Dear friends,
I just got back from AI Dev x NYC, the AI developer conference where our community gathers for a day of coding, learning, and connecting. The vibe in the room was buzzing! It was at the last AI Dev in San Francisco that I met up with Kirsty Tan and started collaborating with her on what became our AI advisory firm AI Aspire. In-person meetings can spark new opportunities, and I hope the months to come will bring more stories about things that started in AI Dev x NYC!
The event was full of conversations about coding with AI, agentic AI, context engineering, governance, and building and scaling AI applications in startups and in large corporations. But the overriding impression I took away was one of near-universal optimism about our field, despite the mix of pessimism and optimism about AI in the broader world.
For example, many businesses have not yet gotten AI agents to deliver a significant ROI, and some AI skeptics are quoting an MIT study that said 95% of AI pilots are failing. (This study, by the way, has methodological flaws that make the headline misleading.) But at AI Dev were many of the teams responsible for the successful and rapidly growing set of AI applications. Speaking with fellow developers, I realized that because of AI's low penetration in businesses, it is simultaneously true that (a) many businesses do not yet have AI delivering significant ROI, and (b) many skilled AI teams are starting to deliver significant ROI and see the number of successful AI projects climbing rapidly, albeit from a low base. This is why AI developers are bullish about the growth that is to come!
Multiple exhibitors told me this was the best conference they had attended in a long time, because they got to speak with real developers. One told me that many other conferences seemed like fluff, whereas participants at AI Dev had much deeper technical understanding and thus were interested in and able to understand the nuances of cutting-edge technology. Whether the discussion was on observability of agentic workflows, the nuances of context engineering for AI coding, or a debate on how long the proliferation of RL (reinforcement learning) gyms for training LLMs will continue, there was deep technical expertise in the room that lets us collectively see further into the future.
One special moment for me was when Nick Thompson, moderating a panel with Miriam Vogel and me, asked about governance. I replied that the United States’ recent hostile rhetoric toward immigrants is one of the worst moves it is making, and many in the audience clapped. Nick spoke about this moment in a video.
I enjoyed meeting many people at AI Dev, and am grateful to everyone who came and to all our speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, volunteers, and event staff. My only regret is that, even though we scaled up the event 3x compared to the previous San Francisco event, we had to limit the number of tickets because the space couldn’t admit more attendees.
Even though so much work is now online, in-person events are special and can be turning points for individuals and projects. We plan to make the next AI Dev in San Francisco on April 28-29, 2026, an even bigger event, and look forward to the conference helping to spark more sharing and connections in the future.
Keep building!
Andrew