The Agentic Enterprise

Babak Hodjat

Babak Hodjat is the CTO for AI at Cognizant, where he leads the Advanced AI Labs, a team dedicated to bringing advanced AI solutions to businesses. Previously, he was the co-founder and CEO of Sentient, responsible for the core technology behind the world’s largest distributed artificial intelligence system. He also founded Sentient Investment Management, the world’s first AI-driven hedge fund. A serial entrepreneur, Babak has founded several Silicon Valley companies as the primary inventor and technologist. Before Sentient, he was the senior director of engineering at Sybase iAnywhere, leading mobile solutions engineering. Prior to Sybase, Babak co-founded Dejima Inc., serving as its CTO and board member, where he was the primary inventor of the patented, agent-oriented technology that powered Apple’s Siri.

Babak has authored numerous papers in fields such as Artificial Life, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, and Distributed Artificial Intelligence, and holds 39 U.S. patents. He is an expert in various AI domains, including natural language processing, machine learning, genetic algorithms, and distributed AI, and has founded multiple companies in these areas. Babak holds a PhD in Machine Intelligence from Kyushu University. He is also the author of “The Narrator,” an AI science fiction novella, and “The Konar and the Apple,” a collection of short stories.

Antoine Blondeau

Operating out of Dubai (UAE) and the United States, Antoine Blondeau is a visionary technology entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder and managing partner of Alpha Intelligence Capital (AIC), a venture capital firm investing in deep Artificial Intelligence technology companies worldwide. AIC’s investments include OpenAI, Aidoc, Envelop Risk, Higgsfield, ZeroEyes, Instadeep (sold to BioNTech), Reaqta (sold to IBM), AImusic (sold to Apple), and GetVisibility (sold to Forcepoint).

Over the past 25 years, Antoine has been dedicated to the development of Artificial Intelligence. He was the CEO of Dejima, the company whose technology powered DARPA’s foundational CALO project, which evolved into Apple’s Siri. Antoine also served as President and COO of Nasdaq-listed Zi Corporation, known for its predictive text input software embedded in hundreds of millions of devices. He was also the co-founder and CEO of Sentient Technologies, a pioneering deep AI technology startup based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Antoine has held senior leadership positions at Good Technology, Salesforce, and Sybase, and advises KKR, Pictet, and BITKRAFT Ventures. He is also the board chair of crypto.com.

In addition to his fund investments, Antoine has made over 40 personal investments in deep technology firms, including SpaceX, Epic Games, Jio Platforms, Boom Supersonic, and many others. He is a founding member and General Partner of Zinc, a social impact-focused technology startup incubator. Antoine began coding at age 11 and is the author of 4 patents.