- 15:00Arrival & field check-in · Nijō gatehouse
- 18:00Opening remarks · R. Mahboubi
- 19:30Kaiseki & table formation (no phones)
- 22:00Fireside · What are we actually doing here?
INVITATION-ONLY · CLOSED-DOOR · CHATHAM RULES
THE AI ROUND– TABLE
EDITION 25 · VOL.Ⅲ
Signal · Not · Noise
FILE · 01
THE THESIS
Every AI conference you've been to tried to broadcast. Stages. Keynotes. Sponsor booths. A thousand people clapping at a deck.
NEXUS is the opposite operation. Forty-eight practitioners — researchers, founders, policy leads, engineers building at the frontier — in one room, for three days, under Chatham rules. No livestreams. No press. No sponsors. One long conversation.
FORMAT
Roundtable · 8 per table · rotating
DEPTH
4 sessions · 90 min each · paper-led
OUTPUTS
One position paper · co-signed
ACCESS
Nominate · reviewed · 11% accept
FILE · 02
PROGRAM · 3 DAYS
- 09:00Session Ⅰ — Alignment at Scale · paper-led
- 11:30Session Ⅱ — Post-Transformer Horizons
- 14:00Rotation · tables re-seat
- 15:00Session Ⅲ — Synthetic Provenance
- 17:30Walk · Philosopher's Path (optional)
- 20:00Long dinner · no agenda
- 09:30Session Ⅳ — Governance · no borders
- 12:00Lunch · breakaway pods
- 14:00Position paper · co-drafting
- 16:30Close · next edition announced
- 18:00Dispersal
FILE · 03
VOICES · PARTIAL ROSTER
Dr. Mira Takahashi
Principal Researcher · Advanced Systems Lab
Stanford · Palo Alto
focus / interpretability · sparse autoencoders
Jae-won Park
CEO · Umbrella Compute
Seoul · Tokyo
focus / inference economics · custom silicon
Amara Odili
Director · AI Policy Cell
OECD · Paris
focus / cross-border governance
Dr. Yonas Gebre
Fellow · Autonomous Systems
MIT · Cambridge
focus / embodied reasoning · robotics
Irina Kovač
Partner · Kovač Ventures
Berlin · SF
focus / frontier capital · closed moats
Lucas Féron
Author · Latent: A Field Guide
Independent · Montréal
focus / representation theory · essays
Dr. Priya Raghavan
Chief Scientist · Noema Labs
Bangalore · London
focus / multi-agent architectures
Emin Yılmaz
Head of Frontier Research
Polaris AI · Istanbul
focus / post-transformer architectures
Mattea Bianchi
Distinguished Engineer
Meridian Systems · Milan
focus / neuromorphic · analog compute
Dr. Samuel Okafor
Director · African AI Observatory
Lagos · Nairobi
focus / language equity · low-resource
Hana Sørensen
Product Lead · Tensile
Copenhagen
focus / interface · agentic workflows
Dr. Reza Mahboubi
Program Chair · NEXUS
Kyoto · Tehran
focus / ethics · convening
+ thirty-six fellows · announced under embargo
FILE · 04
VENUE · KYOTO
A converted machiya near Nijō-jō.
Paper walls. Tatami rooms. A cedar-lined salon for forty-eight, a rock garden wired with low-latency fibre, a kitchen run by the chef behind Takumi · 匠. Twelve private rooms for the fellows; the rest of the city as annex.
Arrival via Kyōto Station · 15 min by black car · transport arranged on confirmation.
LAT
35° 00′ 42″ N
LON
135° 45′ 05″ E
ELEV
56 m
TZ
JST · UTC+09
CLIMATE
24°C · 68%rh · kaeru season
LANG
JP · EN simultaneous
FILE · 05
APPLY · NOMINATE
You'll need a nomination.
NEXUS is closed-door by design. Two serving fellows, plus the program chair, have to sign off. If you're on the list, you already know someone who can do this.
If you're not on the list but think you should be — write to us. Tell us what you'd bring to the table. We read every one.
END OF TRANSMISSION
See you in Kyoto.
京都にて・お待ちしています
NEXUS
an independent convening · registered in JP
CONTACT
fellows@nexus-roundtable.ai
EDITIONS
Ⅰ · 2023 · Reykjavík · Ⅱ · 2024 · Lisbon · Ⅲ · 2025 · Kyoto
NEXUS//25
円卓