The MIT Startup Exchange Lightning Talks and Startup Exhibit listed below are part of the full agenda for 2026 MIT AI Conference - Navigating the Digital Future: AI and Technology Strategy.
AI is advancing faster than many organizations can adapt, raising urgent questions about how emerging technologies can be deployed reliably and at scale. The 2026 MIT AI Conference looks ahead to the next chapter of AI—examining not only what is possible, but what is practical, responsible, and achievable in the years to come.
The conference highlights MIT’s most influential work from the past year and the promising future it is shaping. The program includes topics such as future AI architectures, AI management and deployment, AI applications, social impact, and policy. Together, these themes offer a forward-looking view of where AI is headed—and how society can prepare.
Program Coordinator, MIT Startup Exchange
Irina Gaziyeva joined the Startup Exchange team on June 21, 2022, as Program Coordinator reporting to Catarina Madeira and working closely with the whole Startup Exchange and other Corporate Relations teams. Irina comes to Corporate Relations from the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT where she worked 10 years as Administrative Assistant where she has supported four senior faculty members and their research groups (20-25 graduate students). Since 2018, Irina has acted as program coordinator, teaming-up with the program manager and program faculty lead for the MechE Alliance program. She has facilitated 45+ virtual seminars, workshops, and mentoring events in this informal role. Irina has also actively connected members of the MechE community to support student career development, mentorship, and networking opportunities with MIT alumni and industry. Before MIT, Irina held positions as Administrative Assistant and Member Representative at Brookline Dental and Tufts Health plan, respectively. Irina has also been a Community Organizer in Worcester, MA. Irina earned her B.A., Management (with Innovation & Entrepreneurship track) at Clark University in Worcester, and her M.S., Program and Project Management from Brandeis University in Waltham. She has received many awards at MIT for outstanding service, and she has extensive community volunteer work to her credit.
Founding GTM Lead, Hammerhead AI
Sadia Raveendran is an energy and clean-tech leader with a global career spanning regions, functions, and technologies. At AutoGrid (later Uplight), she led Industry Solutions and the Schneider Electric partnership, helping utilities scale grid flexibility with VPPs and DERMS. Earlier, she advanced large-scale wind and solar deployment at GE Vernova and Tata Power. Now, as Founding Head of GTM at Hammerhead AI, Sadia is tackling AI’s power challenges: turning stranded data center power into AI-ready capacity for faster, most cost-effective, and more sustainable growth.
Co-Founder, Architectures
Javier Segovia is a founder, operator, and startup advisor with two decades of experience building companies at the intersection of digital platforms and the physical world – spanning last-mile logistics, physical AI, smart mobility, climate tech, and the built environment.
As Co-Founder of Architechtures, Javier leads growth and fundraising for a next-generation AI platform transforming real estate design and development. Architechtures combines generative and symbolic AI to produce compliant, buildable Building Information Models (BIM) in real time, enabling developers to dramatically accelerate feasibility analysis and materially improve project economics. The platform now supports hundreds of paying users across dozens of countries and is expanding through enterprise pilots with Tier 1 real estate developers in North America and Europe.
Mr. Segovia has helped launch, fund, and scale dozens of startups as an operator, board director, strategic advisor, and angel investor. Along the way, he has shipped hundreds of millions of dollars in software and hardware products, scaled companies from 0→1 and 1→10, and led ventures from pre-seed through successful exits.
He actively mentors founders and judges startup competitions across MIT, Harvard, and Techstars, and has served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School.
Founder & CEO, Aidalos
Arnulf Hagen is CEO and main founder of Aidalos, a Norwegian AI company pioneering cognitive multi-agent systems and agent workflows for professional use. With a PhD in AI (NTNU, 1993) and MSc from MIT (1990), he bridges three decades of AI evolution—from early frameworks to generative agents. Former Chief Scientist and AI fellow at SAP following their acquisition of Fedem Technology, Hagen has previous experience from founding and leading successful tech companies. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His work in Aidalos focusses on developing cognitive AI agents as assistants in solving complex and ill-defined problems, and automated agents-in-workflow for repetitive tasks to enable professionals to use their skills where it is most valuable. Aidalos recently partnered with IBM on AI-driven monitoring solutions in the transportation domain.
Founder & CEO, Amplified Industries
Dr. Sebastien Mannai is founder and CEO of Amplified Industries. Amplified Industries is a start-up out of MIT launched in 2020 and based in Boston, MA. Amplified Industries gathers a team of scientists and engineers sharing a simple vision: our goal is to build the next generation of industrial systems that leverage high speed databases and AI to automate and optimize processes at scale. The company focuses on the upstream oil and gas sector and builds connected devices, data systems and algorithms to eliminate spills and optimize production. Mannai graduated with an MS & Ph.D from the Aero/Astro department in 2018 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He also completed post-doctoral research work in machine learning and artificial intelligence at MIT under a Siemens Futuremakers grant and a Deshpande fellowship. Before MIT, Sebastien received an MS in mechanical engineering from Ecole Centrale Paris and an MS in quantum physics from Paris XI in France. During his studies, Sebastien conducted research for Schlumberger and Siemens Turbomachinery.
Co-Founder & CEO, Cytex
Andrew Surwilo. , Co-founder & CEO of Cytex. Cytex’s AICenturion is a full-spectrum AI security and governance platform designed to protect against threats and vulnerabilities arising from AI adoption, while securing cloud and AI environments. A U.S. Army veteran with successful 8-figure exits, twice a finalist for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. He founded, Mercanti Systems, the software company that pioneered buy-online, pick-up-in-store technology and ACMG, an omni-channel marketing platform for consumer brand that reached over $ 1 billion in global sales. MIT, MBA; University of Texas, Austin, MS Information Security & Privacy.
Co-Founder & CEO, Delve
Karun is the co-founder and CEO of Delve, the AI-native compliance platform that helps 1,800+ of the fastest-growing companies get and stay compliant. He began building Delve out of an MIT dorm room with his cofounder Selin after the two built an AI medical scribe and experienced firsthand the challenges of HIPAA compliance. Since then, Delve has gone through YC, Prod, and Z Fellows, raised a $32M Series A at a $300M valuation led by Insight Partners, and scaled to 8-figures in profitable revenue. Today, Delve works with companies like Notion, Whop, Wispr Flow, and micro1 to achieve compliance without hundreds of hours of busywork.
CEO, DataTime Space
Valentin Heun is CEO of Data Time Space Inc. and an experienced leader in spatial computing, product innovation, and applied research. He previously led PTC Reality Lab, where he drove research, marketing, and sales and helped publish the open source Vuforia Spatial Toolbox platform. He is the lead inventor of the Reality Editor, an open source spatial computing tool developed at MIT with partners including Steelcase, Qualcomm, LEGO, Audi, Sony, Target, and NEC. He also founded Axsotic GbR, a 6DOF 3D UI company supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs through the EXIT Grant. He holds a PhD from the MIT Media Lab.
Co-Founder & CTO, Netpreme
Nikita Lazarev, the co-founder and CTO of Netpreme, completed his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at MIT, specializing in hardware design for emerging networking infrastructures and data center systems. Prior to grad school, Lazarev worked at Google and Microsoft as a visiting researcher on data center systems. Lazarev also holds a master's degree in computer science from EPFL in Switzerland and an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Bauman Moscow State Technical University.
Founder & CEO, iCustomer
He is Founder & CEO of iCustomer, an Agentic Decision Intelligence company purpose-built for marketing optimization. With a track record of building and exiting enterprise AI startups across CDP, recommendation engines, and consumer identity, Abhi has driven digital transformation for global leaders including GM, Nike, Google, Travelers, American Express, and Cisco spanning financial services, consumer goods, retail/commerce media, and high-tech.
Abhi co-founded Founders United, an enterprise AI venture studio, and the AI Innovators Community (AIC) a network of 1,000+ corporate, academic, and startup executives advancing applied AI.
He authors Data to Decision Activation, a newsletter with 11,000+ subscribers covering enterprise MAD tech (Marketing, Advertising & Data) adoption, grounded in deep work with Fortune 500s and leading AI startups.
An MIT alumnus with degrees in engineering and business, Abhi is on a mission to establish decision governance for humans and agents enabling compounding, accountable enterprise growth.
Co- Founder & CEO, Feromics
Shai Schubert is a biotechnology entrepreneur and technology innovator who has co-founded and led technology development across multiple biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the co-founder and CEO of Feromics, where he leads the development of an AI-driven functional genomics platform designed to transform how immune cell function is measured, modeled, and translated into new therapies and clinical decision-making. At Feromics, Dr. Schubert oversees the integration of high-resolution single-cell functional data with machine learning models to generate decision-relevant insights for drug discovery and diagnostics. The company’s AI pipeline is built on structured, functionomic datasets produced inhouse by a proprietary bottom-up singe cell biotechnology that enable more robust and actionable model training compared to conventional bulk or pooled molecular datasets. Dr. Schubert holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (IIT) and completed his postdoctoral training at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), within the Biomedical Engineering Center. His work sits at the intersection of bioengineering, computational modeling, and translational immunology, with a focus on accelerating the clinical impact of AI in biotechnology.
Disclaimer: MIT Startup Exchange can make introductions that ideally provide open ended discussions in order to share mutual interests and potentially create common ground that incite the parties to collaborate. MIT Startup Exchange introductions may eventually lead to mutual partnerships, but that is not in any way guaranteed by MIT, MIT Corporate Relations, MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) or MIT Startup Exchange, which takes no responsibility for these outcomes and no formal part in such discussions following our introduction. MIT Startup Exchange and its activities and events are not for purposes of soliciting investment or offering securities.