AI Founders, Researchers, & Investors Mixer | With HAC, SGN, 1943 & Leonis Capital
- Date
- 2025-12-18
- Location
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Host
- Singapore Global Network
About this event
AI is moving fast, but the most valuable conversations still happen in person: the quick exchange after an intro, the unexpected connection across disciplines, the investor who finally understands what you’re building, or the researcher who sees around the next technical corner. This mixer is designed for exactly that kind of high-signal room, bringing together founders, researchers, and investors working at the edge of AI, autonomy, and the broader ecosystem shaping what comes next. About the Event This is an in-person evening mixer in San Francisco for people actively building, studying, backing, and connecting around AI. With HAC, SGN, 1943, and Leonis Capital convening the room, the event is aimed at creating meaningful overlap between technical talent, company builders, and capital. Rather than a formal conference or a content-heavy panel lineup, the core format is connection-first. The value comes from being in a room where people are already operating in adjacent worlds and can move quickly from introductions to substance: product questions, research ideas, market timing, fundraising context, hiring needs, and collaboration opportunities. The event is especially relevant if you care about where AI is heading beyond surface-level trends. The tags tell the story: AI, autonomy, community, networking, and meetup. Expect a crowd interested not just in hype, but in practical applications, emerging infrastructure, frontier research, and the people turning those ideas into real companies and real bets. What to Expect The evening starts at 7:00 PM PST on Wednesday, December 17 and is built around in-person networking in a focused, social setting. You should expect a mixer atmosphere where conversations can range from highly technical to highly strategic, depending on who you meet and what you’re working on. A typical flow for this kind of gathering is straightforward and effective: Arrival and check-in Informal introductions and open networking Small-group conversations around startups, research, investing, and autonomy Ongoing opportunities to reconnect with people you want to go deeper with Because the audience spans founders, researchers, and investors, the conversations are likely to be unusually cross-functional. You may find yourself discussing model capabilities with a researcher, GTM with a founder, and conviction around a category shift with an investor all in the same night. This is not the right event to fade into the background and collect names without context. It is the right event to come prepared with a clear point of view, a concise explanation of what you’re building or exploring, and a willingness to ask thoughtful questions. The strongest outcomes usually come from a few real conversations, not dozens of superficial ones. Why Attend If you’re building in AI, access to the right room matters. A strong network can accelerate customer discovery, sharpen product thinking, surface talent, unlock pilot opportunities, and create warmer paths to capital. This mixer is built to compress that process by putting aligned people in one place. For founders, the value may be immediate: meeting early supporters, potential collaborators, future hires, design partners, or investors who understand the category you’re in. If you’re actively fundraising, preparing to raise, or simply pressure-testing your thesis, the room gives you a chance to calibrate against people who see a broad slice of the market. For researchers, this is a chance to connect your work to real-world deployment and strategic demand. You can meet founders translating research into products, investors tracking technical inflection points, and peers thinking seriously about autonomy and AI’s next wave of applications. For investors, the appeal is equally clear. Events like this surface talent and ideas earlier than polished public narratives do. You get to hear how technical and commercial builders are framing the next set of opportunities, where the friction points are, and which teams are attracting real momentum. Just as important, the mixer offers something harder to quantify but often more valuable: context. In a crowded AI landscape, context helps you tell the difference between noise and signal, between a passing trend and a durable shift, and between a good idea and a team that can actually execute. Practical Details This event takes place in person in San Francisco, USA, making it a strong fit for Bay Area founders, researchers, investors, and operators, as well as out-of-town attendees who want to plug into the local AI ecosystem while they’re in the city. The in-person format is a key part of the experience; it’s built for spontaneous conversation and stronger follow-up than you usually get online. The mixer begins at 7:00 PM PST on Wednesday, December 17. Evening timing makes it easier for people coming from work, labs, meetings, or other commitments to attend and still have enough time for substantive conversations once they arrive. To get the most from the night, it helps to arrive ready to introduce yourself clearly. A simple explanation of your company, research area, investment focus, or current interests will go a long way. If there are specific people you hope to meet, think in terms of themes rather than titles: technical collaborators, domain experts, founders in a similar stage, or investors who understand AI and autonomy. This is a meetup-style gathering, so the best approach is to be intentional but open. Come with a point of view, a few good questions, and enough flexibility to follow unexpected threads. In the right room, one conversation can change the trajectory of a product, partnership, hire, or investment thesis. That’s what this evening is built to make possible.
Who should attend
If you want to meet serious people working across AI from different vantage points, this room is for you. - You’re an **AI founder** building a company and looking for sharp conversations around product, market, hiring, partnerships, or fundraising. - You’re a **researcher or technical builder** who wants to connect with people translating cutting-edge work into products, infrastructure, or applied systems. - You’re an **investor** tracking AI and autonomy and want access to founders, technical talent, and early market perspectives in one place. - You work closely with the ecosystem as an **operator, advisor, or community builder** and want to expand your network with people actively shaping the space. - You’re especially interested in the overlap between **AI, autonomy, and real-world deployment**, not just broad industry chatter. - You value **high-signal in-person networking** and prefer meaningful conversations over transactional intros or generic meetup small talk. If you’re thoughtful, curious, and actively involved in the AI ecosystem, you’ll likely find people here worth knowing.