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Lukas Gentele

CEO
vCluster Labs

Lukas Gentele is the CEO & Co-Founder of vCluster Labs, a venture-backed startup virtualizing Kubernetes to enable advanced tenancy models to increase utilization, reduce cost and make Kubernetes more dynamic than ever. vCluster enables platform and infra teams to create virtual Kubernetes clusters which are as scalable and isolated as traditional clusters but much more lightweight and versatile.

Lukas Gentele

CEO
vCluster Labs

Lukas Gentele

CEO
vCluster Labs

Lukas Gentele is the CEO & Co-Founder of vCluster Labs, a venture-backed startup virtualizing Kubernetes to enable advanced tenancy models to increase utilization, reduce cost and make Kubernetes more dynamic than ever. vCluster enables platform and infra teams to create virtual Kubernetes clusters which are as scalable and isolated as traditional clusters but much more lightweight and versatile. Trusted by companies such as CoreWeave, Nscale, Adobe, and Deloitte, vCluster enables organizations to create fully isolated tenant clusters on any infrastructure, from public cloud to private clouds all the way to AI supercomputers powered by the latest GPUs. Lukas has been a keynote speaker and presenter at events such as KubeCon, DevOpsDays, ContainerConf, as well as at AWS and Kubernetes Community Days around the world.

Founders at all stages, this is your opportunity to engage directly with investors during a relaxed breakfast focused on funding. Come prepared with your questions and leave with actionable insights tailored to your brand's growth journey

Investors attending:

Author:

Tina Bou-Saba

Founder
CXT Investments

Tina Henry Bou-Saba is an investor, advisor, and entrepreneur in the consumer investment space, with a strong focus on beauty and personal care, health and wellness, e-commerce, and creators. She founded CXT Investments in 2016 to support purpose-driven entrepreneurs building the next generation of great consumer companies, including brands and enabling technology. Early investments include Beekeeper’s Naturals, Hill House Home, Kosas, Olive & June, and Saie. Tina is a thought leader and strategist whose extensive network, hands-on approach, and sharp instincts for commercial opportunities are highly regarded by investors, founders, and industry leaders. She balances strategy and investing expertise with a start-up owner mindset and a bias toward action and outcomes. A trusted partner and “first call” to entrepreneurs, Tina currently serves on the boards of Arrae, August, and Dae.

Tina is uniquely fluent across the languages of public and private markets, large corporations and start-ups, and consumer brands and technology. She has worked closely with many founders over the past decade and has collaborated with numerous leading VC and PE firms. Tina enjoys working with start-ups across a range of areas including:

  • Fundraising and financing
  • Commercial strategy and execution
  • Start-up culture and operations
  • Business model development
  • Team building and coaching
  • New business development

After starting her career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, Tina covered retail as an equity analyst at Sanford Bernstein and Berman Capital, and has broad knowledge of the industry from mass to specialty to e-commerce. As a member of the strategy team at Victoria’s Secret, Tina worked closely with VS leadership to commercialize new business opportunities and lead extensive customer research. She attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College, and Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar.

Tina is passionate about supporting female and diverse entrepreneurs and serving her community. She is proud of her many years of dedicated Board service at Safe & Sound and the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Tina lives in San Francisco with her husband and their three children.

CXT Investments: https://www.cxtinvestments.com/

Tina’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tinabousaba

Tina Bou-Saba

Founder
CXT Investments

Tina Henry Bou-Saba is an investor, advisor, and entrepreneur in the consumer investment space, with a strong focus on beauty and personal care, health and wellness, e-commerce, and creators. She founded CXT Investments in 2016 to support purpose-driven entrepreneurs building the next generation of great consumer companies, including brands and enabling technology. Early investments include Beekeeper’s Naturals, Hill House Home, Kosas, Olive & June, and Saie. Tina is a thought leader and strategist whose extensive network, hands-on approach, and sharp instincts for commercial opportunities are highly regarded by investors, founders, and industry leaders. She balances strategy and investing expertise with a start-up owner mindset and a bias toward action and outcomes. A trusted partner and “first call” to entrepreneurs, Tina currently serves on the boards of Arrae, August, and Dae.

Tina is uniquely fluent across the languages of public and private markets, large corporations and start-ups, and consumer brands and technology. She has worked closely with many founders over the past decade and has collaborated with numerous leading VC and PE firms. Tina enjoys working with start-ups across a range of areas including:

  • Fundraising and financing
  • Commercial strategy and execution
  • Start-up culture and operations
  • Business model development
  • Team building and coaching
  • New business development

After starting her career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, Tina covered retail as an equity analyst at Sanford Bernstein and Berman Capital, and has broad knowledge of the industry from mass to specialty to e-commerce. As a member of the strategy team at Victoria’s Secret, Tina worked closely with VS leadership to commercialize new business opportunities and lead extensive customer research. She attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College, and Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar.

Tina is passionate about supporting female and diverse entrepreneurs and serving her community. She is proud of her many years of dedicated Board service at Safe & Sound and the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Tina lives in San Francisco with her husband and their three children.

CXT Investments: https://www.cxtinvestments.com/

Tina’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tinabousaba

Author:

Nick Giannuzzi

Managing Partner & Co-Founder
Humble Growth

Nick Giannuzzi

Managing Partner & Co-Founder
Humble Growth

Author:

George Song

Principal
Strand Equity

George Song

Principal
Strand Equity

Author:

Julianne Kur

Principal
Alliance Consumer Growth

Julianne Kur

Principal
Alliance Consumer Growth

Author:

Kristina Lee

Vice President
Monogram Capital Partners

Kristina Lee

Vice President
Monogram Capital Partners

Author:

Deborah Benton

Founder & Managing Partner
Willow Growth Partners

Deborah Benton

Founder & Managing Partner
Willow Growth Partners
Glossary
Glossary
 

Steven Carlini

Chief AI Advocate
Schneider Electric

Steven Carlini

Chief AI Advocate
Schneider Electric

Steven Carlini

Chief AI Advocate
Schneider Electric

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated and infrastructure complexity increases, traditional approaches fall short. In this briefing Axiado CEO Gopi Sirineni introduces a hardware-anchored, AI-driven approach to platform security and system management, powered by intelligent agents embedded directly in trusted silicon and independent of the host CPU and OS. Running on our Trusted Control/Compute Unit (TCU), these agents autonomously detect, respond to, and recover from threats while optimizing system performance in real time. Learn how Axiado’s architecture transforms passive infrastructure into resilient, self-defending systems—delivering proactive protection and operational intelligence from the ground up.

Room 201

Author:

Gopi Sirineni

Founder, President & CEO
Axiado

Gopi Sirineni is a Silicon Valley veteran with four startups and almost thirty years of experience in the semiconductor, software and systems industries. As a senior executive, he has demonstrated exceptional skill at building highly efficient,
cost-effective organizations, managing them in rapidly changing environments, and bringing industry-changing technologies like Wi-Fi mesh, network-attached storage, and core network backplanes to market.

Gopi Sirineni

Founder, President & CEO
Axiado

Gopi Sirineni is a Silicon Valley veteran with four startups and almost thirty years of experience in the semiconductor, software and systems industries. As a senior executive, he has demonstrated exceptional skill at building highly efficient,
cost-effective organizations, managing them in rapidly changing environments, and bringing industry-changing technologies like Wi-Fi mesh, network-attached storage, and core network backplanes to market.

A staggering number of AI projects fail before reaching production, and the primary culprit is data. As enterprises re-architect their infrastructure to support generative, agentic, and physical AI across distributed infrastructures, the data layer is emerging as the lynch pin for success.

Learn how to architect a strategic data foundation that increases efficiency using infrastructure you already have, to simplify AI data pipelines, enable AI anywhere across any on-premises and cloud storage, and prepare for a future at a much larger scale.

Room 206

Author:

Jeff Echols

VP of Strategic Partners
Hammerspace

With a dynamic 20-year career in enterprise software, Jeff Echols has established himself as a leader in building differentiated solutions, strategic relationships, and driving joint partner success. He is currently the VP of Strategic Partners at Hammerspace, focusing on the company's AI Solutions and go-to-market strategy. His extensive experience spans enterprise and startup environments, including two IPOs and international assignments. Throughout his career at companies like WEKA, Nutanix, and CommVault, Jeff has led sales, product marketing, and corporate strategy teams, contributing to significant revenue growth and market differentiation.

Jeff Echols

VP of Strategic Partners
Hammerspace

With a dynamic 20-year career in enterprise software, Jeff Echols has established himself as a leader in building differentiated solutions, strategic relationships, and driving joint partner success. He is currently the VP of Strategic Partners at Hammerspace, focusing on the company's AI Solutions and go-to-market strategy. His extensive experience spans enterprise and startup environments, including two IPOs and international assignments. Throughout his career at companies like WEKA, Nutanix, and CommVault, Jeff has led sales, product marketing, and corporate strategy teams, contributing to significant revenue growth and market differentiation.


As AI workload demands continue to accelerate, Cloud Service Providers, System OEMs, and IP/Silicon vendors require a scalable, high-performance solution to support advanced workloads. By enhancing performance, optimizing power and cost efficiency, and promoting interoperability and supply chain diversity, the UALink 200G 1.0 Specification delivers a low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect designed for efficient communication between accelerators and switches within AI computing pods.

In this session, a panel of UALink experts will explore the latest developments in the UALink 200G 1.0 Specification and demonstrate how it enables scalable, multi-node AI architectures. Attendees will also have the chance to engage directly with the panel to discuss future applications and learn how UALink-enabled systems will lay the foundation for next generation AI/ML systems.

Room 201

Author:

Nafea Bshara

VP/Distinguished Engineer
AWS

Nafea Bshara is a vice president/distinguished engineer working on compute, machine learning, network, and storage architecture with Amazon Web Services.

Nafea Bshara

VP/Distinguished Engineer
AWS

Nafea Bshara is a vice president/distinguished engineer working on compute, machine learning, network, and storage architecture with Amazon Web Services.

Author:

Gaya Nagarajan

VP of Network Infrastructure
Meta

Gaya Nagarajan joined Meta in 2012 as Network Engineer and currently serves as the Vice President of Network Infrastructure. Based in the Bay Area, he leads the team responsible for the full networking stack and end-to-end lifecycle: from designing and building to operating one of the largest networks in the world that seamlessly connects 3+ billions of users – catering to their diverse and dynamic demands. Gaya is instrumental in ensuring the performance, robustness, scalability, and efficiency of Meta's networks within data centers and its large-scale AI clusters; global backbone (including subsea and terrestrial fiber investments) to Meta’s edge network and global CDN. Prior to his tenure at Meta, Gaya made significant contributions at Brocade, developing innovative products designed to meet the complex needs of large service providers. He holds a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Kansas, and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE) in India. Beyond his professional and academic achievements, Gaya is an avid sports enthusiast and keeps an active lifestyle: he has a passion for cricket, golf, and yoga.

Gaya Nagarajan

VP of Network Infrastructure
Meta

Gaya Nagarajan joined Meta in 2012 as Network Engineer and currently serves as the Vice President of Network Infrastructure. Based in the Bay Area, he leads the team responsible for the full networking stack and end-to-end lifecycle: from designing and building to operating one of the largest networks in the world that seamlessly connects 3+ billions of users – catering to their diverse and dynamic demands. Gaya is instrumental in ensuring the performance, robustness, scalability, and efficiency of Meta's networks within data centers and its large-scale AI clusters; global backbone (including subsea and terrestrial fiber investments) to Meta’s edge network and global CDN. Prior to his tenure at Meta, Gaya made significant contributions at Brocade, developing innovative products designed to meet the complex needs of large service providers. He holds a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Kansas, and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE) in India. Beyond his professional and academic achievements, Gaya is an avid sports enthusiast and keeps an active lifestyle: he has a passion for cricket, golf, and yoga.

Author:

Amber Huffman

Principal Engineer
Google Cloud

Amber Huffman is a Principal Engineer in Google Cloud responsible for leading industry engagement efforts in the data center ecosystem across servers, storage, networking, accelerators, power, cooling, security, and more. Before joining Google, she spent 25 years at Intel serving as an Intel Fellow and VP.  Amber is the President of NVM Express, on the Board of Directors for the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), on the Board of Directors for Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink), and the chair of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) Project. She has led numerous industry standards to successful adoption, including NVM Express, Open NAND Flash Interface, and Serial ATA.

Amber Huffman

Principal Engineer
Google Cloud

Amber Huffman is a Principal Engineer in Google Cloud responsible for leading industry engagement efforts in the data center ecosystem across servers, storage, networking, accelerators, power, cooling, security, and more. Before joining Google, she spent 25 years at Intel serving as an Intel Fellow and VP.  Amber is the President of NVM Express, on the Board of Directors for the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), on the Board of Directors for Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink), and the chair of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) Project. She has led numerous industry standards to successful adoption, including NVM Express, Open NAND Flash Interface, and Serial ATA.

Moderator

Author:

Peter Onufryk

Fellow
Intel

Peter Onufryk is a Fellow at Intel Corporation. His research interests include IP and data center architecture along with UALink, NVMe, universal chiplet interconnect express (UCIe). Peter received his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rutgers University.

Peter Onufryk

Fellow
Intel

Peter Onufryk is a Fellow at Intel Corporation. His research interests include IP and data center architecture along with UALink, NVMe, universal chiplet interconnect express (UCIe). Peter received his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rutgers University.