Ventranet
3rd Open LLM Builders Summit
30 Sept 2026 · 10:30 – 17:00 · ETH AI Center
About this event
The 3rd Open LLM Builders Summit convenes top international researchers, infrastructure providers, and policy experts to shape the roadmap for open foundation models. Held as an official event of the Zurich AI Festival, the summit focuses on open-source initiatives, sustainable financing, and global technical collaboration.
What to expect
- Presentations on leading international open-source and open-weight model initiatives
- In-depth breakout discussions addressing long-term funding and collaboration blueprints
- Networking opportunities with global researchers, compute providers, and policymakers
Agenda
1. 08:30 - Registration & Coffee Check-in and welcome 2. 09:30 - Open-Source Initiatives Presentations from ETH Zürich, EPFL, and Open Athena 3. 10:30 - Coffee Break Networking 4. 11:00 - Open-Source Initiatives (Part 2) Talks on global models and open architectures 5. 12:15 - Open-Weight Initiatives Presentation by NVIDIA 6. 12:30 - Group Picture, Lunch & Poster Session Midday networking and posters 7. 13:40 - Calls for Collaborative Projects Insights from CSCS and Euresearch 8. 14:00 - Breakout Room Discussions Collaborative working sessions 9. 15:30 - Coffee Break & Proposal Consolidation Gathering breakout results 10. 16:00 - Discussion: Blueprints for Global Collaboration Strategic open LLM panel 11. 17:00 - Conclusions & Apéro Closing remarks and networking drinks
Who should attend
Contributors from academia, research institutions, government, and industry who are actively involved in building transparent, mission-aligned, and multilingual AI systems.
About the host
The event is organized under the Swiss AI Initiative and coordinated jointly by the ETH AI Center and EPFL AI Center, Switzerland's premier academic hubs for artificial intelligence research and innovation.
Details
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