AI KEEPS
ON ROLLIN

INFRA KEEPS
ON TURNIN

Chris Sosa is an engineering director leading AI infrastructure efforts at AMD with 15+ years industry experience building operating systems and Cloud services. Currently, he is focused on empowering the developer community through enhanced contributions to the ROCm stack and developing a multi-tenant GPU platform to streamline access for developers. Prior to AMD, Chris was instrumental in the success of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), leading configuration management adopted by numerous Fortune 500 companies. Earlier in his career, he was a top 10 contributor to Chrome OS, developing critical system software, and led the development of developer tools and automation systems for both Chrome OS and Android. Throughout his career, Chris has demonstrated a passion for simplifying and automating complex systems to improve efficiency for users.

Liran co-founded WEKA in 2013. Today, he guides the company’s long-term vision and strategy as its Chief Executive Officer. He previously served as WEKA’s Chief Technology Officer.

Before establishing WEKA, Liran co-founded and led research and development at social startup Fusic, where he was responsible for the engineering, design, and development of its rich social media application portfolio. Prior to Fusic, Liran was the principal software architect and a founding member of the technical team at XIV Storage Systems before its acquisition by IBM in 2007; he then managed XIV’s hardware and platform teams at IBM for several years.Before joining XIV, Liran served as a Software Engineer with the rank of Captain in the Israeli Defense Forces for five years. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University.

Valentin (Val) Bercovici is the Head of AI Strategy and Open Source at WEKA, where he shapes the future of intelligent data infrastructure. A pioneer in cloud storage and container orchestration, Val previously served as CTO at NetApp/SolidFire and played a foundational role in setting industry standards—co-authoring Windows Shadowcopy, establishing the first NAND Flash SSD guidelines, and chairing the SNIA initiatives behind the global S3 standard (CDMI). As a founding board member of the Kubernetes Cloud Native Computing Foundation, he’s helped steer the evolution of modern orchestration. Val holds patents in AI agent smart contracts, streaming data integrity, and AR for data center maintenance, continuously pushing the frontier where AI meets cloud, storage, and emerging tech.

RK Anand is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Recogni, an artificial intelligence startup based in San Jose specializing in building multimodal GenAI inference systems for data centers.At Recogni, RK spearheads the company’s product development and Go-To-Market strategies within the data center industry. RK brings over 35 years of leadership experience in data center compute systems, networking, and silicon development. His distinguished career includes engineering roles at Sun Microsystems and serving as Executive Vice President and General Manager at Juniper Networks. As one of the earliest employees at Juniper, RK played a pivotal role in the company’s growth from a startup to generating billions of dollars in revenue.

Sonam Kanungo is the Head of Data Engineering at Crusoe AI, where she leads innovative data engineering projects that support Crusoe's mission to align technology with climate goals. Her team operates horizontally, supporting all functions and operations at Crusoe AI. She is passionate about data-driven decision-making and is enabling Crusoe AI to become the world’s first AI-aligned cloud.

Prior to joining Crusoe AI, Sonam worked at Netflix, Mercedes-Benz Research and Development, and Verizon, gaining extensive experience in building and optimizing data platforms.
She specializes in BigQuery, dbt, and Grafana, focusing on data cataloging, discoverability, governance, scalability, and operational efficiency to drive business impact.

Ashley Tarver is a San Francisco-based technology evangelist, entrepreneur, and thought leader currently serving as a Data & AI evangelist at Microsoft, where he helps Fortune 100 companies shape the future of AI. With a career spanning roles at Cisco, NTT, Cloudera, and Microsoft, he brings decades of expertise across networking, data, software, and cloud infrastructure. A U.S. Army veteran and Aerospace Engineering graduate, Ashley has founded and exited three startups, sits on multiple boards, and serves as Board President of ACG Silicon Valley. From digital transformation and data privacy to autonomous vehicles and scalable AI systems, he’s a sought-after speaker in Silicon Valley and beyond—deeply involved in the technologies redefining our future.

Claudionor Coelho is the Chief AI Officer at Zscaler, where he leads the vision and deployment of cutting-edge AI technologies to power the world’s largest security platform. A Stanford PhD and global authority on applied AI, he also serves as a professor at Santa Clara University and a consulting expert for the World Economic Forum on AI and cybersecurity. With a track record that includes six Copilot/Agent builds since 2016, he previously held leadership roles at Advantest, Palo Alto Networks, and Google, where his deep learning work was featured on the cover of Nature Machine Intelligence for its role in subatomic research at CERN. Claudionor has also held executive roles at Cadence, Synopsis, and Jasper Design Automation, and he’s a serial founder and investor whose ventures—including Kunumi and iVision—have been acquired by Brazil’s top banks. His career spans AI, neuro-symbolic reasoning, AIOps, and Zero Trust systems, with a legacy of transforming infrastructure across industries and continents.

Cosimo Pecchioli has been active in the Data Center Cooling business since 2015.After 20 years at Alfa Laval, he joined BP/Castrol in November 2023 for their Immersion Cooing businessas Global IT Hardware & OEM Partnership Director.An active member of the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) has covered different leading roles,and since 2023 he has been the co-lead of the Cooling Environment Project which covers Door, Direct Liquid Cooling,Immersion Cooling, Heat Reuse and Advanced Cooling Facilities at the site level.Originally from Italy, has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2007.He holds a Master’s Degree in Science and Technology from the University of Florence, Italy.Married with 3 kids, he enjoys Tennis, Hiking, and cooking for his family & Friends (his pizza is kind of famous!)

Luke Norris is a visionary entrepreneur and CEO of Kamiwaza, where he is spearheading enterprise transformation for the Fifth Industrial Revolution—ushering in a new era of AI-native workflows, distributed inference, and intelligent agents operating across core, cloud, and edge. With over $100M raised from leading investors including Dell Technologies Capital, Equinix, and Digital Realty, Luke has built a legacy of scaling data-first, real-time automation solutions for hundreds of Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies. A holder of 12+ patents and a trusted voice in public and private sectors, he’s known for translating breakthrough technologies into operational advantage, bridging emerging innovation with real-world impact at scale.

Jeremiah Owyang is a General Partner at Blitzscaling Ventures, spearheading AI investment in early-stage companies. In addition to being an LP in Blitzscaling Fund I, he has been an active angel investor since 2017. His longstanding friendship with Chris Yeh spans over two decades, during which he served on the board of Ustream, leading to a sale of $130 million to IBM. Jeremiah manages the SF Bay Area deal flow for the firm and organizes the popular Llama Lounge event series, focusing on AI startups. A renowned global speaker at conferences, he boasts a substantial social media following across platforms like TwitterX, LinkedIn, Slack, and through his newsletters.

Anand Chandrasekaran is a Managing Partner at Celesta Capital, a global deep tech venture capital firm with a focus on the U.S. – India corridor. Prior to joining Celesta, Anand co-founded and was President of Crescendo, an AI-first contact center business, co-created and backed by General Catalyst (GC). He is a former Partner and Venture Advisor at GC. Earlier in his career he was CPO and a product leader for two decades at Five9, Meta (Messenger), Bharti Airtel, Snapdeal (FreeCharge), and Founder of Aeroprise (acquired by BMC Software).

Anand was recognized as the #1 seed investor focused on the India – U.S. corridor by the HURUN India Report three years in a row from 2022-2024. He holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. from PSG College of Technology, India. In 2010, Anand was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2017 and 2018, he was named to Fortune's 40 under 40 India list.

Eric is a Partner at Scale Venture Partners, where he focuses on investments in cloud infrastructure and security. He is a Board member at Scale portfolio companies QA Wolf, Cortex, Datastax, Permit.io, and Upsolver, and a Board observer at AppOmni, BigID, Expel, Honeycomb, and Matillion.

Before Scale, Eric led early Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services product teams. At Google, he was a Product Manager in the Data Analytics and Machine Learning group. He led the team that launched Cloud Dataprep and key components of Cloud Dataflow. Previously, Eric built aircraft engines in General Electric’s Operation Management Leadership Program. He’s a contributor to open source projects including Alluxio, where he is on the Project Management Committee, and Apache Beam.

Eric holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Utah and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is the creator and host of Contributor, an interview series detailing the origin stories of open source projects.

Syed Natif Nawaz, Aurum’s CTO, brings over 22 years of global technology leadership to the forefront of next-generation data centers. Spearheading the firm’s vision, he oversees the entire technology lifecycle, from conception to implementation. With a proven track record in managing and building data centers across four continents for industry giants like Equinix, Nawaz combines technical prowess as a CCIE Emeritus and patent holder with a strategic vision in guiding acquisitions for growth and innovation.

A sustainable leader, he champions green initiatives and energy-efficient solutions, reflecting his commitment to a better tomorrow through technology. Nawaz is not only a sought-after speaker and thought leader in the data center industry but also the driving force behind Aurum’s dedication to constructing a future-proof data infrastructure.

Brian Sparkes is the Founder & CEO of Silicon Valley Venture, a global venture partner focused on alignment, access, and acceleration for startups and investors. A leader in Strategic GTM Communication, Brian works with founders, investors, and executives to refine their market positioning, strengthen strategic relationships, and accelerate outcomes through capital and community.

He is the creator and host of Silicon Valley Impact, a podcast streamed in over 20 countries, and a trusted partner to top innovation hubs and venture networks. Through curated events and strategic collaborations, Brian connects high-potential startups with investors, enterprise leaders, and global opportunities—helping the ecosystem move faster, together.

AJ Thomas is a visionary leader, investor, and futurist driving innovation at the intersection of technology, creativity, and impact. As CEO of The Troublemaker Lab, (a founder and team accelerator), and Founder and General Partner of early stage VC firm, Good Trouble Ventures, she empowers founders and invests in the future of entertainment, creativity, at the intersection of frontier technology and digital transformation.

Formerly at Google X, AJ specializes in AI-driven workforce transformation and high-impact teams. As CXO-in-Residence at A.Team, she has helped companies harness AI for growth. A Forbes Contributor, speaker, and executive coach, she advises startups and Fortune 100 companies on disruption and inclusive innovation. AJ is also a musician and singer known for her vocal prowess and performances on music stages and tech conferences. Through her work, she champions creatives, entrepreneurship and equitable innovation.

Rachel is a seasoned product and operations leader at Walmart U.S. Merchandising, where she leads the product management team driving innovation across pricing, assortment, and space planning platforms. With over two decades of leadership experience in both public and private retail tech companies, she’s held key roles spanning product management, customer success, program delivery, and global operations—including international assignments in London and Hong Kong. Prior to Walmart, Rachel was COO at ripe.io, advancing transparency in food systems through blockchain-powered supply chain solutions. A Cornell University graduate and former NCAA Division I basketball player, she continues to give back as a mentor for Cornell’s Women of Color Athletics and Women’s Basketball programs, and serves as Board Advisor and Treasurer for LEAP, a nonprofit focused on Asian Pacific leadership development.

Nitin Gupta is a seasoned leader in AI/ML strategy, consulting, and delivery with over 15 years of experience driving business transformation across Fortune 500 companies. He has a proven track record of building scalable AI/ML solutions that unlock significant business value through advanced analytics and data science. He has led transformative projects across organizations such as IBM, GAP Inc., General Electric, SAS, TransUnion, and Mondelez. Recognized as a “40 Under 40 Data Scientist” by AIM in 2022 and among the “Top 50 AI/ML Strategy Advisors” by TopMate in 2024 and Linkedin Top Voice, Nitin brings deep domain expertise in data science, big data, pre-sales, and product management.

Zaid is a renowned infrastructure leader and former VP/GM of Engineering at Microsoft, where he drove the development of Azure’s AI systems and co-led the strategy behind Microsoft’s first custom AI and ARM chips—MAIA and Cobalt. As part of the company’s technical leadership, he helped define the future of AI hardware for training and inference. Prior to Microsoft, Zaid served as Head of Infrastructure at LinkedIn, where he oversaw architecture and engineering across data centers, compute, networking, and storage—including pioneering work in software-defined infrastructure, zero-touch provisioning, and open hardware contributions to the Open Compute Project. A holder of multiple networking patents and a keynote speaker on global stages, Zaid has served as Chairperson of the OCP Foundation and sits on advisory boards for UC Berkeley EECS and the Internet Ecosystem Innovation Committee. His career reflects a deep commitment to open innovation, internet diversity, and the infrastructure that powers tomorrow’s intelligent systems.

Tonya J. Long is an AI Humanitarian and founder of Quantum Crow Advisory, guiding leaders through the quantum shifts redefining value creation in an AI-enabled world. As a bestselling author of AI and the New Oz and host of the RESET with Tonya podcast, she offers a visionary blueprint for the future of work, technology, and purpose. Her ‘Renaissance of Relevance’ framework empowers technical teams to make infrastructure decisions that elevate AI as a tool for human amplification—not just automation. With executive experience at Akamai and Avaya, Tonya has designed global systems that preserve context and meaning, led 20 strategic M&A integrations, and delivered over $1.5B in transformation impact. Today, she advises boards, invests in bold ideas, and champions an infrastructure of wisdom that unlocks humanity’s highest potential.

David Isaac is a product management and innovation expert with a track record of building successful ventures and leading transformative projects across global startups and as EY-Parthenon ASEAN Innovation lead.

AIPath co-pilots growth strategy validation and prepares it for execution. Described by Gartner as being unique in depth and breadth, the management dashboards prioritize features, sync roadmaps for multiple teams and outputs personalized sales and marketing assets for each customer. World-class research tools unlock insights at enterprise scale and speed, identifying key needs and validating product-market fit more efficiently for clearer business impact.

Bobby Napiltonia is a grizzled tech junkie veteran with over 37 years of experience, having built and delivered transformative technologies that we use every day. From making computers produce sound (Creative Labs) for games and hearing YouTube to enabling text messages (Twilio) that help you catch an Uber or change a password, Bobby has seen it all. He is an authority on GTM strategies and is passionate about cloud computing, APIs, GenAI, Robotics, Deep Tech, Open Source, and building powerful ecosystems.

Many will recognize the AppExchange he built for Marc Benioff and Salesforce, which has become a foundation for many of today's cloud companies, growing into a trillion-dollar ecosystem. Above all, Bobby enjoys being a father and is dedicated to driving DEI into the tech industry through impactful programs.Bobby’s journey is one worth sharing, showcasing a legacy of innovation and leadership in the tech world.

Keith Newman is an entrepreneur and go to market executive with more than 20 years ofexperience building compelling businesses and go to market strategies that drive early-stagegrowth companies. Newman started his career as a writer and editor and then launched aninnovation hub for media and technology companies before turning his sites onconsulting/advisory work and angel investing. He also hosts a popular podcast featuring playersin the technology world called “The Look Back” (iTunes/Spotify/et al.). He holds a BA from SanDiego State University and completed graduate coursework at SJSU and Stanford University. For recreation, Newman enjoys golf, hiking and places a premium on family time.

Doug Shannon is a globally recognized leader in intelligent automation and generative AI, renowned for driving innovation at the intersection of human potential and machine intelligence. With decades of enterprise experience at companies like Cisco, Chevron, and E&J Gallo, Doug is a pioneer in Multi-Agent Systems, building the frameworks that empower organizations to evolve from chatbot-era automation into fully autonomous, human-centered ecosystems. He created the ACT Model, Alignment, Clarity, and Transparency, as the foundation for responsible AI adoption and governance, ensuring trust and impact at every layer of transformation. Whether through his InsightAI podcast, Forbes Tech Council thought leadership, or his bold vision for secure Agents-as-a-Service, Doug consistently leads with insight, action, and authenticity. His work bridges legacy systems with future-forward architectures, giving enterprises the structure they need to orchestrate agents, preserve knowledge, and drive continuous innovation.

Nidhi Chappell is a seasoned leader in HPC and AI, currently serving as VP and GM of Azure AI Infrastructure at Microsoft. With over 15 years of experience spanning engineering, product management, and strategic planning, Nidhi has led transformative projects that bridge cutting-edge technology with business growth. She played a pivotal role in Microsoft’s collaboration with OpenAI, deploying advanced infrastructure to support ChatGPT and drive innovations in generative AI.

Nidhi’s work focuses on scaling HPC and AI capabilities in the cloud, pushing the boundaries of performance across hardware and software. Her leadership has enabled enterprises to seamlessly adopt AI in their workflows. Prior to Microsoft, she spent 12 years at Intel, driving AI product strategies and converged HPC-AI workflows

Jessica Audette (She/Her) is the Head of High-Performance Computing (HPC) at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she leads a team of 30 professionals and manages a budget of over $17 million. She drives initiatives that advance cutting-edge cancer research and healthcare, ensuring that technology plays a pivotal role in transforming scientific discovery. Under her leadership, the implementation of an IO500-rated supercomputer, IRIS —ranked #2 in the US and #4 globally—has significantly accelerated data analysis and scientific discovery, improving the speed and precision of groundbreaking medical research.

Jessica’s technical expertise extends beyond supercomputing. A certified Chief of Staff and Safe Scrum Master, she also served as Chief of Staff to the Senior Director of Research Technology Services. She has led efforts to optimize HPC processes, improving infrastructure to support more efficient, scalable research environments. Her work empowers researchers with the technology they need to make vital advancements in healthcare, pushing the boundaries of healthcare innovation, from cancer genomics to personalized treatments.Prior to her current role, she held key positions at Vanguard, Goldman Sachs Ayco and Morgan Stanley. A passionate advocate for women in leadership, Jessica served as Engagement Chair for the Office of General Counsel’s Women in Leadership (WIL) program at Vanguard.Jessica recently completed an executive program at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and holds a bachelor’s degree in international business from the State University of New York at Cortland. Currently, she is further enhancing her expertise in Digital and Technology Leadership through studies at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and pursuing an MBA at Purdue University.