{"id":429465,"date":"2026-10-16T13:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/429465\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T13:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T13:06:09","slug":"miami-ai-summit-grows-up-new-name-bigger-crowd-13b-keynote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/429465\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami AI Summit grows up: New name, bigger crowd, $13B keynote"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Miami AI Summit<\/a> opens on Oct. 23, one of its featured speakers will be a local resident who recently agreed to sell the company he co-founded to Nvidia for nearly $13 billion. That\u2019s the kind of success story that proves the city no longer needs to convince anyone it\u2019s a tech hub, said Burhan Sebin, who leads the event.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s top voice is Hugging Face\u2019s Cl\u00e9ment Delangue, who will share the story behind the deal. He\u2019s one of more than 30 speakers, from companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, Cognition, Base44 and Archie, at the daylong, curated gathering that\u2019s expected to bring together 600 to 700 founders, investors and enterprise leaders at the Loews Coral Gables Hotel. Attendees apply to attend and are selected based on their profiles.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s summit comes as South Florida\u2019s tech story hits a new gear. Citadel\u2019s Ken Griffin just pledged $2 billion to build a Carnegie Mellon campus<\/a> in Wynwood. VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)<\/a> is opening a West Palm Beach base for its $1.2 billion American Dynamism fund. And Miami-area startups raised<\/a> at least $3.14 billion in venture capital through September, on pace for the region\u2019s best year since 2022, according to PitchBook data. That funding result was helped by two $250 million raises in 2026 for Miami\u2019s AI medtech star OpenEvidence<\/a>, which is now valued at $15 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the ingredients are already here,\u201d Sebin [pictured above], eMerge Americas\u2019 chief AI officer, told Refresh Miami.<\/p>\n

eMerge Americas<\/a> is best known for its flagship tech conference, which started in 2014 and now draws some 20,000 attendees to Miami from more than 60 countries each year. In June 2025, it acquired Miami AI Hub, the community Sebin founded, and named him its first-ever chief AI officer. The move also launched the Miami AI School, which trains founders, small business owners and corporate teams to use and build AI tools, and expanded eMerge\u2019s year-round AI programming, including the summit.<\/p>\n

Hackathon kickoff<\/p>\n

The event caps a week of AI programming that opens with a 12-hour hackathon on October 17. Teams will compete in enterprise AI, finance and healthcare tracks, and more than 400 builders are expected, according to Sebin. Sponsors include Miami-Dade County, Archie, Millennium and Cognition, which are offering cash prizes and platform credits.<\/p>\n

Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, which backs both the hackathon and eMerge\u2019s Miami AI School, plans to work with winning teams on life-science problems afterwards. \u201cThey need this AI talent, so they\u2019re ready to hire these people,\u201d Sebin said.<\/p>\n

Miami AI Summit aims to give executives, founders and investors practical guidance on putting AI to work. The daylong program includes fireside chats, panels and breakout sessions on open-source AI, enterprise deployment, healthcare, national security and workforce training, plus networking time for startups and investors.<\/p>\n

Sebin wants attendees to leave the event with three things. The first is clarity. \u201cThere are new AI tools popping up every day, new AI models popping up every day,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to track all of these and cut the noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2713<\/p>\n

Check your inbox for a confirmation email.<\/p>\n

The second is practical action. The summit will run hands-on workshops led by Anthropic, Cognition, Base44, Millennium and the University of Miami, among others. A dedicated vibe-coding room will teach non-developers how to build apps, agents and websites. \u201cThe idea is the next day they can use this knowledge,\u201d Sebin said.<\/p>\n

The third is connections. The summit puts AI founders in a room with the enterprise clients they need for pilots and the investors to fund them. \u201cI\u2019m sure there will be some co-founders that will tell this story when they raise their Series C: \u2018We met at Miami AI Summit,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A community that doubled<\/p>\n

Miami AI Hub, the community Sebin started, has grown from about 4,000 members to nearly 8,000 in a year, roughly 90% of them local. Three years ago, it was the only AI community in town. \u201cRight now I can list about 20 AI communities just off the top of my head,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said what sets Miami apart from major tech hubs is that people here are early adopters. They quickly pick up new technologies such as crypto and AI, and they\u2019re good at selling the Miami vibe to the world. They are also generous with introductions. \u201cIf people cannot help you, they know someone that can help and they will introduce you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sebin knows that firsthand. He moved from Istanbul to New York, then to Miami about six years ago, during the pandemic. He found the local tech scene at a weekend hackathon run by eMerge and the City of Miami, where his team took third place with an e-learning platform. Today he leads one of the city\u2019s largest AI communities. He met his wife here and hopes to raise his kids in the 305.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiami is home,\u201d he said. \u201cWe owe this city a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Scenes from 2025\u2019s Miami AI Summit. Photos provided by eMerge Americas<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:<\/p>\n

\"Adriana<\/a> <\/p>\n

Adriana Brasileiro is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist and communications strategist based in Miami. She has reported and edited for Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the Miami Herald, covering business, technology, climate and Latin America. A former communications leader at Meta, she is especially interested in South Florida\u2019s startup ecosystem, artificial intelligence and the people using innovation to solve real-world problems. Send pitches to abrasileiromia@gmail.com.<\/p>\n

\"Adriana<\/a>Latest posts by Adriana Brasileiro (see all<\/a>) \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Miami AI Summit opens on Oct. 23, one of its featured speakers will be a local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-429465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}