MIT Decentralized AI

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)

The Future Internet of AI Agents and Why this is a New Frontier
10:30 AM – Multipurpose Room, 6th Floor
Speaker: Ramesh Raskar
The Beginning of the New Era – Internet of AI Agents
12:00 – 12:30 PM – 3rd Floor Atrium
Speakers:
  • Ramesh Raskar – MIT Media Lab
  • Anil Sharma – TCS
  • Anna Kazlauskas – Vana
  • Aditya Challapally – Microsoft
The Commerce Begins – Internet of AI Agents
12:30 – 12:55 PM – 3rd Floor Atrium
Speakers:
  • MacKenzie Sigalos – CNBC
  • Einar Braathen – CoinFund
  • Alpen Sheth – Borderless Capital
  • Daniel Barabander – Variant
  • Mark Weber – Techtonic VC
Will Enterprise Lead the Race – Internet of AI Agents
12:55 – 1:20 PM – 3rd Floor Atrium
Speakers:
  • Aaron Pressman – Boston Globe
  • Caroline Yap – ex-Google
  • Shyam Nagarajan – Hedera
  • Rajeev Wadhwa – HCL
  • Antonio Figueiredo – Salesforce
  • Zafer Sahinoglu – Mitsubishi Electric Innovation Center
Fireside Chat: The Future of Work with AI
1:20 PM – 1:30 PM – 3rd Floor Atrium
Speakers:
  • MacKenzie Sigalos – CNBC
  • Ayush Chopra – Camera Culture
  • Michael Casey – DAIS

Block A — Agentic Futures - Internet of AI Agents
1:45 – 2:45 PM – Bartos Theater(Toward the other side —look for signs)
Speakers & Topics:
  • Chris Pease – AgentiCorp: Multi-Agent Systems (next 12 months)
  • Abhishek Singh – MIT Media Lab: Nanda Protocol
  • Naman + Jon – NANDA Team: NANDA
  • Andrea Ridi – ScaleUp Labs: Agent Commerce
  • Marco Cello – Meshify: Agents for SME Operations
  • Raghu Bala – Synergetics: Agent Registries (AgentWorks Platform)
  • Anil Sharma – TCS: Human Intelligence + Decentralized Intelligence
  • Peeyush Aggarwal – Deloitte: Data Across Silos
  • Aditya Challapally – Microsoft: Edge AI
  • 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
  • Phil McMannis – Beacon Protocol: Private Data Networks
  • Ayush Chopra – Camera Culture: Large Population Models
  • Richard Blythman – Naptha: Framework for Multi-Agent Systems
  • Gabriela Torres – Sundai: A2A Payments (Radius × Sundai)
  • Gauri Gupta – Parallel Web Systems: AI Agents Future landscape
Break
2:45 – 3:15 PM
Block B – Lightning Presentations (1 min each)
3:15 PM – Bartos Theater
Presenters:
  • Alyssa Taliotis – 42os
  • Maria Gorskikh – NANDA development for startups
  • Jim Nasr – Acoer
  • Alessandro De Carli – Acurast Association
  • Liz Graham – Ada IQ
  • Levi Rybalov – Apiary (rebrand in progress)
  • Gautham Pasupuleti – Biodesign Innovation Labs, Inc
  • Lia Müller Peña – bitGPT
  • SATHYA KRISHNASAMY – ChainAim Labs: ZK-PRET
  • Matthew Blumberg – Charity Engine
  • Rahul Manikandan, Bharath Vishal G – Digital Biomedical
  • Sudhendra Kambhamettu – Dropout
  • Dave Peak – Easy Bee
  • Matthew Blumberg – Find.Bio
  • Aoife Manley – Gemsen
  • Alex G. Lee – HealthnovationAI
  • Ada – Hetu
  • Dr. Maha Achour – Kodamai
  • Erik Jespersen – MyLife
  • Vlad Duda – Nomad AI
  • Jay Ma – Nyxion
  • David S. Bennahum – ONIX
  • Marvin Tong – Phala
  • Kenric Nelson – Photrek
  • Tim Miano – Polymathic
  • Nick Trauger – Reso Network
  • Niraj Pant – Ritual
  • Swapneel Mehta – Sakhi
  • Stu Angus – Scriptome.AI
  • Tejas Gopalan – Smortr
  • Michael Goodwin – SQE
  • Cristina Grau-Vilchez – Twintual Inc.
  • Sree bhargavi balija – UFM-R
  • Agrim Mithal – Undergraduation.com
Building with Vana - An Open Protocol for Data Sovereignty
4:30 PM – Bartos Theater
Presenters:
• Anna Kazlauskas

Wed, April 16 (Internet of AI Agents)

Workshop with Working groups
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Room 633, 6th Floor, MIT Media Lab
• Kickoff at 9:00 AM
• Breakout into working groups begins at 10:00 AM

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.

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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.