Powering People — Private Dinner & Fireside Chat, hosted by Teserac
From Transformers to transformers, and, most importantly, the people in between who design, deploy, operate, and maintain them.
Teserac invites you to Powering People, an invitation-only evening for data center owners and operators on November 3 in Ashburn, after day one of DCD>Connect Virginia. Teserac is the premier sponsor of the CK Soirée ’26 Season Finale (the DCD>Connect Virginia after-party), and the evening takes place as part of the Bentley Aston Martin event at Exclusive Automotive Group.
Teserac’s Founder & CEO, Kaixiang Lin, will sit down for a fireside chat with Jim Hurless (Managing Director, Data Center Solutions, CBRE) and Francis Barassi (Vice President, Enterprise Software North America, Hitachi Energy).
We’ll start with Jim’s recent point of view, which puts the problem plainly: operational complexity is growing faster than our ability to manage it. AI densities, liquid cooling, and nonstop retrofits on live sites are all arriving at once, landing on operating models built for a simpler era.
CBRE is the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm, and its Data Center Solutions team runs critical facilities for many of the largest owners and hyperscalers, from site selection and construction through 24/7 operations. When Jim says the operating model is now the constraint, it comes from a team that runs the buildings, not one that observes them.
Hitachi Energy brings the grid side of the story. Its transformers, switchgear, and HVDC systems carry power from the utility to the data hall, and it is investing $1 billion in US manufacturing, including what will be the country’s largest power transformer factory, in South Boston, Virginia. Francis leads its enterprise software business in North America.
At Teserac, we build the AI-native reasoning platform that sits between mission-critical infrastructure and the owners and operators who keep it running 24/7. Our mission is to give them back the one asset they can’t buy more of: time.
Three seats, one problem, three perspectives on the fix.
The evening is for owners, operators, and the facilities and critical-infrastructure leaders who live with the consequences when operational readiness lags behind capacity.
Come for a candid conversation about the industry’s bottlenecks before they become tomorrow’s headlines, for real solutions from people who’ve lived through them, and for the drinks, of course.
Fireside Chat
Kaixiang Lin, Founder & CEO, Teserac (host and moderator)
Jim Hurless, Managing Director, Data Center Solutions, CBRE
Francis Barassi, Vice President, Enterprise Software North America, Hitachi Energy
Agenda
6:00 PM — Private Dinner
7:30 PM — Cocktail Party opens
8:00 PM — Fireside Chat with Jim Hurless, Francis Barassi and Kaixiang Lin
9:00 PM — Cocktails and networking continue
11:30 PM — Evening concludes
Tuesday, November 3, 2026; all times EST.
Venue
Exclusive Automotive Group
45180 Russell Branch Pkwy, Ashburn, VA 20147
Hosted by Teserac as part of the Bentley Aston Martin event.
Seats are limited. Registration is subject to host approval.