Historic: The Inaugural AI Agent Congress in Silicon Valley

An industry-wide event of the leading AI Agent CEOs discussing and planning at industry-level.

The event format was unique, moving from structured to unstructured: 1) A formal industry presentation at the start, followed by 2) facilitated group discussions on three topics, and finally 3) an unconference, where attendees (called delegates) could crowdsource topics and attend the sessions of their choice.

Historic: The Inaugural AI Agent Congress
Last week, we hosted the inaugural AI Agent Congress in Silicon Valley—a landmark event that brought together 31 AI agent founders and select investors. It was a first-of-its-kind gathering focused on building industry-wide collaboration in the emerging AI agent market.


The venue set the stage perfectly. We were in Palo Alto, home to many top startups, hosted at ServiceRocket in their unique dome that opens to the sky. The rotunda was ideal for our circular seating plan, and the acoustics made it easy to hear one another. Special thanks to Rob Castaneda, CEO of ServiceRocket, for being an amazing host and even providing personal coffee service with Vittoria Coffee from Australia.

The Gathering
We invited AI agent founders from across the globe, with participants flying in from Europe, Canada, and the USA. Representatives from Microsoft and Google also joined us to discuss the future of AI agents. A third of the delegates were female AI leaders, and we continue to strive for greater gender representation—a vital aspect for the industry and society.

The 31 AI Agent Delegates

The Agenda
The day began with lunch and networking, followed by welcome remarks and goal-setting. We set a collaborative tone and encouraged respectful debate throughout.

We began with structured rapid introductions, allowing everyone to share who they were and why they were there. I then presented an overview of the AI Agent Ecosystem Map to help level-set before diving into deeper discussions.

Moderated Group Discussions: Industry-Level Discussions
I facilitated 30-minute moderated discussions, ensuring every voice was heard. We experienced a wide range of viewpoints and insights in one room—something truly unique.

  • Topic 1: Agent Topology – Should we have one meta-agent or a swarm of specialized agents? The discussion was lively, with compelling arguments for each structure.
  • Topic 2: Standards, Protocols, APIs – How can we build standards that ensure interoperability across agents? We delved into the need for open protocols, timing, and what’s worked in other industries.
  • Topic 3: Tech Giants vs. AI Startups – What’s the relationship between agents developed by tech giants and those emerging from startups? We concluded startups will out-manuveur big tech.

Above photos: Delegates came prepared with topics they wanted to talk about, or were inspired by convos, and added up session topic ideas. A champion team conducted (a very efficient) cluster analysis, which yielded five session groups for the unconference.

Unconference Sessions
In the spirit of collaboration, we also ran an unconference (an event where attendees choose and run sessions vs a centralized group). Attendees proposed topics, and a champion group clustered them into themes for mini-sessions. Participants moved freely between groups, fostering a dynamic environment for spontaneous insights.

The Unconference topics selected by the delegates were:

  • Evals & Observability for Agents
  • Identity & Safety
  • Pricing / Positioning / GTM
  • UI/UX
  • Memory and Tooling

After unconference breakouts, the congress reconvened and champions from each group gave a summary of insights, see Brooke from Coval on the microphone.

We captured insights in a shared document and reconvened as a Congress to hear from each group’s representatives, highlighting the collective intelligence that emerged from the breakouts.

An ongoing chat among attendees has also been set up in a private discussion tool, allowing relationships formed during the event to continue growing and deepening.

Here’s some key quotes from the selected CEO Founders who attended

“The AI Congress revealed one truth: innovation is application. So it was truly inspiring that all of us are solving today’s challenges, not tomorrow’s dreams.” -Amit Shah, Founder and CEO of Instalily AI. 

“AI agents shift us from systems of record to systems of action. Big tech rules the record, but startups lead the action.” –Anna Yuan, CEO of ScaleGrowth AI

“SaaS is evolving from ‘software as a service’ to ‘service as software,’ driven by the power of AI multi-agents collaborating seamlessly across strategy, execution, and critique. Had a great time brainstorming this groundbreaking shift at AI Congress!” –Peda Venki Pola, Co-founder, Oneshot.ai

“As an enterprise, your next million customers will be AI agents. They’ll demand usage-based pricing, payment enabled API access, and digital identities for seamless transactions.” –Amir Sarhangi, CEO of Skyfire

“AI Agent Congress reminded us of the larger propaganda: making agents the future of tech. 31 founders, 1 room, every mic held was a mic dropped!” –Aditi Kothari. CEO of PotPie.ai

“An exceptional group of Agent founders sparking ideas that will redefine how consumers and businesses interact on the Internet. Still Day 0, and it’s super exciting to keep building together!” –Mikhil Raja, CEO of SonicJobs

Final Thoughts
The AI Agent Congress wasn’t just a meeting—it was the start of a community of innovators and visionaries, coming together to shape an emerging industry. We saw collaboration, learned from diverse experts, and began laying the foundations for the future.

Above: Post-event, we met up for burgers and beers –silicon valley style.

This is just the start. We’re excited about where this journey takes us next—with more collaboration, more representation, and more groundbreaking ideas. Stay tuned for the next gathering which is likely to be in the first half of 2025, apply to attend future AI Agent Congress events.