​Join us for an exciting gathering in San Francisco that connects enterprise leaders with leading startup founders! Hear insights on latest trends and innovations in AI from industry experts.

​This event is hosted by Qlay, SambaNova and Digital Garage US.

​Guest Speakers:

​Thierry Damiba is a Data Scientist and Developer Advocate at Qdrant, a popular Vector Database. Thierry helps data scientists, machine learning practitioners, and AI enthusiasts harness the full potential of AI systems, enabling them to build more powerful, personalized applications. Passionate about combining creativity with technical innovation, Thierry has developed recommendation engines, semantic caching systems, and AI-driven search platforms.

​Justin Woo is a Developer Advocate at SambaNova where he helps developers use and run open source AI models on the SambaNova Cloud. He loves to build in Python and on the side also builds, fixes and programs robots. In his spare time he loves to play Settlers of Catan and pretend to beat people at pickleball.

​Moderator:

​Tom Nakata is the Co-founder and CEO of Qlay. He previously worked as a consultant at McKinsey, building organizational and marketing strategies for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands. Tom received his B.A. in Statistics from Harvard College.

​Agenda:

• ​5​​:30 - 6:15 pm: Registration and Networking w/ Food and Drinks!​

• ​6:15 - 6:20 pm: Partner Introductions​

• ​6:20 - 6:35 pm: "The MiniCoil Sparse Retrieval Model" by Thierry Damiba, Data Scientist and Developer Advocate at Qdrant

​Description: The MiniCoil Sparse Retrieval Model introduces an innovative approach to scalable semantic search by blending the interpretability of sparse retrieval with the contextual depth of dense embeddings. Designed for high performance with minimal computational overhead, MiniCoil strikes a balance between efficiency and semantic richness.

• ​6:35 - 6:50 pm: "Vibe coding using Open Source AI models" by Justin Woo, Developer Advocate at SambaNova

​Description: With the numerous AI tools available to aid coding, choosing the right tool and model can be overwhelming. In this talk, we'll explore the pros and cons of using open-source models for code generation, comparing different tools in a live demo. By the end of this talk, you'll have a better understanding of how to leverage open-source models to enhance your coding workflow and take your coding skills to the next level – or should we say, elevate your 'Vibe coding' game?"

• ​6:50 - 7:05 pm: Panel Discussion with the guest speakers, moderated by Tom Nakata, Co-founder and CEO of Qlay

• ​​​7:05 - 7:10 pm: Announcements

• ​7:10 - 8:00 pm: Networking

​​​Hosts:

​​​Qlay is a Global Engineer Hiring Platform. We help startups source, screen and hire top-tier engineers from around the world. Book a quick intro call to learn how you can scale your development without ruining your cash flow!

​SambaNova is a Palo Alto–based company that is delivering a new hardware architecture for AI that scales beyond the GPU. This new hardware powers SambaNova Cloud, which is available as a service for developers to easily integrate the best open-source models with the fastest inference speeds. Whether you are building AI agents or chatbots, fast inference speeds are a MUST for your end users to enable seamless real-time experiences. Get started in minutes with the latest and best open-source models, such as DeepSeek R1 671B, on SambaNova Cloud for free today.

​Digital Garage US is a technology incubator that bridges global markets and industries. By leveraging its diverse international network, Digital Garage US empowers startups, creators, and businesses to expand and innovate on a worldwide stage.