Encord Launches Long Horizon: The Physical AI Summit

Long Horizon is Encord’s inaugural Physical AI summit, built specifically to mark the advent of a new frontier; it is our thesis that the people on the Long Horizon stage are determining how intelligence enters the modern world. On October 20th and 21st, at Fort Mason in San Francisco, over 60 speakers from Waymo, Google DeepMind, Boston Dynamics, and beyond will take the stage. Day one covers robotics and day two covers autonomy. Here's a first look at what will be on stage.

Encord Long Horizon Physical AI Summit 2026

Day 1: Robotics

Day One covers robotics end to end - topics like humanoid manipulation, real-world deployment, and the data pipelines behind will feature in the agenda. Some highlights include:

• Opening Keynote: Deepak Pathak, CEO of Skild AI - on S1 and the shift from fine-tuning to in-context learning for robots
• Keynote: Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve - on whether frontier-model progress transfers to embodied AI and autonomous driving
• Panel: Closing the Loop, Data Flywheels for Real-World Robot Autonomy: Jason Ma (Co-founder, Dyna Robotics), Chris Paxton (AI Innovation Lead, Agility Robotics), Tye Brady (CTO, Amazon Robotics), Nitish Srivastava (Sr Director of Autonomy, Serve Robotics), Andy Lonsberry (CEO, Path Robotics)
• Panel: Real-World Motion and Perception for Humanoid Robots: Ken Goldberg (Professor, UC Berkeley, and Co-founder, Ambi Robotics), Carolina Parada (VP and Head of Robotics, Google DeepMind), Alberto Rodriguez (Director of Robot Behavior, Atlas, Boston Dynamics)
• Panel: Will World Models Eat Physical AI?: Eric Chan (Co-founder and CTO, Rhoda AI), Ashish Kapoor (CEO, General Robotics), Ivan Poupyrev (CEO, Archetype AI), Samir Menon (CEO, Dexterity)
• Panel: Do Robots Need a GPT Moment? Large Behavior Models in the Real World: Ben Burchfiel (CTO and Co-founder, Walden Robotics), Rodney Brooks (Founder, iRobot), Yunzhu Li (Co-founder, SceniX), Masha Itkina (Research Manager, TRI)

Day 2: Autonomy

Day Two covers autonomy end to end, with talks from eminent voices across defense, autonomous vehicles, and ADAS. Some highlights include:

• Opening Fireside: Autonomy, Anywhere: Sebastian Thrun, Founder of Google X and Waymo - on lessons learned from two decades building autonomous vehicles
• Panel: Fleet Intelligence at Scale, Data Flywheel for Autonomous Deployment: Thomas Kollar (Head of AI, Wayve), Matthew Fornero (Sr Distinguished Engineer, GM), Balajee Kannan (SVP of Autonomy, May Mobility)
• Panel: Scaling Navigation Systems Across Unstructured Urban Environments: Vincent Vanhoucke (Distinguished Engineer, Waymo), Tilo Schwarz (VP of Engineering, Nuro), Suthen Paradatheth (CTO, Grab)
• Panel: What It Actually Takes to Go From 10 to 10,000 Deployments: Xiaodi Hou (CEO, Bot Auto), Apeksha Kumavat (Co-founder and Chief Engineer, Gatik), Peter Schmidt (CEO, Torc Robotics), Michael Wiesinger (COO, Kodiak AI)
• Panel: One World Model, Many Machines, Foundation Models for Autonomy: Arne Stoschek (Director of AI, Archer Aviation), Luc Vincent (Chief R&D Officer, Nexar), Drago Anguelov (VP of AI, Waymo), Michael Benisch (VP of AI, Motive)
• Panel: Autonomy in Contested Environments: Matt George (CEO, Merlin), Dan Magy (CEO, Firestorm), Devesh Upadhyay (CTO, Saab), Joe Putney (CTO, Forterra)

Workshops & Deep Dives

• "Data from the Line: Instrumenting a Live Automotive Plant for Robot Learning": Daniel Burrows, Head of Data Platform, Mind Robotics
• "Robots You Can Train on the Job": Jonathan Scholz, CEO, Reimagine Robotics
• Hand Dexterity Workshop: Andrea Esposito, Hand Development Lead, Foundation
• "10 Lessons of How Evaluation-Driven Iteration Scaled Our Perception Model": Rohit, Director of Perception, Kodiak
• "How to Enhance and Enrich Sensor Fusion Data": Kaustubh Khanke, Senior Product Manager,  Siemens

Media in Attendance

• The Information
• Financial Times
• TechCrunch
• Business Insider
• Reuters
• CNBC
• Bloomberg
• The Washington Post
• IEEE Spectrum
• Crunchbase

The Details

Long Horizon is the first Physical AI Summit, running October 20th and 21st at historic Fort Mason on the San Francisco waterfront. Day One is Robotics. Day Two is Autonomy - come for one day or stay for both.

Tickets are limited, and with 60+ speakers and the industry's biggest names in one place.

Get yours here: https://encord.com/long-horizon/