MAY 12-14, 2026 | SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Engineering the Future of AI
Data Council AI is the technical conference built by engineers, for engineers. Join 2,000+ practitioners building real AI & data systems for 3 full days of deep-dives, battle-tested architectures and production insights in San Francisco, home-base of the AI world.







Real Industry Intelligence
For over a decade, Data Council AI has gathered the engineers behind breakthrough AI & data systems. Our community consists of the researchers who have solved training at scale, the architects optimizing inference pipelines and the engineers shipping models to millions of users.
Technical Attendees
Speakers
Office Hours
Hands-On Workshops
Powered by AI's Leading Companies









Connect with the practitioners from the teams defining the AI landscape. Meet the minds behind the AI tools & platforms you depend on every day.
Data Council AI 2026 - SAN FRANCISCO
About the Venue


San Francisco Marriot Marquis
780 Mission St, San Francisco May 12 - 14, 2026
Experience Data Council AI 2025
Get a preview of what makes our event legendary. Watch over 100+ hours from this past year's event, featuring unfiltered technical sessions from the minds pushing the boundaries of what's possible in AI and data.
Speakers Who Ship Code, Not Slides
Past Data Council AI speakers aren't just talking figureheads - they're the engineers & scientists building production systems, the architects handling billion-parameter inference and the technical experts solving AI's hardest challenges.

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Keynotes

- Keynotes

- Keynotes

- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Ryan Blue is the original creator of Apache Iceberg and currently serves as Vice President of the project. With over a decade in data engineering, he's an established expert in big data formats and infrastructure. Currently a Member of Technical Staff at Databricks since June 2024, Ryan previously co-founded and served as CEO of Tabular until its acquisition by Databricks. His career includes senior positions at Netflix and Cloudera, where he was a technical lead for data formats. An Apache Software Foundation member since 2017, he's a committer in the Apache Parquet, Avro, and Spark communities and previously served as VP of Apache Avro. Ryan holds dual Bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Idaho and a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

- Keynotes

- Foundation Models
Ethan Rosenthal is a Member of Technical Staff at Runway, an applied AI research company focused on multimedia content creation, where he builds engineering systems to accelerate the work of research scientists. His career spans diverse roles across AI, machine learning, and data science - from training language models at Square to developing recommendation systems at seed-stage ecommerce startups. Before working in tech, Ethan was an actual scientist and got his PhD in experimental physics from Columbia University.

- Keynotes

- Analytics & BI
Mike has spent over two decades as a technologist, entrepreneur, and investor. He’s currently co-founder and CEO of Rill, a cloud service for operational intelligence. Previously he founded Metamarkets (acquired by Snap, Inc. in 2017), a real-time analytics platform for digital ad firms, and CustomInk.com a leader in custom apparel online. Mike was also a founding partner at the venture capital firm DCVC, which has invested over $2B+ in assets in deep tech. He began his career as a software engineer for the Human Genome Project and later received a Ph.D. in computational biology.

- Keynotes

- Keynotes
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- Keynotes

- GenAI Applications
- Keynotes

- Keynotes

- Lightning Talks

- Databases

- Databases

- AI Engineering

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- GenAI Applications
Mitul Tiwari is CTO and Co-founder of a stealth AI startup. Until recently he was a Director of AI and Machine Learning Engineering at ServiceNow leading natural language technologies group. Earlier he was CTO and Co-founder of Passage AI (acquired by Servicenow). His expertise lies in building data-driven products using AI, Machine Learning and big data technologies. Previously he was head of People You May Know and Growth Relevance at LinkedIn, where he led technical innovations in large-scale social recommender systems. Prior to that, he worked at Kosmix (now Walmart Labs) on web-scale text categorization, and its applications. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has also co-authored more than twenty publications in top conferences such as ACL, AAAI, KDD, WWW, RecSys, VLDB, SIGIR, CIKM, and SPAA.

- Data Sci & Algos

- GenAI Applications

- Workshops

- AI & Data Culture

- ML OPs & Platforms

- Lightning Talks

- AI Engineering

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Lightning Talks

- AI & Data Culture

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Keynotes

- Keynotes

- Keynotes

- Data Eng & Infrastructure
Ryan Blue is the original creator of Apache Iceberg and currently serves as Vice President of the project. With over a decade in data engineering, he's an established expert in big data formats and infrastructure. Currently a Member of Technical Staff at Databricks since June 2024, Ryan previously co-founded and served as CEO of Tabular until its acquisition by Databricks. His career includes senior positions at Netflix and Cloudera, where he was a technical lead for data formats. An Apache Software Foundation member since 2017, he's a committer in the Apache Parquet, Avro, and Spark communities and previously served as VP of Apache Avro. Ryan holds dual Bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Idaho and a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

- Keynotes

- Foundation Models
Ethan Rosenthal is a Member of Technical Staff at Runway, an applied AI research company focused on multimedia content creation, where he builds engineering systems to accelerate the work of research scientists. His career spans diverse roles across AI, machine learning, and data science - from training language models at Square to developing recommendation systems at seed-stage ecommerce startups. Before working in tech, Ethan was an actual scientist and got his PhD in experimental physics from Columbia University.

- Keynotes

- Analytics & BI
Mike has spent over two decades as a technologist, entrepreneur, and investor. He’s currently co-founder and CEO of Rill, a cloud service for operational intelligence. Previously he founded Metamarkets (acquired by Snap, Inc. in 2017), a real-time analytics platform for digital ad firms, and CustomInk.com a leader in custom apparel online. Mike was also a founding partner at the venture capital firm DCVC, which has invested over $2B+ in assets in deep tech. He began his career as a software engineer for the Human Genome Project and later received a Ph.D. in computational biology.

- Keynotes

- Keynotes
.jpeg)
- Keynotes

- GenAI Applications
- Keynotes

- Keynotes

- Lightning Talks

- Databases

- Databases

- AI Engineering

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- GenAI Applications
Mitul Tiwari is CTO and Co-founder of a stealth AI startup. Until recently he was a Director of AI and Machine Learning Engineering at ServiceNow leading natural language technologies group. Earlier he was CTO and Co-founder of Passage AI (acquired by Servicenow). His expertise lies in building data-driven products using AI, Machine Learning and big data technologies. Previously he was head of People You May Know and Growth Relevance at LinkedIn, where he led technical innovations in large-scale social recommender systems. Prior to that, he worked at Kosmix (now Walmart Labs) on web-scale text categorization, and its applications. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has also co-authored more than twenty publications in top conferences such as ACL, AAAI, KDD, WWW, RecSys, VLDB, SIGIR, CIKM, and SPAA.

- Data Sci & Algos

- GenAI Applications

- Workshops

- AI & Data Culture

- ML OPs & Platforms

- Lightning Talks

- AI Engineering

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Data Eng & Infrastructure

- Lightning Talks

- AI & Data Culture
Beyond the Slides Conference
- Technical Deep-Dives
- Engineering Office Hours
- Hands-On Workshops
- Events & Networking
Technical Deep-Dives

Get direct insights on production systems and architectural decisions from technical leaders. Our hand-selected speakers don't just present — they pull back the curtain on real implementations, complete with performance metrics and hard-learned lessons.
Engineering Office Hours

A Data Council AI exclusive! Our signature office hours get you dedicated time with speakers for in-depth discussions in a small group setting. Meet your heroes face-to-face, debug your architecture challenges, expand on strategies and discuss the future of AI with the leaders building it.
Hands-On Workshops

Build alongside the maintainers of production AI systems. These aren't just tutorials—they're intensive technical sessions where you'll implement real solutions with guidance from the people who architected them.
Events & Networking

Get access to dozens of exclusive community-curated events where engineering discussions continue in fun, low pressure environments where the real connections happen. From our Community Drinks & Demos night to founder dinners to firesides, you won't want to miss out!
What Industry Leaders Are Saying

Pedram Navid, Head of Developer Relations

“Data Council is better than any conference I’ve ever been at because the talks are a higher caliber than anything I’ve ever experience, and the people here are just second to none.”

Charles Frye, Developer Advocate

“The people who work on the tools that you use every day, the people you admire, they’re there. They want to share what they’ve been working on.”

Ryan Boyd, Co-Founder

“Data Council is great because it provides an intimate setting for interacting with other folks in the data industry, whereas other conferences you may not know anyone you meet in the hallways.”






Where AI Actually Gets Built
While other conferences theorize what's possible, Data Council AI features the engineers shipping tomorrow's breakthroughs today. Get exclusive access to the insights, architectures and methods that will become industry standard. Miss this, miss the playbook.