AI models that outperform larger cloud-based alternatives.

His professional focus spans Tether's growing "Pears" ecosystem (Holepunch's peer-to-peer stack), QVAC, and decentralized AI infrastructure — positioning him at the frontier of privacy-first, infrastructure-independent AI deployment. Prior to his current role, he built experience in tech expansion and business development, helping scale Tether's initiatives across international markets.

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Florian Kunzke has spent the last decade at the center of enterprise software's biggest bets.
As Global Director of AI Strategy at SAP, he drives SAP's AI and agent strategy and roadmap, prepares partnering and M&A decisions, and advises executive leadership on where the competitive landscape is heading.
After joining SAP in 2016 through the SAP Innovation Center Network, he helped pioneer technologies like machine learning, blockchain and quantum computing, before becoming instrumental in establishing SAP's platform strategy for Business Technology Platform (BTP).
What makes him a compelling voice on enterprise AI is his ability to look beyond the headlines and spot the nuances that matter: where technology is genuinely going, where enthusiasm outpaces reality, and what it takes for AI to deliver inside a large organization.
He's spoken at re:publica, BigBang KI Festival, AI Summit Kitzbühel, SAP Sapphire, and TRANSFORM, and writes regularly on the future of enterprise AI.

With over 15 years across Amazon, Unilever and P&G, I have directed large-scale digital, financial and operational transformations globally — managing multi million dollar portfolios and leading cross-functional and multinational teams across geographies. I build and scale AI-driven organizations — designing governance frameworks, deploying ML models and building the infrastructure that turns AI strategy into measurable business value.My work sits at the intersection of AI strategy, cloud architecture, ops and finance. Beyond the Corp world, I have experienced building and advising Fintech startups as Tech/AI advisor, and am a private multi-asset class Investor.

Nouamane Tazi is a Machine Learning Engineer at Hugging Face, focused on large-scale distributed LLM training. He is the lead author of the Ultra-Scale Playbook and a core developer of Nanotron, Hugging Face's open-source distributed training library. His work spans projects like StarCoder2, SmolLM3, and Mixture-of-Experts scaling. He is passionate about making large-scale training practical and accessible.

Alia Zafar is Director of HR & Facilities Management at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, bringing nearly three decades of experience across banking, energy, telecoms, and international development. A certified expert in Business AI from London Business School and Negotiation from Oxford, she is a keynote speaker on AI governance, digital transformation, and DEI at forums including London Tech Week and the Change Now Summit. Beyond her institutional role, Alia made history as the first woman elected to a cricket board in South Asia, and is a social entrepreneur, published author, and one of the global managers of the Hans Wahl Impact Entrepreneurs Community.