Of the Field

Frontrunners AI and Data Conference 2026

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rontrunners is an annual software developers conference from the Washington, DC area. The 2026 event focuses on artificial intelligence and data, bringing together developers, architects, and thought leaders for a series of technical talks and practical workshops. Attendees can expect presentations on LLMs, AI-driven development, data quality, open source A…

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14Voices
2Underwriters
0Exhibitors
14On the bill · sessions
9Companies · in total
§I

The Voices

Programmed at Frontrunners, in alphabetical order.
Antoni Borys
Co-Founder and Lead Engineer · Vortex Analytica
Chrissy Ching Mott
Managing Partner · Celertek
Courtney Yatteau
Developer Advocate · Esri
Craig Wong
Cybersecurity Developer
Danielle Maxwell
Software Engineer · Rotational Labs
Frank La Vigne
Hirenkumar Dholariya
Senior Data Engineering Architect
Jeremy Curcio
Integration Engineer · Login.gov
Jofia Jose Prakash
Architect and Enterprise Strategist
Kapil Poreddy
Mark DeRosa
Vice President of Data & Analytics · MetaPhase
Neil Chaudhuri
President of Vidya, LLC · Vidya, LLC
Sandhya Subramani
Sr. Developer Advocate
Steve Drucker
SVP/Technology · flyExclusive
§II

Underwritten By

The houses behind the program. Tiers as disclosed.
RazorX2
Rotational Labs
§III

The Programme

Selected from 14 sessions on the bill.
  • 1:00 PM

    Decoding the Globe: A Conceptual Architecture for AI-Driven Satellite Intelligence

    At Vortex Analytica, we analyze alternative data to map geopolitical risks and generate market intelligence. One of the most fascinating—and daunting—data sources in our ecosystem …

  • 10:30 AM

    AI-Powered Gamification for the Web

    AI can make gamification feel personal and responsive, without turning your app into a giant game engine. In this session, we'll build a set of small, practical features you can dr…

  • 10:30 AM

    Tiered AI Architectures: Cut Cost, Latency, and Brittleness Without Losing Quality

    Building production-grade AI agents is less about choosing the smartest model and more about designing a system that stays fast, predictable, and affordable at scale. This session …

  • 11:20 AM

    Building a Real-Time LLM Classification Pipeline for Under $0.001 Per Request

    Everyone's building with LLMs. Almost nobody's talking about what it actually takes to make them reliable, fast, and cheap enough for production, especially when the output has rea…

  • 11:20 AM

    Building with Open Source AI: A Crash Course

    Thanks to open source, in the past year, we’ve seen a fundamental change: developers and enterprises are moving away from proprietary, closed-source models. To save costs, prioriti…

  • 1:20 PM

    Codepocalypse Now: Stop Worrying and Embrace Agentic AI Development

    The "AI is coming for your job" panic is the wrong movie. Software teams just got a new kind of coworker: an agent that can read, write, refactor, test, and ship code alongside you…

  • 1:20 PM

    From Hype to Impact: How AI Is Reshaping the Way We Hire Technical Talent

    AI is no longer a future-state conversation. It is actively changing how technical teams are built, how work is structured, and how talent decisions impact the business. This sessi…

  • 2:10 PM

    Engineering Better Prompts for AI Assisted Development

    When asking AI to help refactor a method, do you get back something that runs, but would never pass review? The difference between frustrating and useful AI interactions comes down…

  • 2:10 PM

    The Promise and Peril of Model Context Protocol

    Model Context Protocol took the AI world by storm, and it has become the de facto standard for building agents. MCP offers enormous potential for automating workflows, but there ar…

Intermission
Part the Second · For the Buyer

What does it mean when 9 companies show up — and 1 bet on three roles at once?

Nine companies. one are betting more than once.

The numbers below are derived from the speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors on this page — cross-referenced into one ledger. They are the only thing here that 10times.com cannot tell you.

01Fig. 01 — Composition of the House
1All threespeak · spons · exh
1Sponsoringsponsor only
0Exhibitingexhibitor only
7Speakingspeaker only

The Triple-Threat

Rotational Labs

02Fig. 02 — The Voices, by Seniority

29% of the speakers carry senior titles — C-suite, Founder, VP, or Director-level.

  • Founder / Owner214%
  • VP-level214%
  • Engineer · IC750%
  • Other roles321%

Of 14 on the bill · classified by free-text title

03Fig. 03 — The Heaviest in the Room
  1. 01Rotational LabsSp1V
  2. 02RazorX2Sp
  3. 03Celertek1V
  4. 04Esri1V
  5. 05flyExclusive1V
  6. 06Login.gov1V
  7. 07MetaPhase1V
  8. 08Vidya, LLC1V
  9. 09Vortex Analytica1V
04Fig. 04 — By Tier
unspecified2
100% of 2