While you were sleeping, six thousand people were participating in Brazil's first artificial intelligence festival. On October 15th and 16th, the AI Festival, organized by StartSe, an international business school that connects leaders to the world's main innovation hubs, brought together executives and developers around a common purpose: to understand, apply, and lead the Artificial Intelligence revolution in business and society. During two days of intense programming, the festival offered lectures, workshops, and immersive experiences with national and international experts.
Starting point
“People in the business world will have to understand technology more and more, and people in technology will have to understand business more and more, to avoid becoming irrelevant,” warned Junior Borneli, CEO of StartSe and presenter of the event, who opened the festival by questioning how work and productivity are structured. “For decades we’ve used the same tools, in the same way. Now, we need to rewrite our productivity culture and rebuild the way we work. While we sleep, the world changes. The future belongs to those who choose to stay awake. Learning, creating, and fighting for their own relevance.”
Next, Ricardo Alem, leader of GenAI and Machine Learning at AWS for Latin America, projected the impact of the next technological wave. “By 2026 we will have an explosion of AI agents. The scale will break everything. Experimenting is easy, but taking it to the corporate model is the real challenge. The work dynamic will be hybrid. Humans will continue to be the creative ones on duty.”
Maurício Benvenutti, partner and head of International Products at StartSe, discussed the irreversibility of artificial intelligence. “The Gutenberg Revolution affected one profession. The Artificial Intelligence Revolution affects them all. Those who deny the new risk becoming the copycats of the 21st century. The future will not be elegant, nor easy; it will be demanding. But it will be worth it. Because a promising future does not await those who ignore reality.”
"In 10 years, what will be the value of what you know?" – Cristiano Kruel, Partner and CIO of StartSe
Each year in AI is equivalent to seven years in real life. This concept reinforces the increasingly latent importance of constant learning and attention to the signs of transformation brought about by AI. The airplane window paradox was the metaphor used by Junior Borneli to explain the disconnect between the real speed of transformation and the real capacity of human beings to perceive it. The plane is flying at 900 km/h, but from the passengers' perspective through the window, the outside world passes by at a slow speed. "We have to start practicing improving our connection between the real speed and our perception of the changes," explains Borneli.
The second day of the AI Festival solidified the discussion about AI as a driving force behind ongoing transformations. According to Borneli, “we are looking at AI as a tool, but it is already the system. The foundation upon which the coming years of the economy and work will be built.” According to Piero Fransceschi, partner at StartSe, humans will never cease to be important in this context. “People will never follow machines, people will follow relevant people,” he emphasizes.
For the first time present in Brazil, the Chinese company Manus AI, represented by Fangzhou Chen, head of corporate strategy, broadened the vision on the next technological frontier. According to her, the future of AI involves a transition in which models cease to be merely "brains" and begin to gain "hands," that is, autonomy to act. Fangzhou was referring to LLMs ( Large Language Models ), artificial intelligence systems trained with enormous volumes of textual data capable of understanding, generating, and interacting in natural language. "In the last three years, we have seen very advanced models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and others, which may already be more intelligent than many humans, but they are still just the brain. Now we need to build the hands for all these LLMs. The future of AI is not about how much time humans spend on the product, but rather how much time AI works for humans."
Next, Ted Gola, Performance Creative Product Lead at Google, presented “Advanced Creativity with Google AI,” showing how artificial intelligence, especially with the Gemini model, is redefining technological development and opening new possibilities for creative experimentation. “Gemini is the most powerful innovation we’ve launched because it gives us the ability to think far beyond what already exists. It processes information to create text, audio, images, video, sound, and music, all under one umbrella.” According to him, the creative potential of AI depends on how professionals reorganize their time and work practices.
Another highlight was IBM's presentation, with the case study "Customer Zero: How IBM Saved USD 3.5 Billion in Productivity with Generative AI and Autonomous Agents," which demonstrated the concrete impacts of this tool on a large scale. "Technology is an enabler, but the essence of transformation lies in the business, in looking at processes, eliminating what doesn't make sense and automating what truly improves the customer experience," emphasized Joaquim Campos, Vice President of Data, AI & Automation for Latin America at IBM. He stressed that AI is already part of the company's routine. "More than 70% of our processes already have some form of embedded artificial intelligence. This is the path to transforming productivity into real business impact."
The mindset of learning by doing
Cristiano Kruel, partner and CIO of StartSe, challenged the audience to transform discourse into action. In his presentation “AI Tinkery: Enough talk, it’s time to start doing,” he explained that the term tinkery, inspired by the AI Tinkery concept developed by Stanford University, represents the mindset of learning by doing. “Tinker is the discipline of learning by doing. It’s about experimenting to test hypotheses, discovering what works, and transforming learning into action,” he stated, reinforcing that the new era of AI demands more practice, with leaders willing to make small mistakes, succeed big, and generate real impact.
The StartSe AI Festival also featured StackSpot, Zup's multi-agent GenAI platform, as a partner and main sponsor. The brand participated in various content areas, including the lecture "Agentic AI: the new frontier of AI," presented by André Palma, CEO of Zup. The partnership reinforced StackSpot's commitment to supporting large organizations in creating robust and responsible technological solutions, with governance, orchestration, and an AI-first approach.
Everything, at the same time
With simultaneous plenary sessions, over 40 certified workshops, a business fair, exclusive mentoring, and an environment of constant connection, the festival has established itself as a space for learning and genuine exchange among professionals from different fields. The structure was designed to provide a complete experience, combining technical content, inspiration, and high-level networking.
Practical workshops throughout the two-day event demonstrated how artificial intelligence can boost business and creativity from different perspectives. In one of the sessions hosted by Oracle, AI Engineering Senior Manager Vitor Vieira led the workshop “Oracle AI Workshop: Creating AI Agents,” focusing on the use of intelligent agents to automate processes and transform companies into data-driven structures. Meanwhile, Alexandre Messina, from Lovable, presented “How to Create Businesses 10x Faster with AI and Lovable,” introducing the concept of vibe coding and showing how the platform allows for the creation of complete software without technical knowledge.
Representing FIAP + Alura for Companies, André Maluf led the workshop “Amplifying your creativity: how to create video and voice with AI,” highlighting the role of technology as a partner in the creative process and demonstrating tools such as Google NotebookLM. Google was also present with Ted Gola in the workshop “Exclusive Mentorship: AI Journey with Google,” which explored how Gemini and NotebookLM can be used to develop complete audiovisual campaigns from detailed prompts.
A new learning journey
The date also marked the launch of AI Journey, a new course from StartSe that inaugurates an executive training journey in artificial intelligence. Exclusive to festival attendees, the program was created to prepare leaders for the accelerated transformations brought about by technology, promoting strategic mastery and efficient use of new tools.
More than just an event, the StartSe AI Festival symbolizes a transformative movement. By bringing together restless minds and leaders from diverse industries, StartSe reinforces its mission to spark new beginnings, anticipate trends, and connect people, preparing Brazil to compete globally. The journey of artificial intelligence is only just beginning, and the festival showed that the country is ready to be a protagonist in this new era.
