Each year, the Samsung CEO Summit provides a forum for leading innovators, investors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to explore cutting-edge technologies that are shaping our lives and future.

At our 5th annual Summit, the topic was the Convergence Era, in which atoms and bits—the physical and digital realms—are merged to yield new innovations to tackle global challenges in life sciences, global sustainability, and more.

Following an opening greeting from Francis Ho, SVP and Managing Director of Samsung Catalyst Fund, Young Sohn, Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer, Samsung Electronics, and Chairman of the Board, HARMAN, took the stage to introduce the promise and challenges of the Convergence Era.

The 2019 Samsung CEO Summit then welcomed presentations from Greg Kovacs, CTO at SRI International and Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University; Megan Smith, CEO of shift7 and the third CTO of the United States; Jeremy Bailenson, Director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and co-founder of Strivr; Kunle Olukotun, co-founder of SambaNova Systems and Professor of EE and Computer Science at Stanford; and Jungsang Kim, co-founder and CSO of IonQ and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Duke University, in a fireside chat with Young Sohn.

Francis Ho closed the event’s agenda by recapping highlights from all the speakers.

Click here to watch videos of the 2019 Samsung CEO Summit speakers.

Following the presentations, the invitation-only attendees visited demos by Samsung portfolio companies and other innovative startups displaying examples of the latest advances in cutting-edge innovations including training through immersive VR, personal 3D avatars that act as digital identities, advanced speech technology, 3D interactive holographic surgical imaging and trapped-ion quantum computing.

Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) at Samsung CEO Summit

As a special extra for this year’s Samsung CEO Summit, we welcomed the three startup winners of the Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) San Francisco regional competition, timed to coincide with the CEO Summit. The three regional winners—agtech companies Advanced Animal Diagnostics and NovoNutrients and cleantech company Green Dot Bioplastics—were announced on stage at the event and also had demo space.

Attendees and speakers took full advantage of the opportunity to meet and talk in person at the event, while perusing the demos and enjoying an outstanding selection of food and beverages.

The Samsung CEO Summit offers a once-a-year forum that brings together the people behind some of the innovative technologies that are changing our world. As we conclude another gathering, we extend our gratitude to all those who worked to make the event such a success—and we’re already looking forward to the sixth Samsung CEO Summit in 2020.

Samsung CEO Summit is presented by Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center and Samsung Catalyst Fund.