The 2026 speakers

Alex Tsankov is a Senior Machine Learning Operations Engineer at Bloomberg, where he supports Bloomberg Industry Group, an affiliate of Bloomberg that offers the Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government AI products. In this role, he drives infrastructure efforts to operationalize large language models within the Bloomberg Law legal research product. GenAI has opened up many unique reliability and infrastructure challenges for which he is constantly finding new solutions.

Previous Speaking Engagements: Columbia University workshop "AI/LLM for Future Leaders"," AI Summit New York 2025" , "NY AI/ML Developers Meetup",

CEO and co-founder of Timeleft, a platform delivering real-life human connection at scale — matching strangers for in-person dinners in 50+ countries, with 150,000+ people showing up monthly. He built the company on a direct thesis: use technology to get people off their screens, not deeper into them.

He writes daily (2pm and 7pm) on LinkedIn about the mechanics of scaling a consumer social product, the tension between digital fatigue and real-life connection, and founder lessons — including the parts of building a company that don't make the highlight reel. Outside Timeleft, his stated interests include longevity and endurance sport.

Oriol Juncosa is co-founder and managing partner of ESC Venture Capital (formerly Encomenda Smart Capital), a Barcelona-based VC firm, and is also currently associated with Plus Partners VC. He co-founded Kibo Ventures earlier in his career and has been angel investing since 1999, with early bets including Idealista. His background includes senior roles at UBS and Lehman Brothers, and an MBA from London Business School.

His current public commentary focuses on AI, including recent posts on senior AI agents ("agentes sénior de IA") and enterprise AI adoption trends — positioning him as an investor voice on where AI is heading commercially, not just a general VC.

Jan Kavalírek is a former Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, responsible for artificial intelligence and new technologies. Now he serves as a CEE AI Ambassador representing CEE AI business and research community and also as a Director for EU AI Affairs of Czech Radiocommunications. In this role he is responsible for leading the czech AI Gigafactory project.

Mariam Hakobyan is the co-founder an CEO of Softr, the leading AI platform for building business apps without code. A former engineer turned entrepreneur, she has spent more than a decade building products and leading product and engineering teams, and is passionate about making software accessible to everyone.

Malgorzata Luszkiewicz works at Capgemini, focused on AI-driven transformation for clients in the financial services sector. Her work centers on the adoption side of AI change - helping organizations move beyond simply buying tools and licenses toward actually building the skills and workflows needed to use them effectively.

Her current focus is workforce transformation: preparing employees for AI-driven change without the fear-based narrative that AI simply replaces jobs, and instead building the competencies needed to work alongside it.

​David Arnoux builds GTM engines that run on AI. Fully handed over and owned by the client.

​He has built them inside 20+ B2B and B2C companies, from seed stage to scale-ups, rebuilding how they find and win customers. The result is what he calls a GTM OS, an engine that runs the growth motion end to end.

​Before that he co-founded Growth Tribe, where 47,000 people learned growth and AI skills. Today he also runs GenAI Circle, a community of 427 growth operators putting AI to work. And he embeds GTM Engineers directly inside marketing and sales teams.

A seasoned technologist, entrepreneur, and inventor with more than three decades of experience, he has led organizations through complex transformations, rescued distressed service ecosystems, and brought ambitious technology programs back on course. His career spans highly scalable cloud systems, data pipelines, large software suites, kernel-level engineering, graphics applications, and the migration of massive live data environments.

He has also built and led his own software company, taking ideas from concept to code to market, while contributing to a portfolio of granted patents across a wide range of engineering challenges. That combination of deep technical breadth, operational leadership, and entrepreneurial execution makes him especially compelling for audiences interested in what it takes to build, scale, and reinvent technology businesses.

On stage, he would bring a rare perspective on turning around complexity at scale, translating invention into commercial value, and building resilient systems that survive real-world pressure. He is an ideal keynote voice for leaders who want more than vision, they want hard-earned lessons from the front lines of engineering and transformation.

Maxim Khalilov is an AI and Data Science executive with more than 15 years of experience building machine learning and AI capabilities across product, engineering, and business contexts. He has led work at major tech-driven companies including PepsiCo, Glovo, Unbabel, and Booking.com, with a strong focus on applied AI, NLP, and data-driven product development.

He brings a rare combination of research depth and enterprise execution, supported by a PhD in machine translation, an MBA from IE Business School, and more than 30 scientific publications. That mix makes him especially relevant for audiences interested in how AI moves from models and research into scalable business impact.

On stage, Maxim would be a strong fit for a keynote or expert panel on AI platforms, applied machine learning, generative AI, and the future of data science in large organizations. His perspective would resonate well with both technical leaders and business executives looking to operationalize AI responsibly and effectively.

Alex Saiz Verdaguer is the CEO and founder of MONEI, where he has spent more than 20 years working across fintech, e-commerce, and product development. He is known for building payment infrastructure that connects businesses, banks, and digital commerce in a scalable, practical way.

He brings the profile of a founder who combines technical depth with commercial execution, having taken products from concept to market while navigating regulated environments and fast-moving digital commerce. That makes him especially relevant for audiences interested in AI’s impact on payments, commerce, and platform design.

On stage, Alex would be a strong fit for a keynote on how AI is reshaping fintech, customer experience, and the architecture behind modern payment systems. His perspective would resonate with founders, product leaders, and enterprise teams looking to understand how to build reliable digital infrastructure at scale.

Alejandro Mowszet is a Global IT Director and AI Transformation Lead at Win Systems, with a career spanning software leadership, enterprise technology, and large-scale digital transformation. He brings a strong operational perspective on how AI moves from concept into business-critical systems.

He is particularly relevant for conversations about applying AI in complex, regulated, and high-stakes environments, where reliability, scalability, and responsible implementation matter as much as innovation. His background also suggests deep experience in leading teams through transformation and aligning technology with business outcomes.

On stage, Alejandro would be a strong fit for a keynote or executive panel on AI transformation in enterprise environments, especially where the discussion needs a practical, industry-driven voice rather than a purely technical one.

Shayamal Vallabhjee is a peak performance expert, psychologist, and sports scientist who helps leaders and teams perform at their best under pressure. He has worked across elite sport and the corporate world, advising athletes, executives, and organizations on how to cut through mental, emotional, and environmental noise to unlock clarity and performance.

He is the founder of Peak9 and the creator of the Signal Over Noise framework, a leadership and performance philosophy centered on reducing what gets in the way of execution. His experience spans coaching in elite sport, working with global companies and institutions, and delivering more than 1,000 keynotes across 18 countries.

On stage, Shayamal would be a powerful keynote speaker for audiences interested in leadership, resilience, decision-making under pressure, and human performance in a high-noise world. He brings a rare mix of psychology, neuroscience, and practical coaching that makes his message both inspiring and immediately useful.

Tyler Foster is Chief Product & Technology Officer at BizAway, with more than 23 years of experience building software, hardware, and platform teams. He combines deep technical leadership with product strategy, and his background spans distributed systems, machine learning, client development, innovation, and adaptive system design.

He previously served as President and Chief Technology Officer at Evolv AI, where the focus is on creating AI-driven experiences that think more like a designer, blending technology with usability and visual quality. That gives him a strong perspective on how AI can improve both the intelligence and the experience of digital products.

His profile is especially relevant for audiences interested in product-led technology leadership, AI-powered travel and platform design, and the challenge of turning complex engineering into simple, compelling solutions.

Óscar García-Esquirol is a physician, co-founder, and Chief Medical Officer of Mediktor, a Barcelona-based digital health company developing AI-powered symptom assessment and pre-diagnostic tools. He co-founded the company in 2011 with Cristian Pascual, combining clinical experience in emergency and intensive care medicine with healthcare technology entrepreneurship.

He is also Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Barcelona Health Hub, where he supports the digital health ecosystem and the development of healthtech startups. His work focuses on improving access to healthcare, guiding patients toward appropriate care, and applying natural-language AI to clinical triage and patient pathways.

His perspective is especially relevant for sessions on AI in healthcare, clinically responsible AI, digital health entrepreneurship, patient-centric technology, and the transition from medical research to real-world healthcare applications.

Manuel Romero is the Co-founder and Chief Science Officer at Maisa AI, where he focuses on bringing digital workers into production in mission-critical enterprise environments. He combines deep technical expertise in multilingual NLP, LLMs, evaluation, and tooling with a strong open-source reputation in the Hugging Face ecosystem.

His profile stands out because he is not only a builder, but also someone focused on reliability, traceability, and hallucination-resistant AI systems that can work inside real companies. That makes him especially relevant for audiences interested in production AI, enterprise adoption, and the challenge of turning research into scalable products.

On stage, Manuel would be a strong fit for a keynote or technical session about trustworthy AI, digital workers, and what it takes to deploy LLM-powered systems in high-stakes settings.

Matteo Ruffini is Cofounder and Chief Scientist at Albatross AI, a Zurich-based AI company. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and brings experience from roles at Amazon, Skyscanner, and ToolsGroup. His research and applied work span machine learning algorithms, personalization systems, and learning from real-world user interaction data with minimal bias.

Albatross has raised $16 million from MMC Ventures, Redalpine, and Daphni to build real-time product and content discovery systems that learn and adapt as users interact. Ruffini brings a rare combination: deep theoretical grounding in machine learning (latent variable models, fairness in learning from biased data) paired with hands-on founding experience building AI products that scale across e-commerce and media platforms.

His perspective bridges the gap between research rigor and product reality—particularly relevant for audiences interested in applied machine learning, building personalization systems at scale, bias and fairness in AI, and how foundational research connects to building AI products that actually work in the wild.

Elaine Salvador is the Founding Partner of Verana Ventures and the Founder and CEO of Graciosa Climate, where she works with climate-tech, energy-transition, and infrastructure startups across Europe. She advises founders on fundraising, strategic growth, commercialization, and building the partnerships required to bring sustainable technologies to market.

Her background spans investment banking, private capital, and renewable energy, with previous leadership roles at Lazard, Stifel, Lightsource BP, and H.I.G. Capital. She combines financial expertise with a practical understanding of the challenges faced by emerging climate companies, helping them bridge the gap between transformative ideas and the capital needed to scale.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in climate technology, energy transition, sustainable infrastructure, venture capital, and the role of finance in accelerating innovation.

Andy Storch is a keynote speaker, consultant, facilitator, and author focused on career ownership, talent development, and AI adoption. He is the founder and host of the Talent Development Hot Seat podcast and The Andy Storch Show.

He is the author of Own Your Career, Own Your Life and Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, and works with organizations and professionals to build greater autonomy, adaptability, and clarity in a changing labor market. His current work focuses increasingly on AI enablement, helping leaders and employees understand how to adopt AI while taking active responsibility for their careers and professional development.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI adoption, workforce transformation, leadership, talent development, and the skills required to remain adaptable in an AI-driven economy.

Dani Diestre is Co-founder and CEO of Autentic AI, a Barcelona startup building AI agents that run qualitative customer research at scale, recruiting participants, conducting interviews, and generating insight in a fraction of the usual cycle.

He studied Computer Engineering at UPC and was previously Head of Product at Finletic. He came to the company from product rather than from research. He hosts Product Leaders, a long-running Spanish-language podcast interviewing product leaders across the ecosystem, and founded Product Makers, a community focused on building products with AI.

That combination gives him a view of AI adoption from inside the product function: what changes in how teams learn about their users, and what still requires human judgment. His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in applied AI in product development, voice and conversational agents, market research automation, and the Barcelona startup ecosystem.

Tim Beck is building one of Europe's most exciting agentic AI companies.

BLP Digital, the ETH Zurich spin-off he founded in 2019 with his brother Sven, removes manual execution work from core business processes: agentic AI automates complex, exception-heavy workflows across finance, procurement, logistics and sales — not as isolated tasks, but end to end. Because processes rarely fail on the standard case; they slow down where data is missing, formats vary, or work passes across systems and teams.

The approach works: 500+ enterprise customers across 40+ countries, rank #42 in the FT1000 Europe's Fastest-Growing Companies 2026, and a $50M investment by Goldman Sachs Alternatives. On stage, he talks about what agentic AI actually delivers in the enterprise with real bottom line impact  — beyond the hype, proven in production across hundreds of customers.

Rozina Sidhu Koskela is the Founder of The Garage, a Malta-based platform supporting entrepreneurs and businesses from early-stage ideas through validation, growth, and sustainable development. She is also a Vistage Chair and a global partnerships and innovation strategist, with a background spanning business strategy, product management, UX research, and UX design.

Her career has included work with organizations such as Volvo, Aviva, and PwC, as well as experience in banking, insurance, technology, and entrepreneurship. Through The Garage, she focuses on helping founders turn ideas into viable businesses while creating stronger connections across Malta's women-led startup ecosystem.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in entrepreneurship, innovation, product development, user experience, and the role of community in building more inclusive technology ecosystems.

Anna Jelezovskaia is Marketing Lead at Gladia, an AI infrastructure company focused on speech and audio intelligence. As one of Gladia’s founding marketers, she has helped shape the company’s positioning, product communication, and go-to-market strategy as it develops tools for voice-based AI applications.

Her background combines law, creative communications, product marketing, and emerging technology. She has also worked as a consultant at the intersection of AI, extended reality, and ethics, advising XR companies on responsible design practices and exploring how technology can be developed in ways that respect human values.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in voice AI, AI infrastructure, product marketing, ethical technology, and the communication challenges surrounding emerging AI products.

David Masó is a serial entrepreneur and product leader who has built and scaled digital businesses across e-commerce, health, and technology. He co-founded PromoFarma and is now co-founding Avatia, where he is building AI co-workers for the pharma industry to help commercial teams work smarter and scale relationships more effectively.

He brings a strong founder perspective on how AI can become operational infrastructure inside complex industries, especially healthcare and pharma. His background combines execution, strategy, and business-building experience at the intersection of AI, commerce, and regulated markets.

On stage, David would be a compelling speaker for audiences interested in AI transformation in pharma, the future of work, and how to turn AI into practical business leverage rather than abstract hype. David will also demo AI-Coworkers to augment pharma commercial teams

Anastasia Sharapova is Marketing Manager EMEA at Newo.ai, where she leads regional marketing initiatives and helps bring AI-powered solutions to European markets. Her background spans event management, field marketing, project-team leadership, and creative problem-solving, with previous experience managing EMEA events at Object First.

She combines a strong understanding of how technology companies build visibility and engage professional communities with hands-on experience coordinating complex international marketing programs. Her work sits at the intersection of AI, events, communications, and regional go-to-market strategy.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI marketing, technology events, community building, and how emerging AI companies establish a presence across diverse European markets.

Olga Sargsyan leads the artificial intelligence function at Zitro, where she is responsible for driving the company’s AI strategy and implementation. Her work focuses on exploring how AI can support innovation, improve business processes, and create new opportunities within the gaming and technology sector.
She brings a product and technology perspective to AI adoption, helping translate emerging capabilities into practical applications for a global gaming company. Her role sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital transformation, product development, and business innovation.
Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI adoption, gaming technology, product innovation, and the practical implementation of artificial intelligence in established companies.