There seems to be a new, more impressive AI model every week. Given the rapid pace, how can founders best position themselves to build on top of this technology? At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley, we’ll host a panel on “How Founders Can Build on Existing Foundational Models” to answer some existential questions facing AI startups.
We’re thrilled to have leaders from Google DeepMind, Cohere, and Twelve Labs — three companies at the forefront of AI model development — to help us answer some of these questions.
Attendees can hear straight from the source about what AI model developers are trying to build next, how AI models are improving, and where startup founders should (and shouldn’t) be building. If you want to learn how to grow with the AI model developers, and not get squashed by them or left behind, this is the panel for you.
About our speakers
TC Sessions: AI will be joined by Logan Kilpatrick, senior product manager at Google DeepMind. Kilpatrick leads product for Google AI studio and helps developers build on top of Google Gemini, one of the industry’s top performing AI models. Kilpatrick previously led developer relations at OpenAI.
We’ll also be joined by Sara Hooker, the head of Cohere for AI — the AI research lab inside one of Silicon Valley’s hottest AI startups, Cohere. Specializing in AI for enterprise, Cohere has a unique insight into how businesses are using AI foundation models today. Hooker is a widely respected AI researcher who spent many years at Google, and she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in AI in 2024.
Finally, our panel will feature Jae Lee, the founder and CEO of Twelve Labs, a startup building AI foundation models that can analyze and search through videos. Twelve Labs — which is backed by Nvidia, Samsung, and Intel — is building AI models that can help you find exact moments in videos, just by asking for them in plain English. The startup has raised more than $100 million to date, and its backers believe its video models will create new businesses and use cases for AI in the video world.
