While you were sleeping, six thousand people participated in the first artificial intelligence festival in Brazil. On October 15 and 16, the AI Festival, held by StartSe, an international business school that connects leaders to the main innovation centers of the world, brought together executives and developers around the same purpose: to understand, apply and lead the Artificial Intelligence revolution in business and society. During two days of intense programming, the festival promoted lectures, workshops and immersive experiences with national and international experts.
Ponto de partida
“People from the business world will have to understand more and more technology, and technology people will have to understand more and more business, not to get on the march of irrelevance”, warned Junior Borneli, CEO of StartSe and host of the event, which opened the festival questioning the way work and productivity are structured. “For decades we have used the same tools, in the same way. Now, we need to rewrite our culture of productivity and rebuild the way we work. While we sleep, the world changes. The future belongs to those who choose to be awake. Learning, creating and fighting for their own relevance.”
Then Ricardo Alem, leader of GenAI and Machine Learning from AWS for Latin America, projected the impact of the next technological wave. “In 2026 we will have an explosion of AI agents. Scale will break everything. Experimenting is easy, but taking to the corporate model is the real challenge. The work dynamics will be hybrid. Humans remain the creatives on call.”
Mauricio Benvenutti, partner and head of International Products at StartSe, discussed the irreversibility of artificial intelligence. “The Gutenberg Revolution affected a profession.The Revolution of Artificial Intelligence affects everyone. Whoever denies the new, risks becoming the copyist of the XXI 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 wait for those who ignore the reality.”
“In 10 years, what will be the value of what you know?” 2 Cristiano Kruel, Partner and CIO of StartSe
Each year in AI is equivalent to seven years in real life. The concept reinforces the increasingly latent importance of constant learning and attention to the signs of transformation provided 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 ability of humans to perceive it. The plane is flying at 900 km/h, but in the view that passengers have through the window, the outside world passes at a slow speed.
The second day of the IA Festival consolidated the discussion about AI as a driving force of the ongoing transformations. According to Borneli, “we are looking at AI as a tool, but it is already the system.The basis on which the next years of the economy and work will be built”. According to Piero Fransceschi, a partner at StartSe, humans will never cease to have importance in this context. “Gente will never follow machines, people will follow relevant”, he points out.
For the first time in Brazil, Chinese Manus AI, represented by Fangzhou Chen, head of corporate strategy, has expanded the vision of the next technological frontier. According to her, the future of AI goes through a transition in which models are no longer just “brains” and gain “hmans”, that is, autonomy to act. Fangzhou referred to LLMs (Large Language Models), trained artificial intelligence systems with huge 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 are perhaps already smarter than many humans, but are still just the brain.We now need to build hands for all these LLMs. The future of AI is not about how long humans spend on the product, but rather how long AI works for humans.”
Following, Ted Gola, Performance Creative Product Lead from Google, presented the “Advanced Creativity with Google AI”, showing how artificial intelligence, especially with the Gemini model, is redefining technological development and opening up new possibilities for creative experimentation.“O Gemini is the most powerful innovation we launch, 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.”, the creative potential of AI depends on how professionals reorganize their time and work practices.
Another highlight was the presentation of IBM, with the case “Customer Zero: How IBM Saved USD 3.5 billion in Productivity with Generative AI and Autonomous Agents”, which highlighted the concrete impacts of this large-scale tool.“A tecnologia is an enabler, but the essence of transformation is in business, in looking at processes, eliminating what does not make sense and automating what really improves the customer experience”, 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 of impact 70 business 1 is the impact.”
A mentalidade de aprender fazendo
Cristiano Kruel, partner and CIO of StartSe, provoked the public to turn the speech into action. In his lecture “AI Tinkery: Enough to talk, it is past time to start doing”, he explained that the term tinkery, inspired by the concept of AI Tinkery developed by Stanford University, represents the mentality of learning by doing.“er is the discipline of learning by doing. It is experimenting to test hypotheses, discover what works and turn learning into action”, he said, reinforcing that the new era of AI requires more practice, with leaders willing to err small, hit big and generate real impact.
StartSe AI Festival also brought StackSpot, Zup's GenAI multi-agent platform, as a partner and main sponsor. The brand participated in several content fronts, including the lecture “IA Agentica: the new frontier of AI”, presented by Andre Palma, Zup CEO. 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.
Tudo, ao mesmo tempo
With simultaneous plenary sessions, more than 40 certified workshops, business fair, exclusive mentoring and an environment of constant connection, the festival has consolidated itself as a space of learning and genuine exchange between professionals from different areas. The structure was designed to provide a complete experience, combining technical content, inspiration and high-level networking.
Practical workshops showed, during the two days of the event, how artificial intelligence can boost business and creativity from different perspectives. In one of the meetings promoted by Oracle, AI Engineering Senior Manager Vitor Vieira led the workshop “Oracle AI Workshop: Creating AI Agents”, on the use of intelligent agents to automate processes and transform companies into data-driven structures. Already Alexandre Messina, from Loveable, presented “How to create 10x faster businesses with AI and Loveable”, introducing the concept of vibe coding and showing how the platform allows you to create complete software without technical knowledge.
Representing FIAP + Alura for Business, Andre Maluf taught the workshop “Amplifying his creativity: how to create video and voice with AI” highlighting the role of technology as a partner of the creative process and demonstrating tools such as Google NotebookLM. Google also attended with Ted Gola at the workshop “Exclusive Mentoria: AI Journey with Google”, exploring how Gemini and NotebookLM can be used to develop complete audiovisual campaigns from detailed prompts.
Uma nova jornada de aprendizado
The date also marked the launch of AI Journey, a new StartSe course that inaugurates an executive training day in artificial intelligence. Exclusive only to the participants present at the festival, the program was created to prepare leaders in the face of the accelerated transformations brought by technology, promoting strategic mastery and the efficient use of new tools.
More than an event, the StartSe AI Festival symbolizes a movement of transformation. By bringing together restless minds and leaders from various industries, StartSe reinforces its mission to provoke new beginnings, anticipate trends and connect people, preparing Brazil to compete globally.The journey of artificial intelligence is just beginning, and the festival has shown that the country is ready to be the protagonist of this new era.
