MIT Decentralized AI Summit
Event Details
Date: April 14 - 16, 2025
Location: MIT Media Lab
75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA
The Internet of AIs with Edge Compute, Siloed Data, Agents, and Data Markets
In today's AI landscape, data, computation, and governance are centralized. Decentralized AI offers a promising alternative leveraging intelligent, network-based approaches to improve collaboration, incentives, and innovation at the edges. It offers a promising alternative enabling collaboration between distrusted, disincentivized, and disinterested entities.
AI has made remarkable strides, showcasing its vast ability to tackle large-scale challenges. These advancements open new possibilities for areas where data and knowledge are distributed across different organizations and regions—such as healthcare, climate science, and supply chain management. We highlight five essential technical opportunities: (1) enhancing privacy, (2) ensuring verifiability, (3) aligning incentives, (4) enabling orchestration, and (5) improving crowdUX. By addressing these opportunities, diverse entities can collaborate to solve global issues while still achieving their local goals. This vision of Decentralized AI encourages further dialogue and research toward a decentralized, inclusive, and resilient AI future.
| Speaker | Organization | Topic / Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations | ||
| Ramesh Raskar | MIT Media Lab | Internet of AI Agents |
| Anil Sharma | TCS | Innovation |
| Anna Kazlauskas | Vana | Open Protocol for Data Sovereignty |
| Sarmad Quadri | Last Mile AI | Enterprise-Grade LLM Evaluation |
| Aditya Challapally | Microsoft | Edge AI |
| Investability – Startups | ||
| Einar Braathen | CoinFund | |
| Alpen Sheth | Borderless Capital | |
| Investability – Enterprise Adoption | ||
| Mark Weber | Techtonic VC | |
| Rajiv Wadhwa | HCLTech | |
| Shyam Nagarajan | Hedera | |
| Agentic Futures (selected projects) | ||
| Chris Pease | AgentiCorp | Multi-Agent Systems – next 12 months |
| Abhishek Singh | MIT Media Lab | Nanda Protocol |
| Gauri Gupta | MIT Media Lab; Parallel Web Systems | Agentic AI |
| Andrea Ridi | ScaleUp Labs | Agent Commerce |
| Marco Cello | Meshify | Agents for SME operations |
| Gabriela Torres | Sundai | A2A payments (Radius x Sundai) |
| Raghu Bala | Synergetics | AgentWorks Platform |
| Peeyush Aggarwal | Deloitte | Data across silos |
| William Lindskog-Münzing | Flower Labs | Federated Learning |
| Cameron Dennis | NEAR AI | Private Agent Cloud |
| Vlad Larin | Fortytwo | Planetary-scale intelligence |
| John Donaghy | Gensyn | Network Protocol |
| Sharan Jammanahalli Mahesh | Lumif.ai | Open Infrastructure |
| Phil McMannis | Beacon Protocol | Private Data Networks |
| Richard Blythman | Naptha | Framework for multi-agent system |
Program
Mon, April 14 (MIT DecAI Summit)
-
Location: MIT Media Lab, Room 633
4:00 PM – Welcome address
• Decentralized AI updates, MIT engagement opportunities
• How to get the most from the summit
Presenters: Ramesh Raskar, Chris Pease
4:15 PM – Session with Anna Kazlauskas (Vana)
4:45 PM – How startups could monetize NANDA and explore real-world applications
Presented by: MIT Team
5:15 PM – Multi-Agent Economy Panel
Moderator: Michael Casey (Chairman, Decentralized AI Society)
Panelists:
• Toufi Saliba (CEO, Hypercycle)
• Clara Tsao (Director, Filecoin Foundation)
• Pei Chen (Executive Director, Theoriq Foundation)
5:45 PM – Closing Notes
6:00 PM – Invitational DecAI dinner sponsored by VANA
Tue, April 15 (MIT DecAI Summit at Imagination in Action)
- Keynote Talks
- DecAI Investor Panel
- Project Showcase
- Agentic Futures
Wed, April 16 (MIT DecAI Summit)
- MIT DecAI Working session for Working Groups
Past Summit
The MIT Decentralized AI Summit on October 11, 2024 focused on the potential of decentralized AI to transform various sectors. The summit addressed the limitations of centralized AI systems, particularly in areas where data and knowledge are distributed across organizations and regions, such as healthcare, climate science, and supply chain management. Key discussions highlighted five technical opportunities: enhancing privacy, ensuring verifiability, aligning incentives, enabling orchestration, and improving user experience. By addressing these areas, the summit emphasized how diverse entities can collaborate on global challenges while achieving their local objectives, promoting a decentralized, inclusive, and resilient AI future. The event also featured a project showcase, where participants presented their ventures, fostering networking and collaboration among researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors.
Important Notice (MIT Affiliates)
If you are presenting research findings that haven’t been made public, please ensure you have approval from your advisor or principal investigator, and consult your institution’s technology licensing office (for MIT folks, that’s the TLO). This prevents compromising future patent filings or violating sponsor agreements.