AGI Builders Meetup SF: Voice AI w/ Twilio CTO and leaders from Sierra, Phonely, Deepgram
👋 Welcome to our monthly SF meetup!
❤️ Whether you're a developer, founder, or simply curious about the future of AI, you won't want to miss these insightful talks and community demos from leading experts in the field.
🍕 Light refreshments will be available.
Agenda:
5:30 pm - 6:00 pm: Doors open and check-in.
6:00 pm - 6:10 pm: Opening
6:10 pm - 6:25 pm: Tech Talk from Etienne Denis, Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Nooks
6:25 pm - 6:40 pm: Community Demos
Ben Colman, CEO at Reality Defender
...more to come!
6:40 pm - 7:30 pm: Panel Discussion: The State of Voice AI in 2026 - featuring Twilio, Sierra, Phonely, Deepgram (see below for details)
7:30 pm - 8:00 pm: Networking
🗣 The State of Voice AI in 2026
After a decade of voice assistants that were only good for setting timers, Voice AI is finally back to the main stage.
Hear from leadership at Twilio, Sierra, Phonely, and Deepgram on why Voice AI is in hyper-growth and how to think about this new modality.
Panelists:
🎙️ Mark Simms, CTO at Twilio
Mark is the Chief Technology Officer of Twilio: responsible for technical design, strategy and coordination across all of Twilio's products and infrastructure.
🎙️ Will Bodewes, CEO at Phonely
Will is a former PhD AI researcher and the CEO of Phonely, one of the fastest growing voice AI companies. Phonely started building low latency voice AI over three years ago now, and their AI agents power tens of millions of calls annually worldwide with some of the highest accuracy on the market.
🎙️ Ajeet Grewal, Engineer leading Voice AI at Sierra
Ajeet leads Voice AI at Sierra, where he builds enterprise voice agents that represent customer brands. Previously, he was the CEO and co-founder of Receptive AI, a voice agent startup acquired by Sierra.
🎙️ Anoop Dawar, Chief Strategy Officer at Deepgram
Anoop is the Chief Strategy Officer at Deepgram, revolutionizing human-machine communication with real-time voice AI. Previously, he was a strategic leader at GitLab, Meta, Aerohive (Acq: EXTR), MapR (Acq: HPE), and Cisco.
About the hosts:
Twilio gives you the tools to connect digital experiences on any channel, full access to your customer data, and AI to work efficiently.
AGI Builders Meetup: Open stage for AI builders, researchers, and enthusiasts to share, inspire, and transform.
Note:
This event will be held in person, and due to limited capacity, registration is required for entry.
We host monthly meetups in San Francisco. Have an idea you'd like to present at future events? Please apply here.
Past participants from: