Who should you put on stage to talk about AI in 2026? This list answers that from our own roster. Every speaker below is represented by Prophets of AI, so you can check dates and fees for any of them with one inquiry. The list is not a ranking. It covers strategy, ethics, data, creativity and robotics, so you can match a speaker to your audience. For the full roster, see all AI keynote speakers or browse by topic.
Mo Gawdat
Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer of Google [X] and the author of Solve for Happy and Scary Smart. In Scary Smart, published in 2021, he argued that intelligent machines learn from the example we set, so the values people model matter more than the code. On stage he covers leadership in the age of AI, ethical AI and the future of work. He also hosts the Slo Mo podcast.
Jerry Kaplan
Jerry Kaplan co-founded Teknowledge, an early expert-systems AI company that went public in 1986, and then founded GO Corporation, a pen-computing company, in 1987. He has taught AI and entrepreneurship at Stanford University and wrote Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure. He brings decades of first-hand AI history to questions of ethics and responsible development, which makes him a strong choice for audiences weighing what AI should and should not do.
Stephen Ibaraki
Stephen Ibaraki founded the UN ITU AI for Good Global Summit in 2017 to point AI at the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. He is a serial entrepreneur and investor, chairman of REDDS Capital, and has received 23 Microsoft Global Awards, eight of them for AI. He advises companies, governments and startups and conducts more than 100 interviews a year with global leaders. He suits investor, innovation and executive audiences looking at AI strategy.
Ben Goertzel
Ben Goertzel is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, which uses blockchain to make AI services available on an open market. He founded the OpenCog Foundation in 2011, an open-source effort to build artificial general intelligence, and was formerly a Director of Research at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He talks about how today’s narrow AI could grow into general intelligence, and why he believes a decentralized approach serves people better.
Eric Siegel
Eric Siegel is a former Columbia University professor who helps companies deploy machine learning. He founded the Machine Learning Week conference series in 2009, which has drawn more than 17,000 attendees, and wrote Predictive Analytics and The AI Playbook. His keynotes cut through AI hype, explain machine bias in predictive models, and set out how to get machine learning projects deployed. He is a practical pick for business and data audiences.
Toju Duke
Toju Duke spent ten years at Google, latterly as a Programme Manager on Responsible AI, leading programs across product and research teams with a focus on large-scale models. She founded Diverse AI to support underrepresented groups in the field and was previously UK lead for Women in AI. She wrote Building Responsible AI Algorithms, and she gives organizations practical frameworks for fairness, transparency and accountability in AI.
Stephanie Dinkins
Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist working where AI meets race, gender and social justice. In 2014 she began Conversations with Bina48, an ongoing series with a social robot, and she created Not The Only One. Her work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum and the Queens Museum, and she was the inaugural recipient of the LG-Guggenheim Award in 2023. She speaks on co-creating AI with communities, art and social imagination.
Ott Velsberg
Ott Velsberg is Estonia’s Government Chief Data Officer, overseeing the country’s data and AI policy from the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs. He is known for Bürokratt, Estonia’s national AI virtual assistant for public services, which shows how a state can deliver services through AI. He is a strong fit for government, public sector and policy audiences, and for any organization planning AI at national or enterprise scale.
Martin Wezowski
Martin Wezowski is Chief Designer and Futurist at SAP, with more than 25 years of experience across SAP, Sony Ericsson and Huawei. He coined the Humachine, his term for a symbiosis of machine intelligence and human creativity, and asks what is human and what is work in a future shaped by AI. He has been named one of Germany’s 100 most innovative minds and speaks on the future of work and technology.
Natalie Monbiot
Natalie Monbiot cofounded Hour One, which grew to more than 1,000 human-backed AI avatars, and named and mapped the Virtual Human Economy. She now works with technologists and businesses on AI twins designed to amplify people rather than replace them. Her keynotes explore generative AI, digital twins and the future of work, and argue that AI’s real value lies in freeing human capacity for imagination and value creation.
Raja Rajamannar
Raja Rajamannar is a senior fellow at Mastercard and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Quantum Marketing, after 12 years as the company’s chief marketing and communications officer. He rebuilt the Priceless platform around multisensory, data-driven experiences and emerging technology. His work has become case studies at Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management. He speaks on AI strategy for marketing, brand and business leaders.
Abran Maldonado
Abran Maldonado is co-founder of Create Labs, which builds practical AI systems such as agents, workflow automation and enterprise infrastructure. An early tester and partner to OpenAI, Google AI, NVIDIA and ElevenLabs, he helped build Mastercard’s small business AI tool and created C.L.Ai.R.A., the first GPT-powered digital human of color. His keynotes cover agentic AI, generative AI and responsible adoption, with real deployments behind every example.
David Hanson
David Hanson is the founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics and the creator of Sophia. He built the first conversational android in 2005, and Sophia debuted at South by Southwest in 2016. He has created more than 50 original robots across art, research, healthcare and consumer products, and once worked as a Walt Disney Imagineer. He speaks on humanoid robotics, embodied AI and how people and machines can build relationships.
Sophia the Robot
Sophia is the humanoid robot created by Hanson Robotics, unveiled at South by Southwest in March 2016. She has appeared on 60 Minutes and The Tonight Show, addressed the United Nations General Assembly, and was named the first United Nations Innovation Champion by the UNDP. Sophia can appear on her own or alongside a human speaker. Prophets of AI books Sophia directly through Hanson Robotics, so one inquiry covers both.
How to book a speaker from this list
Send us your event date, location, audience and the topics you need through the contact form. We reply within one business day with who is available, their fee and the formats they offer. Each profile shows a fee band, and our guide to what a keynote speaker costs explains what moves the final figure.
