AI Events in DC | AI Tinkerers Meetups 2026

AI Tinkerers DC - AI Meetups, Events, and Builder Demos 2026

A promotional graphic for an 'AI Tinkerers DC Meetup' featuring a mural-style illustration of workers using giant crayons to draw on a textured wall alongside a technical diagram.. Text: AI TINKERERS
DC Meetup
With Softengi
April 9 5:30PM-8PM
prompt -> output
AI TINKERERS - DC METRO
Meetup
2 months ago

AI Tinkerers x Softengi - DC Metro Meetup - April 9th, 2026

Thursday, April 9th 5:30PM to 8PM
William Dildine Sudip Manchare Ryan Prasad Jocelyn Hernandez Chris White Kylee Schreck Paulo Gonzaga Tori Akman Lakshminarayan Shrivas Eleanor Schlick Nikhil Arethiya Joyce Nicholas Adam Sanfacon Maxwell Holmes Jabari Grubb Jake Levirne Sean Johnson Mark Griffin Rajiv Sundar Rob Runett
+130

AI Tinkerers DC hosted a technical meetup focused on live demos and deep dives into generative AI, fostering a community of engineers and researchers with sponsor support from Softengi.

A digital illustration of a robot using a flamethrower to melt a wall of ice labeled 'SNOWCRETE' in a snowy city setting with the US Capitol in the background.. Text: MEETUP - February 24th - 5:30 PM
AI テンカリー
AI TINKERERS
OPEN IN FEB
オープン
SNOWCRETE
Meetup
4 months ago

AI Tinkerers - DC Metro Meetup - February 24th, 2026

Tuesday, February 24th 5:30PM to 8:30PM
Robert Garza Sudip Manchare Elliott Miller Ricky Singh William Zhu Natalie Rex Vikrant Kulkarni Swetha Rathinavelu Saravanakumar Aleksey Inchakov Suparna Misra Raghav Thind Madhu Jalan Pranav Appani Swathi Young Dylan Hawley Sunny Muthumari Aquil Abdullah Atif Sattar Josh Frankel Ying Wang
+26

AI Tinkerers DC Metro hosted an in-person meetup for engineers and researchers to share technical discoveries and working systems, featuring live demos and discussions.

A promotional banner for an AI-related meetup, featuring event details overlaid on a dark, futuristic image of a group of people attending a presentation in a neon-lit conference room.. Text: AI TINKERERS - DC
MEETUP - NOVEMBER 11 • 05:30 PM
AI SAFETY ALIGNMENT DIAGRAMS
AI TINKERERS - DC METRO
Meetup
7 months ago

AI Tinkerers x Trilligent: November Meetup

Tuesday, November 11th, 2025 5:30PM to 8:30PM
Soheil Feizi Josh Frankel Steve Ryan Nadeen Siddiqui Alex Ditzel Eric Eldard Ramin Keene Sunny Muthumari Lucy Chen Rohit Gandrakota Jonathan Farag Joshua Chou William Horton
+130

AI Tinkerers and Trilligent hosted an in-person meetup focused on practical AI infrastructure and tooling. Approximately 70 builders attended for demo-driven discussions and networking.

An Art Deco-style promotional poster advertising a "VIP Lunch: Beyond the Buzz" event, featuring an illustration of business professionals toasting indoors with a scenic view of a neoclassical monument at sunset.. Text: VIP LUNCH BEYOND THE BUZZ MANAGING YOUR HIDDEN TECH DEBT WITH DATABRICKS AI TINKERERS DC METRO
VIP Lunch
7 months ago

AI Tinkerers VIP Lunch: Beyond the Buzz — Managing Hidden Technical Debt in GenAI Startups

Tuesday, November 4th, 2025 12PM
Jake Laes Stephen Solka Kriti Shahi Robert Garza Matt Bordas Soheil Feizi
+3

Builders discussed managing hidden technical debt in generative artificial intelligence startups during an intimate, invite-only lunch, supported by Databricks.

A promotional banner for an 'AI Tinkerers X Google: DC Metro Meetup' event, featuring large red text over a stylized dark blue background with digital matrix code effects and a silhouette of the US Capitol building.. Text: AI Tinkerers X Google: DC Metro Meetup ft. Google Cloud October 02 | DC Google Cloud AI TINKERERS
Meetup
8 months ago

AI Tinkerers x Google: DC Metro Meetup (October 2, 2025)

Thursday, October 2nd, 2025 5:30PM to 8:30PM
FARAZ Akhtar Dylan Hawley Yuan Liu Kristoph Matthews Luana Fernandes Kyle Mulka Lucy Chen Tajh Taylor Yash Manish Bobde Luca Passani Ramin Keene Gil Medrano Omkar Balekundri Henry Graves William Horton Z Liu Alex Ditzel Jignesh Shah Robert Garza Steve Ryan
+130

AI Tinkerers and Google hosted a code-first meetup for engineers, researchers, and founders to share practical AI learnings and demos, supported by Syracuse University and Google Cloud.

A man speaks at a podium to an audience in a well-lit room, with a large screen behind him displaying an article or presentation. The setting appears to be an indoor event or lecture.. Text: greg.org
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Stevens: a hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs
There's a lot of hype these days around patterns for building with AI. Agents, memories, RAG, autonomous-on-many-homesteads but the reality is, you don't need fancy techniques or libraries to build useful personal tools with LLMs.
In this short post, I'll show you how I built a useful AI assistant for my family using a [unreadable] single architecture: a single SQLite table of memories, and a handful of cron jobs for ingesting memories and sending updates, all hosted on Vercel. The whole thing is so simple that you can easily copy and extend it yourself.
Meet Stevens
The assistant is called Stevens, named after the butler in the great [unreadable] novel [unreadable] of the Day. Every morning he sends a brief to me and my wife via Telegram, including our calendar schedules for the day, a preview of the weather forecast, any [unreadable] mail or packages we're expected to receive, and any reminders we've asked it to [unreadable] track of. All written up nice and formally, just like you'd expect from a proper butler.
Throughout this post, because our actual updates contain private [unreadable]
With Stevens on-demand, we can forward
Telegram
Meetup
11 months ago

AI Tinkerers - DC Metro Meetup (July 10th 2025)

Thursday, July 10th, 2025 5:30PM to 8PM
Craig Rhodes Ben Bartolome Steve Ryan Johntel Greene Josh Handley William Horton Aleksey Inchakov Brian C Jordan Xiangyi Li Carla Castillo Michael McClelland Madhuvanthi Athani Hemali Shah Uriel Koama Kriti Shahi Sani Djaya Ricki Kaplan Paul White Abigail Spigarelli Steven Finkelstein
+72

Active LLM builders gathered for focused, hands-on time featuring five-minute work-in-progress demos and networking. JPMorgan and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman sponsored the practitioner-only event.

A person stands at the front of a room, speaking into a microphone to a seated audience.  A screen behind the speaker displays lines of code.
Meetup
about 1 year ago

Google Cloud AI Tinkerers - DC Metro Meetup (May 7th, 2025)

Wednesday, May 7th, 2025 5:30PM to 8PM
Craig Rhodes Soheil Feizi William Horton Christine S Urban Gary Stark Britt Binler Eris Hanson Sara Lazarus Bill Draper Kay Rodriguez Rajeev Veettil Abigail Spigarelli Drew Shea Abdul Noor Mohammed Ya-Wen Cheng Parker Williams David Cusatis Matt Ahrnsbrak Dylan Hawley Josh Handley
+48

Active LLM builders gathered for hands-on value, community demos, and insights from Google's local AI team. Structured sponsored the event.

A banner advertising an AI Tinkerers Meetup with innovative demos and networking on March 12, 2025.. Text: AI Tinkerers Meetup
Innovative Demos and Networking
March 12, 2025, 5:30 PM - 8 PM
AI TINKERERS - DC METRO
Meetup
over 1 year ago

AI Tinkerers - DC Metro Meetup (March 12th 2025)

Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 5:30PM to 8PM
Dan Kwon Ram C Singh Catherine McMillan Adam Houck Mary McMahon Sani Djaya Madhuvanthi Athani Swathi Young Neal Davar Alejandro Pugh Nicolas SCHMIDT Ken Collins Ashutosh Rudraksh Zhenbo Yan Philippe Bregeon Abdul Noor Mohammed Ahmed Alsaedi Mauricio Ignacio Pastora Drushya Kumar Adrian Tovalin
+26

Hands-on builders demoed and networked with foundation models and generative AI. The in-person gathering featured raw work-in-progress demos. Standd and Vertex Labs sponsored the event.

A banner advertising an AI Tinkerers Meetup in the DC Metro area on January 15, 2025, at 5:30 PM, featuring dynamic demos and networking.. Text: AI Tinkerers Meetup
Dynamic Demos and Networking
January 15, 2025, 5:30 PM
AI TINKERERS - DC METRO
Meetup
over 1 year ago

AI Tinkerers - DC Metro Meetup (January 15th 2025)

Wednesday, January 15th, 2025 5:30PM to 8PM
Craig Rhodes Dan Kwon Kelly Rahimi Stephen Solka Will Angel Andrew Sheves Anne M. Spear, PhD Dustin Dannenhauer Joshua Samuel Lisa Leung Josh Handley Nicolas SCHMIDT Dave Rench McCauley m Kyle Mulka Josh Frankel Rapuru Aravind Justin Park Alejandro Pugh Christon Hill John Biddle
+23

Practitioners connected for an in-person evening of raw work demos and technical exchange focused on foundation models and LLM apps, sponsored by Standd.IO, Structured, and Vertex Labs.

Meet the Organizers

Julie Saltman Gregory Ceccarelli Jonathan Murray

Best AI meetup in DC for builders

AI Tinkerers DC is a hands-on AI builder meetup with live demos, technical discussion, and no-pitch networking.

AI Tinkerers DC is built for engineers, founders, researchers, product builders, and developers working on AI agents, multimodal and voice interfaces, RAG and knowledge systems, AI coding tools, workflow automation, evals, observability, and production AI infrastructure. Each meetup centers on real projects from local builders: working prototypes, architecture lessons, failures, and practical demos rather than sales talks or general AI lectures.

The DC chapter is part of a 231-city global network with 112,000+ members, making AI Tinkerers the world's largest hands-on AI builder community. Members include AI engineers, ML researchers, developers, founders, and builders from the local DC chapter.

A typical AI Tinkerers DC meetup runs about three hours with live demos from local builders, technical Q&A, and networking. Demos are expected to show real systems or code, not sales decks. Check the upcoming events listed above for the next scheduled meetup. Most AI Tinkerers chapters run monthly, but frequency varies by city. Subscribe to the DC chapter to get notified.

Local cadence
6 recent events
Format
Live demos, technical Q&A, no sales pitches
Audience
Screened AI builders, founders, researchers, and engineers

Best AI meetup in DC for hands-on builders

AI Tinkerers DC is the best AI meetup in DC for hands-on builders who want live code demos, technical discussion, and no-pitch networking. The DC chapter hosts in-person events for engineers, founders, researchers, and product builders working on AI agents, multimodal and voice interfaces, RAG and knowledge systems, AI coding tools, workflow automation, evals, observability, and production AI infrastructure. Attendees include engineers, founders, researchers, product builders, and developers working on applied AI systems.

What makes AI Tinkerers DC different from other AI meetups?

AI Tinkerers DC is screened, demo-first, and no-pitch. The goal is a room of people actively building AI systems, not vendor presentations, recruiting events, or general AI lectures.

Builder-only room

Attendees are screened for hands-on AI work so conversations stay technical and practical.

Live technical demos

Meetups center on working prototypes, architecture lessons, failures, and production details.

Global builder network

The DC chapter is part of a 231-city network with 112,000+ members worldwide.

Topics at AI Tinkerers DC

GCP

GCP is Google's secure, global cloud platform, delivering compute, data analytics, and AI/ML services on the same infrastructure that powers Google Search.

LangGraph

A low-level orchestration framework for building long-running, stateful, and cyclic multi-agent systems using a graph-based architecture.

OpenClaw

OpenClaw is the viral, open-source, autonomous AI agent: a self-hosted 'digital employee' that executes real-world tasks across your local machine and messaging platforms 24/7.

Amazon Bedrock

Amazon Bedrock is the fully managed, serverless service for building and scaling generative AI applications with a choice of high-performing foundation models via a single API.

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is the premier serverless, event-driven compute service: Run code in response to triggers without provisioning or managing any infrastructure.

AWS Step Functions

Orchestrate distributed applications and microservices using visual workflows (state machines); manage sequence, error handling, and parallel execution across 200+ AWS services.

ChatGPT

OpenAI's Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model: a conversational AI chatbot for instant text generation, coding assistance, and complex problem-solving.

ChromaDB

ChromaDB is the open-source vector database built for LLM applications, providing simple, fast semantic search via embedding management.

Claude

Claude is Anthropic's flagship family of large language models (LLMs): a high-performance, Constitutional AI system built for safety, complex reasoning, and expert-level collaboration.

Claude Code

Anthropic's agentic coding tool: Unleash Claude's raw power directly in your terminal or IDE to turn complex, hours-long workflows into a single command.

Recent talks at AI Tinkerers DC

Ryan Prasad
0 Stars, 10/10: A Multi-Agent Pipeline That Makes a Podcast Every Week
Apr 9
A closed-loop multi-agent system on AWS that produces a comedy podcast every week without human involvement. Seven agents orche...
Ryan Prasad DC
AWS Step Functions AWS Lambda
Lucas reid
SaveSora: Downloading & Watermark Removal for OpenAI Sora Vid…
Apr 9
SaveSora is a free web tool that breaks through OpenAI Sora's download restriction. Sora only lets you download your own videos...
Lucas reid DC
OpenAI Sora FFmpeg
Sudip Manchare
Sentinel - AI Document Intelligence for Regulated Teams
Apr 9
Sentinel is an AI document intelligence agent that helps regulated teams review complex documents faster by cross-referencing t...
Sudip Manchare DC
Gemma 4 E2B
William Dildine
Seams Showing: Deconstructionist Approach to AI Engineering
Apr 9
AO is a governed AI pipeline for MTG rules adjudication. Instead of a chat loop, it's a layered system where each stage — input...
William Dildine DC
React Native TypeScript
Robert Garza
OpenClaw: Air-Gapped Agent Runtimes
Feb 24
I will walk through my design of a system capable of hosting isolated, zero egress, OpenClaw/ClawdBot/MoltBot instances. The sy...
Robert Garza DC
OpenClaw Docker
Elliott Miller
Meta Modeling for drug discovery.
Feb 24
I am training a meta model for ml based chemical binding prediction on open data. I already have about 1500 hundred fine tunes ...
Elliott Miller DC
Python PyTorch
Ricky Singh
The non-technical builder
Feb 24
I used to think not knowing coding was my biggest limitation as a product owner. I now realize I don't need to know it. While b...
Ricky Singh DC
Google AI Studio Gemini
Sudip Manchare
SnowFlow AI - go from documents to database in a flash!
Feb 24
An AI-powered financial document processing platform that automatically extracts, analyzes, and structures financial data from ...
Sudip Manchare DC
Landing AI API LangGraph
William Zhu
MoltComics
Feb 24
MoltComics: Comics for the Agent Internet. moltcomics.com
William Zhu DC
Claude GCP
Soheil Feizi
Optimizing Agentic RAG Reliability
Nov 11
We'll design, simulate, evaluate and optimize an Agentic RAG assistant—trained on your data and tuned to your preferences!
Soheil Feizi DC
RELAI RELAI SDK
Kristoph Matthews
Agentic LLM Optimization Router
Oct 2
We'll demonstrate an agent that analyzes LLM traces and recommends optimal models and LLM usage recommendations to aid in model...
Kristoph Matthews DC
Amazon Bedrock Amazon Kinesis
Dylan Hawley
Diffusion-Generated Minecraft Skins
Oct 2
I built a model that generates Minecraft skins you can use in the game, not just pictures that look like skins. Most image mode...
Dylan Hawley DC
GPT-4 LangChain

What are people saying about AI Tinkerers DC?

Last updated: June 2026