Optimized AI Conference 2025 | Wix | 14 April 2025 | Cobb Galleria Centre, 2 Galleria Pkwy SE, Atlanta, GA 30339

Learn directly from 80+ leading AI companies, VCs, executive AI leadership, and senior engineers across 12 segments to shorten your path to production AI.

The conference is one of the most practical AI events you can attend. The organizers of the event both work for top AI companies NVIDIA/Google so we curate a breadth of speakers that we would want to learn from in order to make progress with our production workloads.

The content strikes a healthy balance between deep theory required for extending industrial research, deep dives on production use-cases and business optimization strategies. We believe that every AI professional can benefit from developing both their technical and business development skills.

Come accelerate your learning, generate revenue and advance your career.

Topics:
• Knowing the foundations of deep learning has it benefits. How do you scale your training in a cost-effective manner. When it comes to deploying deep learning. models, methods such as quantization and pruning can help to reduce inference costs and latency. We explore optimizations on both the training and inference lifecycle.
• Many teams have already implemented RAG systems to keep their insight generation engines up-to-date. How do you increase the accuracy and quality of results coming from these systems? Which component do you scale, and how can you keep inference costs as low as possible but still get the highest quality results?
• The current GEN AI adoption curve is just beginning. The true frontier of breakthrough applications will come from training and learning on more diverse datasets. Image, sound, and video generation will be at the top of the list, showcasing how to fine-tune and deploy these various types of models.
• Working for top AI companies is not the only way to earn a great living from the Gen AI boom. Many enterprises need the Capex to expand their teams and hire top-tier technical talent. Now is a rare opportunity to build the next generation of consulting firms, that are co-pilot enabled.
• Starting an AI company is easier than ever. This makes competition fierce and differentiating your unique value proposition takes advanced positioning, timing and precision marketing to preserve budgets. We’ll be hosting a number of startups that you can join and learn from.
• What remains constant in the GEN AI age? Growing volumes of data. This means the cost to process medium to large datasets will only increase over time. We explore the field of accelerated data processing on GPUs and other optimized platforms to reduce processing costs and increase the quality and speed of insights from your datasets. Learn how to accelerate spark, pandas and ML workloads.
• LLM inference is distinctly different from other types of model inference. We explore both traditional approaches to model optimization and deployment and this new field of deploying token, image, and video-generating systems. The goal is to minimize cost and maximize throughput and utilization of these systems.
• What is your career optimization function? Is it wealth, freedom, control of time, or interesting work? How do you navigate this new age of GEN AI work, and how do you position yourself to advance your career strategically? Learn from many experts, both their strategies and mistakes, so you can optimize your next career move.
• This is the true frontier of the LLM revolution. When agents are fully online, small companies can compete with large companies due to an AI-accelerated labor force. This paradigm will transform businesses in a meaningful way, enabling organizations to scale their efforts. Individuals who follow the Company-of-One philosophy can create viable businesses with no employees, by leveraging agents.
• All leadership must understand AI at its core in order to lead the next generation companies. By going deep into how these systems work, leaders can have more powerful predictive capabilities that they can leverage to steer their organizations into the rapidly changing landscape. Leadership is not easy, and AI Leadership is even harder, given how fast the field is evolving, come compress your learning.
• GEN AI startups have some of the highest valuations and exits in history. Many small firms are being acquired for hundreds of millions. Most of these companies raised funding along the way to accelerate their product development and market penetration efforts. Learn how to connect with VCs and better understand what the funding path entails.
• The biggest barrier to adoption of GEN AI in enterprise is the cost and effectiveness of inference. We explore many topics on scaling out these systems effectively, leveraging routers to choose the best models between frontier and open-source models. You will leave learning how to deploy your own GEN AI applications cost effectively.

2025 Speakers

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Chip Huyen
Author / Founder, LinkedIn

Paige Bailey
AI Developer Relations Lead, Microsoft

Laura Edell
Chief Data Scientist, Google

Amr Awadallah
Ex - Google, Founder & Sr. Research Science Manager

Hamza Farooq
CEO, Vectara

SPEAKERS:

Vivek Muppella
Director AI Engineering, Cohere

Abhai Pratap Singh
Senior Technical Product Manager, Amazon

Dona Sarkar
Chief Technologist Co-pilot & AI Extensibility, Microsoft

Huiming Qu, PhD
VP, Data Science, E-Commerce & Marketing, The Home Depot

Maria Shaukat
Machine Learning Engineer, LinkedIn

Monica Song
Product Manager, Google

Jesús Barrasa
Field CTO - AI, Neo4j

Praful Konduru
Software Engineer, Meta

Ken Seier
Sr. VP of AI/ML, 66 Degrees

Marcus Eagen
Co-Founder, Trace Machina

Vinesh Gudla
Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Instacart

Apoorva Joshi
Sr. AI Developer Advocate, MongoDB

Ethan Ferdosi
Solutions Architect Leader, LinkedIn

Dr. Terri-Karelle Reid
Founder, Open Door Jamaica Foundation

Rahul Raja
Staff Software Engineer, LinkedIn

Shankar Krishnan
Product Leader Conversational Analytics, Google

Lin Zhang
VP, Data Science, BlackRock

Naresh Dulam
Vice President Software Engineering, Walmart

Shashank Kapadia
Staff ML Engineer, Microsoft

Khalifeh Al Jadda, PhD
Director of Data Science & Conference Founder, Neo4j

Mostafa Elzoghbi
Principal Engineering Manager, AI Platform, Microsoft

Gopi Krishna
Director of Graph Data Science, Neo4j

Phani Dathar
Cloud Solutions Architect, Microsoft

Mark Tabladillo
VP, Data Science, Coca-Cola

Jim He
Sr. Director, Data Science, The Home Depot

Jinzhou Huang
Sr. Director, Data Science, The Home Depot

Matt Kott
VP, Data and Analytics, Carter's

Jinzhou Huang
Sr. Director, Data Science, The Home Depot

Sergey Davidovich
Co-Founder & President, Spark Beyond

Michael Berthold
CEO & Co-Founder, KNIME

Logan Lawler
Precision AI Workstations GTM, Dell

Ramnath Chellappa, PhD
Associate Dean, Emory University

Arpita Vats
Senior AI Engineer, LinkedIn

Raja Iqbal
Founder/CEO, Data Science Dojo

Kimetha Dunn, M.Ed
Sr. Manager, Data Science, LinkedIn

Reshma Lal Jagadheesh
Founder & Author, Trey Grainger

Giri Tatavarty
VP, AI, Redis

Tyler Hutcherson
Lead Applied AI Engineer, Redis

Iris Yang Singhania
Vice President, Global Data, Analytics & AI, Alimentation Couche-Tard

Faizan Javed
Sr. Director, Data Science, Kaiser Permanente

Yuanzheng Zhu, Ph.D
Sr. Machine Learning Engineer, Instacart

William Crowder
Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Aperture

Scott Radcliffe
Managing Director, MS in Business Analytics, Emory University

Kolin Konjura
Data Science Solutions Architect, 66 Degrees

Surya Kallumadi
Director of Machine Learning, Coursera

Patrick Hoeffel
Sr. Technical Architect, Perficient

Bill Franks
Director, Center for Data Science & Analytics, Kennesaw State University

Bruce Schonk
Regional Director, Southeast, Glean

Devang Sachdev
General Partner & Co-Founder, Lenovo

Jose Carlos Huescas Palomeque
Global AI Product Leader, Lenovo

Philip Kiely
Head of Developer Relations, Baseten

Beverly Wright
VP, Data Science & AI/CAIO, Wavicle Data Solutions

Sam Partee
Co-founder, CTO/Principal AI Engineer, Arcade

Jacopo Tagliabue
Co-founder/CTO, Bauplan

Srijan Kumar
CEO/Co-founder, Lighthouz AI

Connor Shorten, PhD
Research Scientist, Weaviate

Nikolaos Vasiloglou
VP Research ML, Neuron7.ai

Learie Hercules
Founder & CEO, Heft IQ

Christopher Reckord
Chairman, National Artificial Intelligence Task Force - Jamaica

Kyle Maloney
Co-Founder, Tech Beach Setreat

Andrei Lopatenko
VP, AI & Engineering, [Company not specified]

Alessandro Negro
Chief Scientist, GraphAware

Shane Murray
Field CTO, Monte Carlo

Pramod Misra
Chief AI Officer, Unifi.ai

Saurabh Aggarwal
Sr Manager & Principal Data Scientist, Unifi.ai

Ravi Chandu Ummadisetti
Generative AI Architect, Toyota

Jason Quinley
Ventures Associate, Aflac

Murium Iqbal
Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Fetch

Manohar Sai Jasti
Analytics Engineer, Workday

Luciano Martins
Lead AI Developer Advocate, Americas, Google

Sarfaraz Hussein, PhD
Applied Scientist II, Amazon

Mohita Ajmera
AI Engineering Lead, IBM

Frank Hinek
CTO, Fedi

Pritram Roy
Sr. Manager, Capgemini

Gulrez Khan
Data Science Leader, PayPal

Benjamin Manning, PhD
Founder, Agile Hippo

Darshil Modi
ML Engineer, Chalk

Eyal Wirsansky
Senior Data Scientist / Author, Gradle Inc

Sid Sriram, MS
AI/ML Consultant & Senior ML Engineer, NexGen AI Solutions

Elvis Kahoro
Co-Founder & CAIO / Developer Advocate, Oppos Inc

Fouad Bousetouane, PhD
Co-Founder & Chief AI Officer, InterspectAI

Lawrence Paranidharan
Founder & CEO, InterspectAI

Brittany Bafandeh
CEO, Data Culture

Jared Rhodes
Principal Consultant, EPAM

Praneeth Reddy Amudala Puchakayala
Data Scientist, Marist

Lakshmi Thejaswi Narasannagari
Machine Learning Engineer, [Company not specified]

Balaji Chandrasekaran
Lead Data Scientist, Schaeffler

Brent Zucker
Director of Engineering, Feature Space

Jennifer Priestley, Ph.D.
Teacher, Marist School

Nikhil Kassetty
Software Engineer - AI/ML and Fintech, IEEE

Darace Rose
CEO, Oppos

Donny Greenberg
Founder, Runhouse

Luke Moyou
Search Engineer, Grid Dynamics

Ines Chami
Co-founder & Chief Scientist, Numbers Station

Joshua Cazoe
AI Solutions Consultant, Firstmovers.ai

Ayodhya Ouditt
Co-Founder & Design Director, Vessel

Kevin Butler
Senior Search and AI Engineer, KMW

Kordel France
Technical Architect, Toyota

Niels Bantilan
Chief ML Engineer, Union

2025 Sponsors

PLATINUM SPONSORS:
• Neo4j
• Nativelink
• 66Degree

GOLD SPONSORS:
• CXO Spark Beyond
• Dell
• The Home Depot
• Knime
• Emory
• MongoDB
• Lightmimg AI

SILVER SPONSOR:
• Aws

BRONZE SPONSORS:
• Glean
• Kennesaw State University
• Rapt.ai
• Redis
• Perficient
• GeorgiaState University
• University of Georgia