AI WEEK 2026 unveils its first speakers: European Commission, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and the co-author of “Attention Is All You Need”

Europe's largest AI event returns to Milan on May 19-20 with a line-up that puts policymakers, frontier labs and the founders of the fastest-growing AI companies on the same stages.

MILAN – When AI WEEK opens its doors at Rho Fair on May 19 and 20, 2026, Milan will host the conversation that is shaping the next decade of technology. Today the organisers unveil the first names on a line-up that reads like a map of the global AI ecosystem: the institutions that write the rules, the labs that build the models and the founders who turn them into products used by millions.

Policy and research at the top of the bill

The European institutions will be on stage with Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation. Science has a strong presence too, with Pascale Fung, co-founder of AMI, Nataliya Kosmyna, research scientist at MIT, and Llion Jones, CTO and co-founder of Sakana AI and co-author of “Attention Is All You Need”, the paper that gave the world the Transformer architecture behind today's large language models. Journalist and author Karen Hao, whose book Empire of AI has reshaped the debate on the power of the industry, completes a panel of voices that goes well beyond technology.

The builders of the AI era

The companies shaping everyday AI will be there as well:

Alex Mashrabov, CEO and founder of Higgsfield
Rong Yan, CTO of HeyGen
Michele Catasta, President and Head of AI at Replit
Gian Segato, Data Science Manager for Research at Anthropic
Mark Hamilton, Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind
Advait Sarkar, Senior Researcher at Microsoft
John Abel, Managing Director EMEA of the Office of the CTO at Google Cloud
Vladimir Tsaganov, Head of AI Products and Solutions at Alibaba Cloud

An ecosystem, not just a conference

Around the stages, AI WEEK is built as a place where business happens. Arsenalia is Main Sponsor and Altermaind Tech Sponsor of the 2026 edition, while names such as Hugging Face, Lovable, ElevenLabs, Runway, AWS and Samsung are already part of the programme. Many more speakers and companies will be announced in the coming weeks.

For two days, Milan will be the place where Europe's AI community meets the people who are defining where the technology goes next. Tickets and updates are available on aiweek.it.

About AI WEEK

AI WEEK is Europe's largest event dedicated to artificial intelligence. Held every year in Milan, it brings together executives, founders, researchers, policymakers, investors and AI enthusiasts for two days of content, knowledge and networking on the concrete applications of AI and their impact on business and society.

AI WEEK 2026 – MAY 19-20, 2026 | Rho Fair, Milan, Italy
Press contact: press@aiweek.it