The Voices Setting the Tone at AI Unleashed 2026: Day and Track Openers

Marc Benioff opens this year’s Six Five Summit — but the CEOs, executives, and product leaders who follow him each morning are the ones setting the frame for every conversation that comes after.

‍

Every day of The Six Five Summit: AI Unleashed 2026 opens with a keynote conversation with an executive whose company sits at the center of that day's story, followed by track-opening sessions from the operators building the specific technologies underneath.

‍

It's the part of The Six Five Summit that sets the tone for everything that follows — the platforms, the silicon, the agents, the networks, the security models, and the semiconductors that will shape enterprise AI over the next twelve months.

‍

Here’s who we have opening each day, each track, and why their voices matter this year.

‍

Day 1: The AI Platform Era — Tuesday, August 25

Day Opener: Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO, Snowflake

Following Marc Benioff's opening keynote, Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy will unpack why enterprise data is emerging as the true competitive moat in the agentic era. Ramaswamy has been vocal that the bottleneck for enterprise AI is no longer storage or compute — it's making the right data visible, governed, and actionable at the moment a model needs it (Six Five Media). Expect a candid conversation on intelligence as the control plane, open formats like Iceberg and Polaris, and the token economics that will decide who scales and who stalls.

AI Infrastructure Opener: John Roese, Global CTO & Chief AI Officer, Dell Technologies

John Roese opens the AI Infrastructure track. As Dell's Global CTO and Chief AI Officer, Roese has become one of the most quoted voices on the economics of digital labor and the infrastructure required to run autonomous agents in production (Dell Technologies). His opener will frame the architectural decisions — from GPU density to networking to power — that separate AI pilots from AI factories.

Data & Observability Opener: Anand Eswaran, President & CEO, Veeam

Data protection is quietly becoming an AI story, and Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran is leading that conversation. Eswaran recently described a missing "Data AI Trust Layer" that unifies security, privacy, governance, and resilience into one substrate rather than a patchwork of tools (CRN). His opener kicks off a track focused on the data foundations that make observable, trustworthy AI possible.

AI Platforms, Models & Ops Opener: Drew Bradstock, Sr. Director of Product, Orchestration & Kubernetes, Google Cloud

Drew Bradstock leads the Google Kubernetes Engine business and product management with global teams across Sunnyvale, Seattle, Toronto, Boston, and Warsaw. As the operating system for scaled AI shifts toward orchestration, Bradstock's session opens a track dedicated to how models get built, deployed, versioned, and governed — with a strong pulse on where Kubernetes fits in the agentic stack (Google Cloud).

‍

Day 2: Infrastructure and the Agentic Enterprise — Wednesday, August 26

Day Opener: Matt Murphy, Chairman & CEO, Marvell Technology

Matt Murphy has spent nearly a decade transforming Marvell into a leader in data infrastructure semiconductors. His Day 2 opener zeroes in on what he has publicly called the biggest constraint in the AI buildout: connectivity. Expect Murphy to walk through the transition from copper to optical, the state of custom silicon for hyperscalers, and how connectivity strategy is reshaping data center economics.

Connected Intelligent Edge & Networks Co-Openers: Moe Beydoun and Matt Fiedler, T-Mobile for Business

The Edge & Networks track opens with a rare co-headliner from T-Mobile for Business. Moe Beydoun, Senior Director of Product Specialist Sales, leads the national team selling T-Mobile's 5G portfolio into enterprises, while Matt Fiedler, Senior Manager of Physical and Edge AI, built T-Mobile's Physical & Edge AI business from the ground up. Together they'll explain why 5G, physical AI, and edge connectivity — recently spotlighted in T-Mobile's joint work with NVIDIA on AI-RAN — are redefining enterprise infrastructure (Six Five Media).

AI Devices Opener: Ketan Patel, President, Personal Systems, HP

Ketan Patel stepped into the president role for HP's $36B Personal Systems business in November 2025, following a two-decade rise through sales and marketing leadership at the company (CRN). Patel opens the AI Devices track with a first look at how HP is thinking about AI PCs, next-gen peripherals, and the productivity re-architecture happening on every endpoint.

Enterprise AI Software & Agents Opener: Jason Maynard, CEO, Qualtrics

Jason Maynard took over as CEO of Qualtrics in February 2026, bringing 30 years of enterprise software and capital markets experience to the experience management category (PR Newswire). His opener kicks off the Enterprise AI Software & Agents track with a fresh CEO perspective on where AI is genuinely reshaping SaaS business models — and where it isn't.

Sustainability Opener: Linda Yao, VP & GM, Hybrid Cloud & AI Solutions, SSG, Lenovo

Linda Yao leads Lenovo's AI services practice, guiding enterprises through the strategy, deployment, and — increasingly — the sustainability math behind large AI programs (WSJ Partner Content). Her session opens the Sustainability track with a pragmatic view of how hybrid AI architectures can align business outcomes with energy realities.

‍

Day 3: Silicon, Sovereignty, and the Inference Economy — Thursday, August 27

Day Opener: Gary Dickerson, President & CEO, Applied Materials

Gary Dickerson has led Applied Materials as CEO since 2013 and is widely regarded as one of the semiconductor industry's most consistent advocates for co-innovation across logic, memory, and advanced packaging (Wikipedia). His Day 3 opener will trace the semiconductor demand supercycle powering AI and where materials engineering breakthroughs unlock the next roadmap.

Cybersecurity Opener: Harman Kaur, CTO, Tanium

Harman Kaur leads Tanium's technology strategy, product management, and AI and automation roadmap — and continues to serve as a Cyber Officer in the U.S. Air Force. Kaur has been outspoken that as AI accelerates vulnerability discovery, security leaders should double down on foundational IT and security operations rather than buy their way out with new tools (Australian Cyber Security Magazine). Her opener sets a grounded, operator-first tone for the Cybersecurity track.

Semiconductors Opener: Paul Cho, President, Samsung Semiconductor U.S. / Corporate EVP, Samsung Electronics

Sangyeun "Paul" Cho leads Samsung Semiconductor's U.S. business and serves as Corporate EVP of Samsung Electronics — a seat that sits at the intersection of HBM, foundry, and the AI infrastructure buildout. Cho recently sat down with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman at NVIDIA GTC to discuss how HBM4 and next-gen memory are redefining AI infrastructure (LinkedIn), and he'll open the Semiconductors track with that same lens.

‍

Why These Voices

Every opener at AI Unleashed 2026 has been selected because they represent a specific decision point in the enterprise AI stack — data, orchestration, connectivity, devices, agents, sustainability, security, or silicon. Together, they preview the questions that Six Five analysts will spend the following sessions pressure-testing with the rest of the program.

‍

Register for free and hear from each of these openers live August 25–27, 2026.

‍