Samah Afifi
CTO at Pitchtape
Samah Afifi is the Founder of CogniFound and CTO of Pitchtape, and a technology executive with 20+ years of experience building enterprise software, AI platforms, and data systems, specializing in agentic AI, decentralized AI architectures, and AI governance. That work helps organizations build production-ready AI systems that prioritize reliability, privacy, and human control, and extends to advising startups on bringing trustworthy AI products from concept to deployment.
Talks
Data Con LA 2026
Decentralized AI: Safer, Faster, and Greener
As AI systems move from centralized clouds into personal devices, edge compute, and distributed networks, a pivotal question follows: can decentralization make AI not just more powerful, but safer, faster, and greener? Builders of personal, self-hosted AI, climate-tech and product leaders, and sustainable AI infrastructure experts examine the concrete patterns, from personal AI servers and embodied agents that keep data local, to AI-powered climate platforms, to low-carbon GPU clouds powering sovereign AI stacks, and what it takes to align incentives, protocols, and infrastructure with privacy, resilience, and sustainability.
https://youtu.be/PcgRVGy4AG4