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In the rapidly transforming world of artificial intelligence, where emerging technologies are reshaping industries at an unprecedented pace, few leaders have made as profound an impact as Yuyan Duan, the founder of AI+ Founders Club. Under her vision and leadership, AI+ has grown into one of the most dynamic and influential AI entrepreneurship communities in the world — a platform where technical innovation meets entrepreneurial execution, and where founders and investors convene to shape the future of AI across sectors.
AI+ is not just another networking group. It is a carefully built ecosystem that supports founders from idea to scale, connecting them to cutting-edge technical discussions, cross-industry insights, top-tier investors, and a robust network of peers. With over 20,000 AI professionals and more than 2,000 active AI founders in its orbit annually, AI+ has established itself as a global force catalyzing AI-driven transformation.
At a time when the world stands at the cusp of an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) era, communities like AI+ are becoming essential infrastructure for the future — and Yuyan Duan is at the forefront of this movement.
The core thesis behind AI+ is simple but powerful: the most transformative AI companies of the next decade will not emerge in isolation. They will be built by founders who are deeply connected to both the scientific frontier and real-world application landscapes. Recognizing this, Duan structured AI+ as a multidisciplinary, multi-stage platform where technology creators, product innovators, investors, and operators intersect with intention.
Rather than simply organizing events for events' sake, AI+ curates every gathering to create maximum value, whether it's a private roundtable on the future of LLMs, a hands-on workshop for scaling go-to-market efforts, or a career fair matching early-stage founders with specialized engineering talent.
Every initiative is rooted in one question: How can founders not just survive, but thrive, in a world where AI capabilities and market expectations evolve faster than ever?
One of AI+’s most notable initiatives is the ABC Founders Club, a selective monthly gathering of Series A to Series C AI founders. This is not a typical demo session or pitch event. Instead, it is a closed-door environment where experienced AI entrepreneurs candidly share lessons learned, emerging technical challenges, commercialization strategies, and even fundraising tactics.
Participants come from some of the most recognizable and promising names in AI today. Founders and CTOs from companies such as Quinett, Scale AI, Zilliz, Midjourney, Cloudchef, Pika Labs, and many others routinely take part. Many of these startups are already Series B and C companies, operating at the frontier of robotics, LLM infrastructure, vector databases, video generation, agentic platforms, and real-time AI applications.
Each session is designed to foster open dialogue rather than formal presentation. In these intimate discussions, founders dissect their scaling journeys — from navigating multimodal AI challenges to iterating on humanoid robotics platforms to adapting LLMs for specialized industries. Conversations often dive deep into technical architectures, data strategies, and user acquisition models that general industry events rarely surface.
This peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, amplified by a carefully vetted network, positions the ABC Founders Club as one of the most valuable nodes in the global AI founders’ ecosystem.
While entrepreneurial tactics are critical, AI+ also understands that true leadership in AI requires staying deeply connected to the science itself. That’s why another cornerstone of its programming is the Tech Roundtables, where researchers, engineers, and technical founders engage in candid conversations about foundational AI developments.
The roundtables hosted by AI+ explore the true frontiers of AI research. Discussions on foundation models feature top researchers from leading universities and organizations, offering cutting-edge insights into the next generation of AI architectures. In robotics, engineers from Tesla Optimus and Figure AI share advancements in manipulation models, examining how humanoid robots can interact more seamlessly with the physical world. Experts in multimodal generation, including leaders from Luma AI, Midjourney, and Pika Labs, engage in debates about the future of video-generation technologies and the commercialization challenges facing generative media.
Coding agent prospects — another critical area for the next phase of SaaS disruption — are discussed by founders and technical leads from companies like MultiOn, Replit, and Augment. These conversations address not only engineering challenges but also productization frameworks, agentic action standards (such as MCP and A2A protocols), and future agent ecosystems.
Each roundtable is highly curated, often bringing together 10–20 deeply technical leaders, ensuring that the dialogue remains rigorous, forward-looking, and immediately relevant to company-building at the edge of innovation.
For founders who attend, these sessions are invaluable. They are opportunities to anticipate emerging research trends, adapt strategies early, and form partnerships with those shaping the very technologies their businesses depend upon.
Beyond foundational research, AI+ recognizes that for AI to have lasting impact, it must successfully cross the chasm into industry. To bridge this gap, AI+ organizes Industry Discussions — targeted panels and workshops connecting AI founders with domain experts, corporate innovation teams, and technical buyers.
These sessions cover a wide array of sectors. In entertainment, AI+ helped the production team behind The Wandering Earth 3 find new storytelling angles using LLMs from discussions with scientists at Stanford, Meta, and DeepMind as well as video-generation companies like Midjourney and Luma AI. In gaming, founders from Tencent, Roblox, and Riot Games explored how LLMs can be embedded into next-generation immersive experiences.
In healthcare, leaders from Intuitive Surgical, Stanford, and Harvard MD Anderson shared how AI is advancing computer vision in clinical surgery, personalized healthcare, and drug discovery pipelines. In marketing and adtech, AI+ facilitated closed-door workshops where AI SDR and CDP startup founders met with advertising executives to co-develop next-gen recommendation engines and ad targeting strategies.
Every discussion is outcome-oriented: connecting technological capabilities to genuine industry needs, identifying bottlenecks to adoption, and helping founders shape more compelling, revenue-driving AI products.
Today, over 600 scientists, founders, and industry practitioners have participated in these cross-sector discussions, demonstrating the tangible value of AI+’s approach to ecosystem building.
No startup succeeds on technical excellence alone. Access to capital, early customers, and strategic partnerships are equally critical. To this end, AI+ has cultivated one of the most robust venture and corporate networks in the AI ecosystem.
Its network spans over 150 venture funds, incubators, and corporate partners, including General Catalyst, a16z, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, Google Ventures, Microsoft Ventures, and Plug and Play.
Through partnerships with these funds, AI+ supports founders through multiple key initiatives. Its Demo Days bring together 50–100 startups and 80+ top funds in a single gathering, offering fundraising founders direct exposure to decision-makers. Career Fairs help early-stage companies rapidly connect with engineering and scientific talent from big tech and research institutions. In one case, a founder succeeded in hiring two PhD-level scientists within a day through an AI+ hiring event.
Additionally, AI+ organizes GTM Workshops where exited founders mentor early-stage teams on scaling challenges, product-market fit iterations, and international expansion — a critical area as many AI companies face the complexities of global go-to-market strategies.
Through this comprehensive support model, AI+ accelerates founder journeys across multiple dimensions: from fundraising to team-building to commercialization.
At the center of AI+’s success is Yuyan Duan’s unique leadership. A Silicon Valley-based investor, founder, and product leader, Duan combines technical expertise with a deep understanding of founder psychology and market dynamics.
Educated at the University of Michigan and Georgia Tech, Duan’s background in Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, and Management enables her to design community experiences that are not only intellectually rigorous but emotionally resonant. She has led product development efforts in big data and ML/LLM spaces, including pioneering one of the first marketing AI agents for enterprise applications.
As the author of AIGC: From 0 to 1, she has also contributed frameworks that early-stage AI builders use to navigate productization challenges, data strategy, and user adoption hurdles.
Her leadership style is characterized by a relentless focus on quality — curating every event, every conversation, and every connection with an eye toward creating tangible outcomes for members. She is deeply respected not only by founders but also by investors and researchers, who see in her a rare ability to bridge the technical, entrepreneurial, and community-building worlds.
Through AI+, Duan is doing more than just organizing gatherings. She is setting new standards for what a next-generation founders’ platform should look like in the AI age: technically sophisticated, commercially relevant, and globally connected.
As AI capabilities continue to advance — from autonomous agents and robotics to vertical-specific AI applications — the need for trusted, high-signal founder communities will only grow.
AI+ is positioned to be a permanent fixture in this future, expanding its programming, deepening its technical partnerships, and broadening its impact across more industries and global markets.
For AI founders serious about building at the frontier, and for investors seeking access to the brightest and boldest entrepreneurs, AI+ offers something rare: not just access, but advantage.
In an industry defined by velocity and volatility, Yuyan Duan and AI+ are providing what might be the most critical asset of all — a place to build the future together.
