And that’s a wrap on Ai4 2025! From August 11-13, Ai4 gathered more than 8,000 attendees in Las Vegas to learn about the latest and greatest in AI through engaging content, interactive networking, and experiential demos. With speakers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei Fei Li, executives from Anthropic, Perplexity, and more, there was no shortage of forward-looking takeaways for the next generation of AI builders.

We sat down with Daniel Lackland, Senior Director of Content at Ai4, to hear the Ai4 story, as well as his learnings from managing thousands of speakers and curating hundreds of sessions.

Learn more about Daniel, how Ai4 has evolved since its beginnings, the AI trends that will next dominate the stage, what Ai4 attendees must know, and how Daniel uses AI in his everyday, below.

Let’s take things back to the team’s beginnings! How has the Ai4 program changed since its first iteration?

Dan: Back when we started Ai4 in 2018, AI was way less cool and our event was much smaller. We first did an "AI in Finance" event in Brooklyn, New York, and even then it was clear AI was going to continue building momentum. We decided to expand and cover every industry sector and have since built the largest independently organized AI industry event in the US. The content is forever changing and evolving, since the technology is shifting so fast. It definitely keeps us on our toes!

AI Innovation is moving incredibly quickly. What are some AI trends you’re starting to see and want to feature more on stage?

Dan: As agentic AI becomes more commonplace, we will need to feature end to end use cases from organizations that are letting AI agents run complex operations across all sorts of business functions. It's quite exciting, but there is also risk involved, so we aren’t quite sure how fast this stuff will roll out at big companies. It’s going to be an interesting 12 months.

What is something you wish more attendees knew about when attending Ai4?

Dan: I think its easy to get lost in the day to day, but the reality is that whether you sell AI, make AI, or adopt AI, you are part of a little blip in history that will forever change how we all interact and work. In other words, if you are attending our event, you are making history. This matters.

How do you use AI in your everyday life?

Dan: I use it constantly - research, thinking, planning. Its sort of like my little best friend now. One sort of new use case is using OpenAI Deep research to map relationships between various entities I want to include in the event. In effect, if I want X person, but they are hard to get ahold of, using DeepResarch to figure out that X person has invested in Y company that happens to be a B2B SaaS company that probably would love our event. I can then go to A company and try to convince them to invite X person.