SOLD OUT
SUNDAY, 26 JANUARY
17:00 Welcome Cocktail and Get Together
Grand Beacon Hotel
MONDAY, 27 JANUARY
09.00-10.30 Hearst & The San Francisco Chronicle
Tim O’Rourke, VP of Content Strategy, Hearst, and Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Editor-in-chief.
How AI can augment journalism in local newsrooms and produce user-centric personalized experience. Hear from The San Francisco Chronicle’s innovation, and the DevHub – the team that drives editorial innovation in Hearst’s local newsrooms. Their most recent experiments with AI include Chowbot (An AI restaurant guide) ; the Kamala Harris news assistant.
11.00-12.00 The Information
Laura Mandaro, Managing Editor.
The Information, a leading tech business publication in the US, has been at the forefront of breaking stories about AI’s biggest players and controversies. Join us for a conversation with Managing Editor Laura Mandaro and (to be confirmed) AI beat reporters Jon Victor and Stephanie Palozzolo to explore how they tackle this high-stakes beat.
13.00-14.30 Lunch
14.30-15.30 You.com
Brian McCann, CTO and co-founder, Saurabh Sharma, CPO.
We’ve all heard about OpenAI’s news partnerships. But another Silicon Valley player has been making moves with news organisations: You.com. Co-founded in 2020 by two former Salesforce executives, Richard Socher and Brian McCann, You.com isn’t new to the AI space. In 2022, it launched the first search engine to integrate large language models (LLMs) with real-time internet access. This fall, You.com announced a new partnership with news publishers. Co-founder Brian McCann and Chief Product Officer Saurabh Sharma will share why You.com is focusing on the future of news and journalism—and how AI could become a meaningful opportunity for publishers.
16.30-17.30 AGI House
Rocky Yu, founder and CEO.
AGI House is a community dedicated to advancing AI. It is also a 68 million $ mansion in one of Silicon Valley’s most coveted cities, Hillsborough. AGI House organizes Hackathons and many events and has full-time tenants.
19.00-21.00 Dinner
TUESDAY, 28 JANUARY
10.00-11.30 OpenAI
David Duxin (Business Operations & Content Partnerships), Christina Lim (Partner Manager, Media Partnerships), Varun Shetty (Head of Media Partnerships).
Open AI’s latest tool aims to change the search landscape. How does news fit in this landscape? How are publishers building new experiences using AI like the OpenAI API?
12.00-13.00 Lunch
13.30-14.30 Kapwing
Julia Enthoven, CEO and founder.
Leveraging AI to innovate with videos. Kapwing helps many newsrooms transform their formats and expand their reach on social with videos.
15.00-16.30 Verso
Patrick Swanson and Kaveh Waddell, co-founders.
Verso is a new AI consulting lab based in San Francisco. It helps newsrooms, non-profits, and business leaders enter the AI age, drawing on our journalistic and technical experience. Verso is co-funded by Patrick Swanson and Kaveh Waddell, two ex-Stanford Knight fellows. They will share a masterclass on AI design thinking for leaders.
17.00-18.00 ScalePost
Zach Liberman and Ahmed Malik, co-founders.
ScalePost.ai is building the next-generation platform to connect LLMs and AI Agents directly with content owners to use their content or data. It facilitates partnerships between content owners and GenAI companies, transforming how content is licensed, monetized, and deployed. We work with over 100 leading publishers, including Time, Entrepreneur, and Texas Tribune. ScalePost works with Fortune 10 AI companies and AI agents (including its exclusive partnership with Perplexity.ai) to help them seamlessly access content. Top-tier investors and advisors from E14 Fund, Quiet Capital, Tenacity Ventures, the Ex-CEO of Fast Company & Inc. Magazine, back the company.
19.45-21.00 Dinner
WEDNESDAY, 29 JANUARY
09.00-10.30 Perplexity
Jessica Chan, Head of Partnerships.
How can Perplexity help media and publishers? One of the fastest-growing AI apps, Perplexity is redefining how users interact with search.
11.00-12.30 ProRata.ai
Annelies Jansen, Chief Strategy Officer.
ProRata.ai has developed technology that will enable generative AI platforms to accurately attribute and share revenues on a per-user basis with content owners. In August, ProRata raised $25 million in a Series A round for its tech, for which it has several pending patents. The company’s early investors include Revolution Ventures, Prime Movers Lab, Mayfield, and Technology incubator Idealab Studio.
12.30-13.30: Lunch
13.30-15.00 Protege Media
Dave Davis, CEO.
Protege Media is a new venture that connects media companies with the growing world of artificial intelligence. It helps AI developers access high-quality media content—like TV shows, films, news clips, and sports broadcasts—to train AI systems responsibly and effectively. This new arm of Protege, a platform known for managing and licensing data for AI, was created after acquiring Calliope Networks, a company with deep experience in media content licensing. Protege Media now offers a treasure trove of global, premium content, including rare formats like 4K and 3D. Dave Davis will tell us how media companies can safely and profitably licence their content for AI projects.
15.30-17.00 Session to be confirmed
17.00-18.00 Mayfield Ventures
Shelby Golan, Director Business Development.
Mayfield, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most influential venture capital funds, has a legacy of backing transformative companies like Poshmark, Marketo, and Lyft. More recently, it has invested in ProRata.ai and Scrunch AI, a start-up helping large companies adapt to the era of AI-driven search. In this conversation with Shelby Golan, we’ll explore how AI is reshaping and will continue to disrupt the media industry.
18.30-21.00 SF Demo Night by GenAI Collective @ AWS GenAI Loft
Hosted by GenAI Collective, the SF Demo Night will spotlight 10 next-level showcases guaranteed to inspire you. See, learn, and connect in a way San Francisco has never seen before. Your mind will race with fresh discoveries – was that a tech demo, or a glimpse of the future’s magic?
THURSDAY, 30 JANUARY
09.30-10.30 The San Francisco Standard
Griffin Gaffney, CEO.
Innovation and journalism. Launched in 2021 with the backing of venture capitalist Michael Moritz, the San Francisco Standard is San Francisco’s newest digital-only media and fastest-growing newsroom in the US. In the last year, the Standard added new verticals to its offer (opinion, sports, tech and wealth).
11.00-12.00 Particle
Sara Beykpour, co-founder and CEO.
Particle is an easier way to keep up with the news. It’s designed to give users a streamlined, personalized, and multi-perspective view of the news they care about the most. Traffic is down, newsrooms are undergoing lay-offs, and publishers fear AI technologies will only worsen matters. Entering the fray, news-reader startup Particle is teaming up with publishers to seek a new business model for the AI era, where AI news summaries don’t have to mean lost revenues. The startup, built by former Twitter engineers, offers a news-reading app that helps readers understand all angles of the story by leveraging AI to summarize news from across a range of publishers.
12.30-13.30: Lunch
13.30-15.00 Miso Technologies
Lucky Gunasekara, co-founder and CEO.
AI and user experience: How can AI assist publishers in accessing new audiences, i.e. GenZ, and opening new revenue streams? Lucky will discuss Miso as an AI Media Lab, and the core focus on media houses extracting the value out of content and data vs AI companies doing it and taking that value for themselves. AMiso Labs work with O’Reilly, Outside, Macworld, ALM and Roularta.
15.00-15.30 Bloomberg Beta
James Cham, Partner.
Bloomberg Beta, an early-stage venture firm backed by Bloomberg L.P, is recognized as a leading investor in artificial intelligence, focusing on startups that leverage machine learning and AI technologies to improve business processes and the future of work. Bloomberg Beta aims to expand Bloomberg’s horizons by investing in innovative startups while maintaining an independent and transparent approach to venture capital.
15.30-17.30 TollBit
Josh Stone, Head of Partnerships
TollBit is creating a revolutionary marketplace that connects publishers with AI companies, enabling a mutually beneficial system for content licensing and monetization, ensuring publishers are fairly compensated for their work. Over 200 publisher sites have been onboarded to the platform. High-profile publishing partners include Penske Media Corporation, TIME, Mumsnet, Trusted Media Brands, CANDR Media Group, and ADWEEK.
20.00-22.00 Dinner
FRIDAY, 31 JANUARY
09.30-10.00 Stanford University
Campus visit, Main Squad
10.00-12.00 Stanford University
Cheryl Philipps and Djordje Padeski.
How is AI impacting publishers and journalism? Cheryl Philipps, visiting professor of professional journalism, and Djordje Padejski, associate director of post-fellowship programs, will host us for a conversation with the Knight fellows and a presentation of one of the most recent journalism projects using AI.
12.00-14.00 Lunch & Final Debrief
