🚨 Officially Announcing the 2026 AI Hot 100 Summit in NYC

The Third Edition of the AI Hot 100 Summit is coming May 7th 2026 - Where AI Industry Leaders and Visionaries Converge

Author

AI Furnace
October 09, 2025

Excited to announce that we’re back for the third edition of The AI Hot 100 Summit 2026 set for May 7th, 2026 in New York City. The only AI summit built for real connections where startup innovation meets enterprise implementation.

This will be a one-day, high-signal summit where breakout founders demo live, enterprise leaders share learnings on implementing enterprise AI on the frontlines, tier-1 investors share what they’re betting on next, and operators trade shipping-ready playbooks.

True AI decision makers, innovators and implementers in one space

Tracks and themes for 2026 include: Voice AI, MCP, Agentic Infrastructure, Finance, Healthcare, and Retail.

🚀 Announcing the first speakers and brands at the AI Hot 100 Summit 

We’re thrilled to announce our first few speakers and attendees for The AI Hot 100 Summit 2026:

👉 Showcase your brand alongside the biggest companies in AI

👉 Early bird tickets are now available, grab your tickets starting from $249

The AI Hot 100 List & Report 2026 - Now Accepting Applications

The AI Furnace is curating a list of the hottest 100 AI startups from across the US and bringing them to the AI Hot 100 Summit in NYC on May 7, 2026, for a chance to get in front of Fortune 500 executives and partner level investors.

We have pre-seed to series C companies who are tier-1 VC backed and/or showing strong revenues on our list. We are now opening it up for more applicants.

Are you creating the next big AI company or know of anyone who is? Apply today!

📈 AI Venture Deals to Watch Out For 

⚒️ New AI Product Launches You Don’t Want to Miss 

  • Sora 2, OpenAI’s latest video model, it’s genuinely insane how realistic AI video is getting

  • AgentKit, OpenAI also just released a dev tool to build, deploy and optimize agents

  • Figure 3, Figure AI announced it will be releasing its newest robot on 10/9 - “the best humanoid robot the world has ever seen”

  • VidAU AI, released a tool to turn product images into scroll-stopping video ads

  • Ada.im, released an AI data analyst creating professional reports from any dataset.

  • Caesr AI, released an AI agent for automating anything on any device.

Top Jobs in AI

Join a high growth funded startup, having <100 employees, which are actively HIRING.

Julius AI ($10M seed | 2 million users in 18 months | 15 employees) - AI Data Scientist 

Retell AI ($4.7M seed | $30M ARR in 22 months | 20 employees) - AI Voice Agents for Call Centers 

Growthbook ($22.6M Series A | 20 employees) - Open Source feature flagging & A/B testing

Juicebox ($30M Series A | 14 employees | $10M ARR) - AI talent sourcing for recruiters

Hiring in AI? Get featured → [email protected] 

Upcoming Events 📅

October 15 - AIF Supper Club

Hat Box Room at Private Whiskey Club

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November 12 - AIF Supper Club

Private room at Mamazul Mexican

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December 9 - AIF Supper Club

Private room at Sicily Osteria

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👀 In case you missed it 

On July 10th, we dropped the 2025 AI Hot 100 Market Report by The AI Furnace. Here, we highlighted the Hot 100 startups building in AI in North America this year.

Once again, thanks to our board of advisors and committee of AI experts, technologists and industry vertical experts who helped us with the selection.

About The AI Furnace

The AI Furnace is a global network of 25,000+ AI founders, developers and researchers. It was started by Angela Mascarenas and Hamza Zaveri, AI founders from NYC and London who started the org to support fellow AI founders and operators building in local cities outside of Cerebral Valley (San Francisco).

📢 Interested in sponsoring? Reach out to us at [email protected] to get your brand in front of thousands of AI entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, executives, and AI leaders.