The AI Conference

What a Day One! 🚀 Pier 48 was buzzing today with big ideas, packed sessions, hands-on demos, and conversations happening everywhere you looked. Thank you to every speaker, sponsor, partner, and attendee who made Day One of The AI Conference 2026 one to remember. We’ve loved seeing the conference through your posts! Keep sharing your favorite moments and tag The AI Conference so we can follow along. 📸

Ignite Talks starts at 7:00 PM in Theater 1. Join us for two hours of rapid-fire talks built around sharp ideas, unexpected perspectives, and fresh conversations from across the AI community. 7:00–9:00 PM | Theater 1 A fast, high-energy close to Day 1.

Day ZERØ at The AI Conference 2026 was a great start, and Day One is already delivering. Yesterday's workshops set a high bar. I'm here at Pier 48 in San Francisco on the Technical Track, along with 5,000+ builders, researchers, and technical leaders. I build agentic AI systems at Ascentra Innovations and contribute agentic tools and systems to open source projects. Here's what I'm focused on this week: • How teams run agents in production, including evals, observability, and failure handling • Practical patterns for MCP and tool integration • AI infrastructure lessons that apply to sustainability If you're here too, let's connect. I'll be at tonight's evening event. The photo is from yesterday, so today look for me in a dark green blouse with a matching green scarf. What's the one question you'd want answered at an AI conference this year? I'll bring the best answers back in a recap post. The AI Conference #TheAIConference #AgenticAI #AIEngineering #MCP #SanFrancisco

Overwhelmed with the love and support I have received today at The AI Conference

Party in the Park takes place at China Basin Park in San Francisco’s Mission Rock neighborhood. The park is on China Basin Way, between Third Street and Terry A Francois Boulevard, across the water from Oracle Park. Join the AI community for an open-air evening with live music, food and drinks, games, and a special surprise announcement. All registered attendees are invited. 5:00–7:00 PM | China Basin Park Sponsored by Fireworks AI and Merge.

From zero to $100M in six weeks. At 4:30 PM in Theater 2, Brian Yang will share lessons from building a $100M product at OpenAI and what that kind of speed reveals about product, execution, and scale. Lessons from Building a $100M Product in Six Weeks at OpenAI 4:30–4:55 PM | Theater 2

Startup Showdown takes the stage on Conference Day 1. Eight early-stage AI companies will pitch live in front of investors, founders, operators, and thousands of attendees, competing for the top spot and the People’s Choice Award. Expect four-minute pitches, real-time judge scoring, and a fast look at the companies trying to shape what comes next. Startup Showdown 2026 Conference Day 1 | The AI Conference

A useful AI assistant needs more than a fluent answer. It needs the right context, data, and guardrails. At 12:00 PM in Theater 4, Dharmin Parikh and Himaanshu Gupta will share lessons from building Uber’s production AI assistant for drivers and couriers, including real-time contextual data, latency and cost, safety guardrails, and evaluating responses for accuracy and trust. Behind One Useful Answer: Building Uber’s Earner Assistant 12:00–12:25 PM | Theater 4