ABOUT US

The Team Behind Rise of AI

The sum of passion and vision.

Our Story

2014 Fabian Westerheide asked if Singularity is close. He wanted to discuss this topic with like-minded people and started a transhumanistic meetup group.

10 people met at cbase in early 2015 to discuss Singulartity. They had the idea to invite more people and enrich the evening with experts to give us answers.

2016 Fabian hosted the first Rise of AI evening on the topic “the Singularity might be closer than you think” (youtube). Prof. Danko Nikolic, Ehssan Dariani, Dr. Jan Klauck, Samim Winiger and Ronnie Vuine shared their views about AI, Posthumanism and SciFi. 

Later in 2016 Fabian organized the second Rise of AI meetup under the name “human coexistance with machines” (youtube videos) together with Dr. Anish Mohammed and Dr. Trent McConaghy.

Since the waiting list for the last two events had over 2000 people, Fabian realized that the interest for meetings and discussions was larger than his organizational skills.

He asked Veronika Westerheide for help. Veronika had 10 years of event experience. Both had met during Veronika’s time at Team Europe, where she organized the CEO events around the world and later had started her own high-end business event agency.

In 2016 they joined forces and initiated the 2017 Rise of AI Conference with 350 guests at the Technikmuseum Berlin (watch it on youtube).

In 2018 Rise of AI Conference changed location to the Hauptstadtrepräsentanz Berlin and had 650 guests, 3 stages and the first Rise of AI exhibition (youtube).

In 2019 Rise of AI Conference added AI Deep Dive Workshops and a 4th stage (AI Future, AI Applied, AI Evolution, AI Unicorns) for our 800 guests (youtube).

For 2020 Rise of AI Conference was planned with 2,000 guests as part of the German AI Week. Due to Covid-19 we quickly adapted new formats to connect the AI community. In April 2020 we have started the Rise of AI Virtual Chats; a series of inspiring conversations with leading minds in AI. Then in November 2020 we hosted the hybrid Rise of AI Summit with 1,800 virtual guests. 

While we continued with the Virtual Chats during 2021; we hosted the hybrid Rise of AI Conference June 2022. It was a wonderful family reunion with 160 Berlin guests and 900+ in the streams.

In May 2023 we hosted the next Rise of AI Conference; with 223 live guests and 1000+ in the streams as part of the German AI Month mAI 2023.

The 2024 Rise of AI conference was overbooked and a huge success. We had 300 guests in Berlin and 1,600 online watching our 40+ keynotes and panels live.