The AI Conference Events

The AI Conference is an independent, vendor-neutral AI conference held annually in San Francisco. It was founded by Shon Burton, who previously founded the long-running Machine Learning Conference (MLconf), with Ben Lorica — former program chair of the O’Reilly AI Conference, Strata Data, and TensorFlow World — serving as program chair. Because it is not run by a single cloud or model vendor, the agenda spans the whole stack rather than one company’s product roadmap — AGI, large language models, AI infrastructure, alignment, neural architectures, AI startups, and real-world applications across industries. The recent San Francisco editions draw 5,500+ attendees, and the program is built for a broad mix of builders, researchers, operators, executives, and investors — from ML engineers and data scientists to AI founders and technical leaders shipping real systems. Browse our verified attendee reviews above to see how past participants describe the room.

The AI Conference uses tiered ticket pricing rather than application-based admission, so the cheapest way in is to book during the early-bird window, with rates stepping up as the event approaches and at-the-door pricing the most expensive. Separate tiers typically exist for individual builders, larger teams, and academic or student attendees, and group rates are available for companies sending several people. Because pricing changes per edition and sells in waves, published figures go out of date quickly. Check the upcoming events section above for current ticket tiers and the live early-bird deadline for the next edition.

The AI Conference is held in San Francisco at Pier 48, a waterfront venue in the Mission Rock neighborhood steps from Oracle Park, placing it in the heart of the Bay Area AI ecosystem. It runs annually in the autumn — recent editions have landed in late September through early October as a multi-day event. The San Francisco location is deliberate: it puts attendees within reach of the foundation-model labs, AI startups, and investors that shape the field. Check the upcoming events section above for the confirmed dates of the next San Francisco edition.

The AI Conference covers the modern AI stack across themes such as AGI, large language models, AI infrastructure, alignment, neural architectures, AI startups, and real-world applications across industries. Its program is organized into multiple tracks — typically a technical/builders track focused on implementation, infrastructure, and operations; a strategy and leadership track covering governance, economics, and organizational change; and vertical tracks delivering industry-specific insight in sectors like healthcare, finance, advertising, and retail. Because the event is vendor-neutral, sessions lean toward how techniques such as retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation, and AI agents actually perform in production rather than product pitches, making it as relevant to AI engineers as to founders and executives.

For ML engineers, AI founders, and researchers, the draw of The AI Conference is its independence: because no single vendor controls the stage, the talks compare approaches across labs and tools rather than promoting one platform, which is harder to find at vendor-hosted events. Attendees commonly cite the technical depth of the tracks, the density of practitioners shipping real AI systems, and the San Francisco networking around startups and investors as the main reasons to go. If you are looking for a beginner-level overview or a single-vendor certification, a narrower event may fit better. Browse our verified attendee reviews above to judge whether the program matches your role.