Moonshots

Peter Diamandis

Host and founder

Diamandis founded the XPRIZE Foundation and co-founded Singularity University, and has started more than twenty companies across space, longevity, and human performance. He trained first as an engineer, then as a physician. To the table he brings a working conviction: the largest problems are also the largest opportunities, and somebody is already building the answer.

Known for: XPRIZE · Singularity University · the books Abundance and The Future Is Faster Than You Think.

Salim Ismail

The one who names the pattern

Ismail was the founding executive director of Singularity University and wrote Exponential Organizations, the book on how small teams outrun incumbents tenfold. He ran Yahoo's internal incubator before that and now leads OpenExO. On the panel he reaches for the structure underneath a story: why an industry is about to turn over, and which players are too slow to feel it coming.

Known for: OpenExO · Exponential Organizations · serving on the XPRIZE board.

Dave Blundin

The builder and investor

Blundin founds companies, twenty-three of them so far, out of MIT's Kendall Square, and runs the venture firm Link Ventures. He built large neural networks as an undergraduate and worked on model quantization back in 1992, long before it was common. He chairs EverQuote and teaches an oversubscribed MIT class on building AI ventures. He keeps the table honest about what can actually ship, and what it is worth.

Known for: Link Ventures · founding 23 companies · chairing EverQuote (NASDAQ: EVER).

Alexander Wissner-Gross

The first-principles scientist

Wissner-Gross is a computer scientist and inventor who runs the deep-tech firm Reified. He took a triple major at MIT, finished a physics doctorate at Harvard, and won both the USA Computer Olympiad and the Intel Science Talent Search along the way. He holds two dozen patents and proposed the theory of causal entropic forces, the idea that intelligence is whatever keeps the most futures open. He is the panel's resident skeptic.

Known for: Reified · causal entropic forces · 24+ patents.