Straight from the event, AI Agent Conference founder Simon Chan joins theCUBE + NYSE Wired co-host Gemma Allen to dissect the emerging enterprise imperative of agentic AI. Chan explains how the AI Agent Conference is designed to bridge the widening gap between AI builders and business buyers, offering a platform to spotlight use cases where AI agents are making measurable operational impact. With the conference scaling 5x year over year, it’s clear industry leaders are hungry for answers on how to move from experimentation to deployment.
The conversation explores what agentic AI actually means beyond the hype – its implications for enterprise productivity, trust and hybrid human-AI teaming. Chan shares candid observations from the investor's seat, including why domain-specific insight trumps serial founder status, how governance and credibility shape market readiness, and why the term “hybrid work” is taking on a whole new meaning. With New York City as the backdrop, the May 2026 event aims to convene builders, investors, and C-suite decision-makers ready to rewire workflows and rethink AI-powered business models.
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Simon Chan, AI Agent Conference
Irina Denisenko, chief executive officer of Knox Systems, features in this episode of theCUBE's Mixture of Experts series in partnership with NYSE Wired. As part of the lead-up to the AI Agent Conference, Denisenko shares the journey behind Knox Systems and discusses emerging trends in cloud security and artificial intelligence (AI). Hosted by Gemma Allen, this episode sheds light on applications of AI and cloud innovations in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
In an engaging session with Gemma Allen of theCUBE, Irina Denisenko details their path to establishing Knox Systems as a pioneer in expedited Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) cloud services. Denisenko's experience as a co-founder of Class.com propels them to tackle government complexities, providing crucial insights into cloud security standards and the importance of minimizing time and cost investments for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. The discussion highlights theCUBE Research’s ongoing exploration of AI and technology developments guided by trusted hosts.
Denisenko notes that the key to navigating structural challenges in achieving FedRAMP compliance lies in leveraging AI-driven cloud management. They emphasize the critical nature of real-time monitoring and rapid responsiveness in cloud security, which Knox Systems uniquely delivers to its prominent clients such as Adobe and Armis. The conversation underscores the strategic significance of Knox Systems’ services, empowering SaaS vendors with cutting-edge technology and facilitating secure government collaborations.
play_circle_outlineReviving Connections: The Significance of the AI Agent Conference in the Post-Pandemic Tech Ecosystem for Networking and Knowledge Sharing
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play_circle_outlineNeed for executive understanding of agentic AI’s impact on business operations.
Straight from the event, AI Agent Conference founder Simon Chan joins theCUBE + NYSE Wired co-host Gemma Allen to dissect the emerging enterprise imperative of agentic AI. Chan explains how the AI Agent Conference is designed to bridge the widening gap between AI builders and business buyers, offering a platform to spotlight use cases where AI agents are making measurable operational impact. With the conference scaling 5x year over year, it’s clear industry leaders are hungry for answers on how to move from experimentation to deployment.
The conversa...Read more
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Why was the AI Agent Conference created, and what differentiates it from other AI conferences?add
How do AI agents (agentic AI) transform enterprise operations?add
What is the AI Agent Conference, who is it for, and what are its main goals and themes?add
>> Welcome back to theCUBE here at our studio in the New York Stock Exchange. This is our Mixture of Expert series with NYSE Wired. And today we're going to talk to Simon Chan, producer and founder of the AI Agent Conference. Welcome, Simon.
Simon Chan
>> Hello, Gemma. Good to meet you.
Gemma Allen
>> So one thing we know about tech is that the tech ecosystem love a conference. I have spent many, many days in Vegas wondering what day of the week it was, what time it was. I think we've all been there, right?
Simon Chan
>> There's so many AI conferences nowadays.
Gemma Allen
>> So many. And I think for a while we thought maybe in person conferences, I mean, certainly pandemic, post-pandemic, would they really make the comeback they originally had? But it seems to me they certainly have. Tell me a little bit about the AI Agent Conference, which we're, by the way, very excited to partner with you on in May of this coming year.
Simon Chan
>> Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me here and so excited to partner with New York Stock Exchange, Wired and theCUBE for the AI Agent Conference. Yes, I see a lot of in person events coming back after the pandemic. People want to come together. When I talk to the founders, I ask them, "Hey, what's your calendar like this year?" Some of them told me, "Oh, I'm going to 30 conferences, 40 conferences this year." But AI Agent Conference, the reason why we create yet another AI conference is, yes, I see events where they can bring the top technologists, AI founders coming to talk about what's possible, what's available, what will be the future of AI. But I think what the industry is missing right now is, okay, now enterprise companies, key industries, the executives are hearing about AI, agentic AI every day, but what does that mean? How do they transform the business? How do they transform the enterprise operations with AI? So the key of AI Agent Conference is to bring these decision makers from key industries to mix directly with the creators of this latest AI technology.
Gemma Allen
>> I think it's so important because the term agentic and AI have become very interchangeable, somewhat convoluted, if I can speak candidly for a second in that there's a bit of a catchall happening right around two spaces that are exceptionally complex in terms of what they can or cannot deliver for companies and customers. So what we hear all the time is a lot of companies come on to talk about the product and we ask them for use cases. Tell me about a way in which an agentic workflow has truly transformed your business. And it's challenging because like anything, you need customer testimonials, you need to match it with reality. So I think it's actually a great idea to connect these two dialogues to actually say, "Here's what's really worked for us on a product perspective and at a company perspective."
Simon Chan
>> Yes, yes, absolutely. We hear agentic AI, AI agents a lot these days. I think there are two ways to look into it. First of all, well, we the tech industry are really good at coming up with amazing terms.
Gemma Allen
>> Buzzwords.
Simon Chan
>> Buzzwords. Yes. Like data science, big data, machine learning, deep learning, now agentic AI, LM and all this, right? Well, but I think I'm particularly excited about this new wave of AI technologies and I think something's new here. In the last decade, I built a machine learning platform, got acquired by Salesforce, became the Einstein platform.
Gemma Allen
>> I mean, incredible.
Simon Chan
>> It's a really fun journey, exciting company. What we're seeing in the industry was large enterprises, large companies, if they have big data sets, if they have the machine processing power, they can actually do a lot of predictions. They can do a lot of analysis. That's what we call the predictive AI, predictive analytics. But if you look at the last, I would just say last two years, what's happening is there's some true AI breakthrough, the disruptions in the market where AI is no longer just accessible by the big companies. Now you see people using LLM, you see people using ChatGPT at home, right? Doing things like planning for a dinner, advising and things like that. What's happening here is AI is going through a phases where it's accessible by enterprise, now it becomes consumerized, but suddenly enterprise is looking into it. Okay, what's happening? What is going on? Where's this all this productivity coming from? And I think agentic AI, I don't know if it will be called agentic AI next month or next week, right? But the transformational point is now in the last century, in the last 20 years, software mainly was the system of records. It's the workflows that users can interact through a browser. You do your work through a browser, you create workflows. That's wonderful. Agentic AI agentic system is the system that we believe can make decisions by itself, take actions by itself, and interact with your human teams. And this is super, super exciting and transformational for every industry.
Gemma Allen
>> So it's an additional muscle with huge amounts of capability that you can integrate across many of your workflows and tasks at all levels. From a thematic perspective, we talk a lot about agentic workflows, right? And there's all sorts of ways in which that is also impacting industry and investment. We think about the cyber risk, for example, the automation that that can bring, what it means for SaaS broadly. We see a lot more SaaS vendors coming into the space, but are they in a way cutting work from other SaaS vendors? What are you kind of seeing? When you think about the teams and the companies that your investment firm invest in, what are the kind of key spaces you're kind of really honing in on?
Simon Chan
>> Every company can utilize Agentic AI and companies that can operationalize agentic AI into the workflows will have a structural advantage in the coming years. They will be able to get lower costs, they will be able to get higher throughput, they will be able to make better decisions. So I think the question is not really about which company or which industry will be able to apply AI is how. Now, start seeing companies saying, "Oh, this is our human workforce. How can we create the AI agent workforce to team up together?" So this is the new type of hybrid work companies are talking about. We're not talking about like in person or remote hybrid work. We're talking about very intelligent humans and very productive AI working together.
Gemma Allen
>> Together. You know that they say that some of the most successful companies don't necessarily have customers, they have hostages, right? And we have certainly seen the evolution of tech whereby large incumbent players have really dominated the market for a number of reasons for annuity licensing because true up in terms of deciding to double down on stock investment is sometimes more commercially savvy than it is to go to a new player. We see all of these different kind of market fundamentals play out, right? In your space, when you're looking at your investment portfolio and you're thinking about new players into these markets and into these customer segments, how open and I guess available do you think the market is for new thinking and disruptors versus like 10 years ago?
Simon Chan
>> Trust interestingly become the key points of this AI revolution. I think in the past a lot of startups, founders thinking, okay, if I can move fast, if I can brick things, move fast, create the latest technology, now I get the first mover advantage. Agentic AI, AI in general is different. I'm running a VC fund called Firsthand VC. I intentionally invest in experienced executives and founders who are building new companies. And I think the way that companies take care of not just the technology, but the governance models, the guardrail, how do you integrate the technology into enterprise companies will be very crucial because AI is not just creating a new business service or business functions, right? Agentic AI is trying to get into your existing workflows. Sometimes maybe even just transform your workflows. It work with your human employees, your team members, and the trust is very, very important this time.
Gemma Allen
>> Share more about the profile of those founders. Are they second, third, fourth time founders? You say experienced people who have seasoned days in industry. What are you looking for? And again, are these people you've known in your network a long time, is this quite parochial in practice?
Simon Chan
>> Yes. Experience is an oversimplified term. I'm actually very excited about founders with unique domain understanding. If you come from the security background, if you have been working with large companies in the security space, and then you see, hey, if we apply latest technology into this space, we can create something very, very different. Then these are the founders I'm looking for. So not necessarily second time, first time founders, but if they're first time founders, but they have very unique insights into the domain, like in commerce, in software, in workflows, in productivity, those are the founders I'm really, really interested in talking to.
Gemma Allen
>> And I guess with that domain experience comes the opportunity to solve niche lived problems, right? Many of them have probably lived the problems that they're now solving for.
Simon Chan
>> Yes.
Gemma Allen
>> So the AI Agent Conference in May, give me a sense of what we can expect, what sorts of conversations we can look forward to hearing, even anyone in particular who might take the stage?
Simon Chan
>> Yes. AI Agent Conference is the first ever event 100% dedicated to agentic AI.
Gemma Allen
>> Okay. Wow.
Simon Chan
>> We built this for enterprises who are looking to apply AI into productions. A lot of companies looking at Agentic AI in the last several months, and I think they're ready to move from pilots into productions. And when we talk to these enterprise executives, they're thinking a few things, right? They're thinking, "Okay, how can we build Agentic AI? How can we buy Agentic AI products or services?" That's why the conference, we divide it into three core themes. The first one is Agentic Engineering. We bring in the creators of these AI technologies, the founders of these technologies to come and talk about what is possible and how companies can apply these technologies into the development workflow. We also have a theme called Agentic Enterprise, which is a place where CFO, CMO, head of sales can learn, okay, in this horizontal enterprise functions, sales, customer service, marketing, finance, legals and all this, what we can do? How should they plan? How should they think about the workforce and how should they think about the interaction between AI and the company? The third one I think is super interesting is called Agentic Industries. And this is why this conference has to happen in New York City. New York is the hub for global businesses for the key industries like financial services, healthcare, commerce, logistics, and all this. So beyond the horizontal business functions, companies are looking at the use cases for their specific industries like healthcares, clinical work, clinical workflows. How can we apply agentic AI into these processes? So we also have the track for a specific industry. So we're bringing in the real decision makers and also the pioneers, executives who have been trying different playbooks to apply AI into the fields and they're very generous. They're coming to share the playbook. Frankly, I don't think many people have a complete proven playbook at this time, but this is where the conversation should happen.
Gemma Allen
>> So two days in New York City in May, you are connecting great builders with buyers to talk about all of the wonderful ways in which Agentic AI can transform businesses for the better.
Simon Chan
>> Exactly. We'll be May 4th and 5th right here in New York City.
Gemma Allen
>> And we'll be there.
Simon Chan
>> Thank you.
Gemma Allen
>> And just to say too, Simon, in terms of the growth of this conference, I know you mentioned when we chatted off camera, last year it was 500 people. This year it'll be 2000 people. Am I right?
Simon Chan
>> It will be four to five times bigger.
Gemma Allen
>> Amazing.
Simon Chan
>> We're seeing really, really big demand from the engineers, the builders, the executives, the founders, investors, all trying to learn about enterprise agentic AI. So this will be very, very interesting year.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, let's hope the sun shines in May in New York. Look forward to seeing you then.
Simon Chan
>> Looking forward to it. Thank you so much.
Gemma Allen
>> Thanks so much for coming on.
Simon Chan
>> Thank you.
Gemma Allen
>> I'm Gemma Allen coming to you from theCUBE studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. This is our Mixture of Experts program with NYSE Wired. Thanks so much for listening.
Gemma Allen