AI x Crypto Expo 2026 - 10-Day Innovation Series
( Note: AI x Crypto Expo 2026 will be fully online - we welcome sponsored venues from the community. I can't send out updates until Luma restores access to the blasts. )
Relevant Hackathon links:
Planet ZekNova shared gaming experience: https://medallionxln.com/zeknova/
Contribute to ZekNova's code base: medallion-xln/zeknova-shared-gaming-experience
Join the livestram Day 2: https://medallionxln.substack.com/publish/live-stream/284988
Hackathon onboarding instructiions: https://medallionxln.substack.com/p/emergency-deployment-order-zeknova
Prepare the Planet
Humanity has discovered a new world capable of sustaining life—but the planet is unstable, unfinished, and rapidly becoming uninhabitable.
A specialized crew of Space Monkeys, supported by autonomous AI machines, has been deployed ahead of the human fleet. Their mission: transform this untamed world into a functioning civilization in only 10 days.
They must build the intelligence, infrastructure, financial systems, culture, governance, and defenses humanity will need to survive.
Each day marks a new stage of planetary development. Every challenge reflects a real frontier facing AI, blockchain, robotics, creators, founders, investors, and policymakers.
The Mission Begins
10 Days to Prepare a Planet for Humanity
Days 1–3 — Build the Planet
Hackathon teams deploy the systems humanity will depend on, including energy, artificial intelligence, communications, robotics, water, digital identity, and decentralized infrastructure.
Days 5–8 — Design Civilization
Speakers, founders, investors, creators, and policymakers determine how intelligence, ownership, culture, capital, and governance should operate in this new world.
Day 9 — The Allocation
Selected founders present their technologies to the Planetary Allocation Council for investment, strategic partnerships, and real-world deployment.
Day 10 — Humanity Arrives
The entire ecosystem comes together for a final networking experience designed to activate the new civilization and welcome humanity’s arrival.
DAY 1-3 — BUILD THE PLANET HACKATHON - JULY 17-19
Builders, designers, and developers collaborate to create next-generation AI, autonomous systems, and decentralized technologies.
Over four days, teams will form, build, and refine their solutions with support from expert mentors, then showcase their innovations to judges, investors, and industry leaders for awards, recognition, and potential partnership opportunities.
Rules:
Participants will use AI agents to build and expand a procedurally generated version of Planet ZekNova.
Choose one of four biomes—Forest, Desert, Highlands, or Arctic—each offering unique resources, challenges, and strategic advantages.
The team with the most advanced and functional biome by Day 4 wins.
We don't have any prizes unless someone wants to sponsor the hackathon. Instead you'll win street cred. Which is a email blast to our massive network of builders and investors.
Winners will be selected by the governamce system. Voted on by all AI x Crypto Expo attendees.
Scout Planet ZekNova
DAY 4 — FRONTIER INTELLIGENCE - JULY 20
Days 4–8: Speaker Series
Four days of keynotes, panels, workshops, and expert conversations exploring the technologies and systems shaping the next generation of civilization.
Bharathi Raja Ramachandra Bose
Vice President, Genpact
Talk: What Are Consulting Companies Doing in the AI Revolution?
Bharathi explores how consulting firms are helping enterprises move from AI experimentation to scalable deployment. The session will address enterprise architecture, data modernization, responsible governance, workforce transformation, intelligent copilots, and measurable business value.
Anupriya Ramraj
CEO and Co-Founder, Vaultzy
Talk: AI Agents, Blockchain & the Future of Human Credentials
Anupriya explores how agentic AI, blockchain, and verifiable digital credentials can create a trusted foundation for the AI era. The session will examine applications across employment, education, healthcare, financial services, and government, with a focus on trust, accessibility, and opportunities for underserved communities.
Deepali Gosain
Founder and CEO, Ferendis
Workshop: Is Your AI High-Risk? A Hands-On Compliance Classification Workshop
Deepali guides founders and product teams through classifying real AI use cases using the EU AI Act as an anchor. Participants will identify applicable requirements across SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, and related frameworks, prioritize key controls, and leave with a documented first-pass compliance plan.
Himanshu Goel
AI Researcher, Independent AI Researcher
Talk: Beyond Hallucinations: Building Trustworthy RAG Systems for Finance and Crypto
Himanshu examines how RAG systems can produce confident but ungrounded answers in high-stakes financial and crypto environments. He will share architectural methods for improving retrieval accuracy, reducing embedding costs, and building more trustworthy AI systems.
DAY 5 — BLOCKCHAIN STACK - JULY 21
Fernando Jia
Co-Founder and CEO, Intelligence Cubed (i³)
Talk: Make AI Auditable: Watermark Provenance as the Payment Rails for AI
Fernando explores how watermark-based provenance, on-chain attestations, and automated settlement can transform AI outputs into verifiable economic transactions. The session examines attribution, usage-based billing, derivative ownership, and automated royalties.
Srinivasan Sriram
Founder & CEO
Talk: Unlocking DeFi Liquidity for RWAs
Srinivasan explores how emerging infrastructure can unlock DeFi liquidity for tokenized real-world assets. The session will examine KYC restrictions, custody-related tax implications, and the financial plumbing needed to help RWA holders access liquidity while using yield-generating assets as collateral.
Vadim Khramov
Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Edge Capital Investment Management Ltd
Talk: Beyond Beta: Institutional Yield Strategies in Digital Assets
Vadim explores how institutional allocators are moving beyond passive crypto exposure into market-neutral, liquid, and risk-adjusted yield strategies. The discussion will address portfolio construction, capital efficiency, liquidity deployment, custody, and regulated structures.
Karnika Yashwant
Founder, KEY Difference
Talk: AI Agents Are the New Degens
Karnika examines what happens when autonomous agents begin routing liquidity, managing yield, rebalancing portfolios, evaluating protocols, and executing trades around the clock. The session explores the implications for trust, permissions, reputation, risk, and market infrastructure.
DAY 6 — CREATOR ECONOMY - JULY 22
Manish Jain
Founder and Thinker, SystemsWay Academy
Talk: Understanding Understanding: The One Skill Creators Need in the Age of AI
Manish explores why the most valuable skill in the AI era may no longer be accessing knowledge, but determining whether what we believe we understand is genuine understanding. The session challenges creators and builders to distinguish reliable knowledge from pseudo-understanding, persuasive explanations, and confidently presented nonsense.
Payal Motwani
Principal Technical Program Manager, Amazon AGI
Talk: Catastrophic Risk Assessment in Foundational Models and Their Applications
Payal presents an executive framework for identifying hazardous AI capabilities, quantifying model risk, establishing lifecycle red lines, and preparing escalation, mitigation, and shutdown procedures before critical thresholds are crossed.
Shivam Gupta
Software Development Engineer, Amazon Web Services
Talk: Building Production AI Systems at Scale: Lessons for the Next Generation of AI and Web3
Shivam explores what it takes to move AI systems from prototypes into reliable, secure, and scalable production environments. The session will examine cloud-native architecture, MLOps, observability, automated evaluation, model monitoring, operational resilience, and the growing role of generative AI and autonomous agents in modern infrastructure.
Yamen Hawit
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Nebula
Talk: A Better Alternative to Free Music
Yamen explores how digital ownership, investment infrastructure, and secondary markets could create a more sustainable music economy. The session examines streaming-era value dilution and the potential to transform music into an investable asset.
Panashe Sivindani
Founder, Flamelily Foundation and MyMansiesAI
Talk: Identity as Infrastructure: Trust, AI, and the Future of Data Ownership
Panashe explores why identity, data provenance, and permissioning are becoming essential infrastructure for AI and blockchain systems. The session will examine practical applications of verifiable credentials, decentralized identifiers, digital wallets, blockchain-based attestations, and privacy-preserving data systems across financial services and healthcare.
DAY 7 — POLICY AND SCALE - JULY 23
Hila Lauterbach
Co-Founder, 10X GTM
Talk: From Conviction to Traction: Building GTM Systems That Turn Vision Into Predictable Revenue
Hila explores how companies can turn buyer insight, product conviction, and cross-functional alignment into repeatable go-to-market systems. Attendees will learn how to connect leadership, product, marketing, and sales around buyer truth to create predictable growth.
Manish Jain
Founder and Thinker, SystemsWay Academy
Talk: Sense-Making Nonsense: Why Policymaking in Social Systems Is Hard
Manish explores why policies that appear rational through an analytical or technical lens can backfire when applied to complex social systems. The session will examine unintended consequences, feedback loops, false learning, and why systems thinking is essential for leaders designing organizations, policies, and technologies intended to serve society.
Cleopatra Victoria, MA, MFT
Licensed Psychotherapist and Workplace Mental Health Specialist, Executive Psychotherapy
Talk: On Fire: Fueling the AI Spark Without Burning Out
Cleopatra examines the psychological pressure facing founders, executives, and technology teams operating at the center of the AI revolution. The session provides strategies for managing burnout, sustaining ambition, strengthening workforce resilience, and building healthier innovation cultures.
Deepali Gosain
Founder and CEO, Ferendis
Talk: Compliance Is the New Competitive Advantage: Governing AI in Regulated Industries
Deepali explores how AI companies can turn governance, security, and regulatory readiness into a competitive advantage. The session will examine how frameworks including SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, and the EU AI Act can accelerate enterprise sales, strengthen investor confidence, reduce risk, and create a durable foundation for growth in regulated industries.
Prof. PK — Prasanna Kumar
Senior Executive, Business Optima
Talk: AI in Regulated Industries — Finance & Legal: When the Workflow Breaks
Professor PK examines the risks that emerge when AI is inserted into financial and legal workflows that vendors describe as seamless. The session will explore integration failures, human oversight, responsibility, and liability when AI systems operate between core systems of record and high-stakes decision-makers.
Special Guest Panelists:
Rahul Varshneya — Executive Director — Morgan Stanley
Senior executive driving innovation at the intersection of financial markets, institutional strategy, and emerging technologies.
Vivian Liu is a California corporate and emerging companies attorney with more than a decade of experience spanning BigLaw, independent practice, and fractional outside-counsel roles. She advises startups and growth companies on financings, governance, strategic transactions, and commercial agreements, with an increasing focus on AI contracting, data and intellectual property rights, responsible governance, and cross-border commercialization.
Rahul Biswari
Global Executive. 25+ years experience in Operations, Transformations, Analytics, Cybersecurity & AI.
Distinguished Alumnus – Indian Institute of Management (IIM, Mumbai). MBA.
DAY 8 — THE DEAL LOUNGE - SPACE COLONY EDITION
Founders enter a high-signal environment designed to create direct engagement with investors.
A curated group of industry-specific investors will hear pitches and product demonstrations from founders operating within their areas of expertise.
DEAL LOUNGE 1: INDUSTRY AGNOSTIC
DEAL LOUNGE 2: BLOCKCHAIN, WEB3, FINACE, PAYMENT GATEWAYS
DEAL LOUNGE 3: FRONTIER AI & INFRASTRUCTURE
How It Works
Main Format: Shark Tank Style
Each company receives 5 minutes total:
2-minute founder pitch
3-minute rapid investor Q&A
1 founder vs. 4–5 aligned funds / capital partners
Real-time outcome: Pass • Follow-Up • Move to Deal Room
Top founders advance to private, closed-door Deal Room discussions with aligned capital partners.
DAY 9 — TBA
DAY 10 - THE HUMANS ARRIVE AT PLANET ZEKNOVA CELEBRATION
The final day brings the entire ecosystem together for an elevated networking experience with speakers, hackers, founders, investors, creators, sponsors, researchers, and policymakers.
This is where conversations move beyond presentations and into partnerships, investments, collaborations, and long-term relationships.
Arriving at Planet ZekNova
Planet ZekNova is a newly discovered habitable world orbiting two suns, defined by vast turquoise waters, lush alien ecosystems, towering highlands, mineral deserts, and frozen polar regions. With a breathable atmosphere, stable climate, abundant freshwater, and diverse biomes capable of supporting human life, ZekNova represents more than a distant planet—it is a potential new frontier for exploration, settlement, and civilization.
Visit Planet ZekNova
Seeking Venue Partner(s)
We’re seeking venue partners to support AI × Crypto Expo: Mission 2 — Prepare the Planet, taking place July 17–27, 2026, in San Francisco.
The 10-day program will bring together AI and blockchain founders, developers, investors, researchers, and industry leaders through a hackathon, speaker series, pitch competition, and networking finale.
Venue partners can support by hosting a full program day, providing breakout or meeting space, assisting with production and hospitality, or contributing discounted or sponsored venue access. In return, partners may receive prominent brand visibility, event promotion, speaking opportunities, ticket allocations, and direct access to our builder and investor community.
We would be grateful for any support your team can provide and would welcome the opportunity to discuss a partnership that aligns with your venue and community goals.
Thank You Sponsors
Thank You Partners
10-Day Event Architecture
AI × Crypto Expo unfolds across four connected experiences over 10-days designed to move participants from building to learning, pitching, and forming high-value relationships.
Become a Vendor and secure a Booth at AI x Crypto Expo 2026
Put your company at the center of discovery, conversation, and deal flow. Showcase your brand to investors, founders, builders, and industry leaders actively shaping the future of AI, blockchain, and emerging technology.
Workshop Table — 6 ft
A professional branded presence designed for product demonstrations, meetings, and attendee engagement.
Includes:
One 6 ft table
One branded 3 ft × 7 ft trade-show backdrop
One branded table skirt
Two chairs
Shared access to power
Pricing: Contact us for availability. Prices vary based on if vendor has table cloth & 7x4 banner already printed.
Sponsored Lounge — 15 ft × 15 ft
Create a premium destination where attendees can meet, recharge, and engage with your brand throughout the Expo.
Includes:
225 sq. ft. branded lounge
Lounge seating and café tables
Custom branded backdrop
Integrated charging hub
High-visibility sponsor placement
Investment: $12,500
Main Stage Experience — 30 ft × 20 ft
Own the Expo’s most prominent presentation environment with a fully branded, production-ready stage experience.
Includes:
Raised stage platform
Custom branded backdrop
Two 16 ft × 9 ft LED displays
Professional lighting
Premium sound package
High-impact visibility throughout the program
Investment: $30,000
Sponsor At AI x Crypto Expo 2026
As a sponsor, your brand receives sustained exposure across 10 days of high-value programming—positioned where ideas become companies, partnerships become products, and conversations become investments. From the hackathon and technical workshops to keynote sessions, pitch presentations, and executive networking, your company remains visible throughout the full innovation journey. Whether your goal is recruiting talent, launching products, generating qualified leads, supporting developers, or establishing category leadership, the Expo provides repeated access to the builders, investors, and decision-makers shaping the future.
ENSIGN — ENTRY LEVEL
Visibility + Access
Designed for emerging brands seeking to establish a credible presence within the AI × Crypto ecosystem. Ensign partners gain focused visibility and opportunities to connect with founders, builders, creators, investors, and early adopters.
LIEUTENANT — GROWTH
Engagement + Influence
Built for companies ready to move beyond brand awareness into active market engagement. Lieutenant partners receive deeper access to founders, investors, developers, and decision-makers while creating meaningful opportunities for product visibility, thought leadership, and relationship building.
CAPTAIN — LEADERSHIP
Leadership + Ownership
Created for market leaders seeking category authority, high-level access, and lasting brand equity across the innovation economy. Captain partners gain a commanding presence within the Expo, with opportunities to shape programming, lead strategic conversations, and build enduring relationships with the people defining the future of AI, blockchain, and emerging technology.
Choose How You Would Like to Participate
Submit a Venue
Host one or more days of AI × Crypto Expo and introduce your space to founders, investors, technologists, creators, and industry leaders.
Submit your venue for consideration:
Open Google Form
Speaker Application
Apply to present a keynote, lead a workshop, join a panel, or contribute your expertise to the 10-day mission. Open Google Form
Sponsorship Application
Position your organization at the center of the AI × Crypto Expo through brand visibility, activations, speaking opportunities, exhibits, and strategic access to the community. Open Google Form
Vendor & Exhibitor Application
Showcase your technology, product, service, food, merchandise, or interactive experience during the expo. Open Google Form
Partnership Application
Collaborate with AI × Crypto Expo as a community, ecosystem, media, technology, education, promotional, or programming partner. Open Google Form
Volunteer Application
Join the mission crew and help support registration, guest experience, production, programming, speaker relations, media, logistics, and event operations. Open Google Form
Let's Make Great Memories
Watch Day 1 Live Stream: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/283886?utm_source=live-stream-share-button