Last Updated on Thursday, 23 May, 2019 at 8:42 am by Christian Keszthelyi
After last year’s debut, the island nation will host the Malta AI & Blockchain (AIBC) Summit on 23 and 24 May, expecting to attract 5,000 delegates, 700 investors, 300 exhibitors and 100 startups to the Hilton in St Julian’s, according to a press statement sent to Business Malta. May’s event is the spring edition, with another AIBC event in the pipeline in November.
Last year’s summit brought W. Scott Stornetta, John McAfee, the Winklevoss Twins and Sophia the Robot to Malta’s shores along with 8,500 delegates. Although last year’s summit predominantly focused on distributed-ledger technology solutions and blockchain, as of this year the organisers are expanding their scope of view.
“We are moving beyond the hype by discussing not only blockchain but also AI [artificial intelligence], quantum tech, big data, and IoT [internet of things] this year,” says Eman Pulis, Founder of the Malta AI & Blockchain Summit. “Before the big show in Malta in November, we are also hosting a number of networking dinners across the world,” Mr Pulis says, referring to the end-year AIBC.
Throughout the year, the AIBC is organising a roadshow of exclusive C-level dinners entitled the Knights of Blockchain. The Knights of Blockchain dinners are “lavish invite-only events with no expense spared in the company of 200 C-level Executives from the industry”, the organisers say about the series. “I strongly believe that business is not made between companies, it is made between people,” Mr Pulis adds.
“We are moving beyond the hype by discussing not only blockchain but also AI, quantum tech, big data, and IoT this year.”
To support startups within the sector, the AIBC has also invited 100 startups to claim a booth on the expo free of charge, giving them access to 700 attending investors. “We had overwhelming feedback from all the disruptive startups that we welcomed to claim their free booth last year,” says Mr Pulis.
“However, as we had so many interesting and promising projects that we could not accommodate in the fierce competition of the available space that we had, we are happy to increase to 100 free booths this year to boost innovation and facilitate connections between startups and investors so that this sector can flourish,” he adds.
The speaker line-up for May’s summit includes world-renowned names in the AI and blockchain space, including Tim Draper; Roger Ver; Ben Parr, Co-Founder of Octane AI and world-famous author of Captivology; Patrick Chang, Director at Samsung NEXT; Tone Vays, renowned bitcoin/blockchain researcher with more than 80,000 YouTube subscribers; Brock Pierce, Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation; Alexander Borodich, Founder of Universa; Eric Van Der Kleij, CEO at Centre for Digital Revolution, and many more.
Last minute passes are still available for visitors, while exhibitors and sponsors can reach out to the organisers to explore possibilities.
