Hardware Talks
A small gathering for CTOs and VPs of Engineering building connected and wearable products. The topic: how AI is actually being adopted across the full development workflow, from firmware to cloud.
!! Heads up: registering here is a request to join, not a confirmed spot. There are just 1-12 places in one room, and we review every request to get the right mix of engineering leaders together.
If your spot is confirmed, we’ll email you the full details: venue, address and format. Until then, please treat your spot as pending. !!
About the Evening
AI tooling is moving fast in pure software environments. Teams shipping wearables and connected devices are playing a different game.
Bringing AI into the whole product ecosystem (firmware, embedded systems, mobile apps and cloud infrastructure) is genuinely hard. Most hardware-centric teams stop at basic coding assistants and never reach real, system-wide gains.
Your host is Cristin Iosif, Founder & CEO of Salt & Pepper. I’ve spent 10+ years building full-stack engineering for connected devices, and I know how tough it is to keep hardware and firmware cycles in step with fast-moving mobile and cloud teams.
That’s why I’m hosting this private session for 10 to 12 CTOs and VPs of Engineering from the connected device space. There will be no vision slides and no vendor pitches, just an honest, peer-to-peer conversation about how engineering leaders can use AI to build better physical-to-digital products, faster.
Who It’s For
This session is curated for:
VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and Heads of Product, Hardware or Software at connected device companies.
Leaders working in consumer IoT, wearables, industrial IoT, medtech and automotive.
Companies from growth stage (Series A–C) to established mid-size organizations (50–500 engineers).
Logistics & Format
Date & Time: Saturday, 24 October 2026, 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Location: Boston (venue shared once your spot is confirmed)
Format: A private, closed-door roundtable with a guided, peer-to-peer conversation
Cost: None. The evening is fully hosted by us.
What Happened at the First Edition (June 2026)
The speakers. Enrico Santagati showed how he gave AI real access to hardware. He built MCP servers for each hardware interface, so an AI agent could drive BLE, read serial logs and debug over JTAG. A three-week task shrank to three days. His takeaway stuck with everyone: “The AI model was not the bottleneck. Building the right interfaces is.”
Sam Shames, co-founder of Embr Labs and now at Flagship Pioneering, brought the investor and company-builder view. He talked about where AI in hardware is overhyped (consumer products) and where the real opportunity is (closed-loop systems where AI senses, decides and acts). The two perspectives sparked a roundtable that ran strong for nearly two hours.