Announcing the 6th annual VentureBeat AI Innovation Awards at Transform 2024

Generative AI has gained significant traction across enterprises over the last year, with almost one-third of companies using gen AI regularly in at least one business function. Amidst this, VentureBeat returns on July 9 with our annual flagship event, Transform, which will focus this year on “Putting AI to Work.”

Transform, which will be a three-day in-person event, from July 9 through 11, is the premier event for enterprise technical decision-makers keen on mastering gen AI applications. This exclusive networking event dives into crucial sectors like health, finance and software, with insights from Fortune 500 leaders including Wells Fargo, Walmart and Kaiser Permanente, and innovative, emerging companies like Brex, Pinterest and Airbnb.

Attendees can expect in-depth discussions on promising AI applications, challenges in AI orchestration and enhancing AI accessibility across organizations, positioning VB Transform at the forefront of gen AI innovation.

At the July 10 in-person event in San Francisco, VentureBeat will recognize and award enterprise, innovative, visionary and inclusivity initiatives through our sixth annual VB AI Innovation Award.

The nominees are drawn from our daily editorial coverage and the expertise, knowledge and experience of our nominating committee members. Prepare to witness the trailblazers and game-changers in the realm of gen AI take center stage as we recognize their outstanding contributions.

Introducing the 2024 AI Innovation Awards nominating committee

–Jonathan Frankel is chief scientist for neural networks at Databricks, which acquired his previous startup MosaicML, a company dedicated to making it easy and cost-effective for anyone to train large-scale, state-of-the-art neural networks. Jonathan completed his Ph.D at MIT and previously earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Princeton University. He also spends a portion of his time working on technology policy on topics related to AI. He previously served as the inaugural staff technologist at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law.

–Diya Wynn is the responsible AI lead at AWS. She started and leads customer engagement globally on responsible AI. In her role, she focuses on helping organizations uncover and mitigate risks or potential unintended impacts related to AI’s development, deployment and use. She has provided responsible AI information for legislators and policymakers to help shape imminent AI regulation and policy. Earlier in her career, she worked in early-stage companies to scale products for acquisition, and in consulting. She is an author and international speaker; serves on non-profit boards; volunteers with multiple organizations; and guest lectures on responsible and inclusive technology. In 2023, she was named one of Business Insider’s top 15 people in Enterprise AI and top 100 people in AI and one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics. She also received the VentureBeat Women in AI’s Responsible AI award.

–Tonya Custis leads the Autodesk AI Lab, a team that does fundamental and applied AI research, primarily in gen AI and deep learning for CAD geometry. She has more than 15 years of experience performing AI research and leading AI research teams and projects at Autodesk, Thomson Reuters, Honeywell and eBay. She has a Ph.D. in Linguistics, a master’s in computer science, a master’s in linguistics and a bachelor’s in music.

Custis is a returning member of the nomination committee. 

“I’ve been doing AI research for 20 years, so it’s so exciting to finally see so much of what we’ve been trying to do for so long finally happening,” Custis told VentureBeat. “It’s such an exciting time to be working in AI and a privilege to serve on this committee to recognize some of the smart AI innovations and applications that are changing how we live and work.”

–Prem Natarajan is chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at Capital One. He leads the technology strategy, architecture, and development for Capital One’s enterprise data, analytics and machine learning (ML) initiatives, including advancing its AI capabilities, tools and research efforts. Natarajan previously led Amazon’s Alexa AI organization and brings more than two decades of experience leading science, technology and commercialization efforts in natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, computer vision, forecasting and other ML applications.

“It’s an honor to return to VentureBeat Transform’s AI Innovation Awards nominating committee. New approaches to AI, and increasingly gen AI, have demonstrated the potential to deliver substantial benefits and to democratize access to a broader suite of services, capabilities, and resources across the entire social spectrum than ever before,” Natarajan said. “The AI Innovation Awards are an important forum to elevate and celebrate the visionary efforts of the individuals and teams who are pushing the boundaries of Generative AI in thoughtful ways that create positive, enduring value.”

–Kalyan Veeramachaneni is principal research scientist at MIT College of Computing. He is a co-founder of DataCebo, a commercial product based on the Synthetic Data Vault (SDV). Veeramachaneni is also a principal research scientist at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. In 2015, he founded MIT’s Data-to-AI (DAI) Lab (part of MIT LIDS), where he directs a team that builds technologies that enable the development, validation and deployment of AI applications. Veeramachaneni has previously founded two other AI start-ups: Feature Labs, a data science automation company that enabled enterprises to create machine learning models from their data with automated feature engineering, and PatternEx, an AI cybersecurity company.

AI Innovation Awards categories

Generative AI Innovator of the Year

This award will go to the company that has pushed the boundaries of gen AI the furthest in the past year and demonstrated the most innovative use of the technology. The winner will have created an application, platform or service that showcases the vast potential of gen AI in a creative, impactful way.

Best Enterprise Implementation of Generative AI

This award will highlight the top enterprise company that has implemented gen AI in a truly transformative way.

The award will also be offered in categories specific to industries, including:

1. The Best Enterprise Implementations of Generative AI Award (Finance)
2. The Best Enterprise Implementations of Generative AI Award (Health)
3. The Best Enterprise Implementations of Generative AI Award (Software)

Most promising generative AI startup

This award will go to the most promising startup that has developed an innovative gen AI application and demonstrated high growth potential and has raised less than $30 million in funding.

Generative AI Visionary

This award will go to an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of gen AI through their thought leadership, research or work building foundational technologies. The winner would be judged based on the novelty and influence of their contributions, as evidenced by publications, patents or products developed.

Generative AI Diversity and Inclusion

This award will recognize the company, organization or individual that has done the most to promote diversity and inclusion in the gen AI field. This could include advancing AI ethics, making AI technologies more accessible, providing opportunities and support for underrepresented groups or using AI in a way that reduces bias and promotes social justice.

Generative AI Open Source Contribution

This award highlights the person, team or company that has made the most significant contribution to open-source tools, datasets or other resources to help advance gen AI.

Counting down to the AI Innovation Awards

We look forward to sharing a list of final AI Innovation Award nominees later this month, as well as editorial and social media coverage of nominees and winners. Awards will be presented at VentureBeat’s in-person event at Transform on July 10 in San Francisco. Stay tuned!