Masterclasses are educational experiences in which experts offer their guidance, advice, and personal viewpoint. The Radical AI Founders Masterclass brings in seasoned professionals on the future of AI development and the fundamentals of building an AI-first business. Over four modules, we host live Q&As where our Masters share their experiences building tech-first startups and scaleups. Participants gain access to these feature conversations and a set of practical seminars (“labs”) and resources designed to support researchers who want to apply their research as a business. The series wraps up in a product hackathon delivered in partnership with Cohere. 

Radical AI Founders is hosted on Slack and Zoom with hybrid in-person and video sessions.  Each session includes a live Q&A component with the weekly Master and a practical lab with relevant professionals. All accepted participants are added to the Radical AI Founders Slack community, where participants can find other researchers and like-minded technical founders from around the world. 

Successful startup founders transform our future. In the next few years, technical founders working with AI will disproportionately impact society. Yet, researchers face many barriers when applying their research to real-world problems. The Radical AI Founders Masterclass and alum community is a space to test ideas, innovate, and build on shared experiences.

Researchers and affiliates at global top-tier AI institutes looking to commercialize their research. Most registrants are doctoral students or candidates, or master’s students; but researchers at all levels may apply. The series is also open to AI practitioners and professionals looking to start their own companies. Participants should be interested in founding an AI-first company and acting in a CEO or CTO role within the company. You do not need to be a company founder to participate in this speaker series.

Participation is free.

Our 2023 Masters include Geoffrey Hinton, the Turing Award winner known as the “godfather of deep learning;” Fei-Fei Li, AI pioneer, Co-Director of the Stanford HAI and Stanford University professor; Daphne Koller, Founder on Insitro, Co-Founder of Coursera and previous Stanford University professor; Ion Stoica, Co-Founder of Anyscale, Co-Founder of Databricks and Professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley and Co-Director of AMPLab; Oliver Cameron, Co-Founder of Voyage and leader in self-driving cars; Sara Hooker, Head of Cohere For AI, and more to be announced. 

Previous speakers have included Pieter Abbeel, Co-Founder of Covariant and Director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab; Richard Socher, Co-Founder of You.com; Raquel Urtasun, Founder of Waabi; and, Aidan Gomez, Co-Founder of Cohere, amongst others. 

This series will be held with virtual and in-person attendance options from October 4th to October 25th. Key sessions are held weekly at 4:00pm Eastern, but are recorded for viewers in conflicting time zones. In collaboration with Cohere, this year’s Radical AI Founders program will include a hackathon, with winners announced November 8th, 2023.  

Masterclass 1: How to build for future  – October 4,  4:00 – 6:00pm ET

Lab 1 – October 5 at 4:00pm ET

Masterclass 2: Am I a founder? – October 11,  4:00 – 5:00pm ET

Lab 2 – October 12 at 4:00pm ET

Masterclass 3: What problem am I trying to solve?  – October 17,  4:00 – 5:00pm ET

Lab 3 – October 18 at 4:00pm ET– Hackathon registration opens and information session 

Masterclass 4: How do I build an AI product/business? – October 25, 4:00 – 5:00pm ET

Lab 4 – Hackathon with Cohere begins October 26 and closes November 4, 2023. Winners announced November 8, 2023.

The series is designed to build on each week. Participants will get the most out of the experience by attending all four sessions in sequence. However, attendance at all four sessions and labs is not mandatory.

Masterclasses can always be attended virtually. Key Master sessions are held weekly at 4:00pm Eastern, but are recorded for viewers in conflicting time zones. For those who are unable to attend the session but still wish to ask a question, we offer the option to submit questions in advance of the Q&A segment. However, please note that live attendees’ questions will be prioritized.

All Masterclass and practical lab sessions have a virtual option. Some sessions will offer limited in-person attendance at specific locations pertaining to the session. Some of our partner institutions also run in-person content related to key sessions. This includes Stanford HAI, the Vector Institute for AI, and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. Please contact the institutes directly for their programming this year. If you are an institute and would like to partner with us, please reach out to AIFounders@radical.vc and provide any relevant information.

Some of our partner institutions also run in-person content related to each session. This includes Stanford HAI, The Vector Institute for AI, and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. Please contact the institutes directly for their programming.

If you are an institute and would like to partner with us please reach out to AIFounders@radical.vc and provide relevant details. 

If you are interested in partnering with us please reach out to AIFounders@radical.vc and provide relevant details.