Long before artificial intelligence started dominating headlines, Michael Weiss and Marcus Jecklin, both AB ’12, recognized its potential to transform industries ranging from healthcare to cybersecurity.

In 2018, the pair drew on their Arts & Sciences education to create Ai4, an annual event that would grow to become the largest and most impactful AI industry gathering in North America. Weiss, a former WashU English literature major, studied the latest AI trends, technologies, and applications to identify workshop topics and influencers to be keynote speakers. Jecklin’s degree in psychological and brain sciences informed their marketing strategy, a task that required him to stay attuned to how people think and engage.

Fast forward to 2025, and it’s clear their intuition and work have made a difference: The latest event, held in Las Vegas in August, drew more than 8,000 attendees, including many leaders from academia and industry. The event was a milestone for the AI industry and the WashU grads. Over the years, Weiss and Jecklin have applied their education, ambition, and talent for organizing large-scale events to a string of successful enterprises. And it all started on the Danforth campus.

“I knew the Arts & Sciences curriculum would be a great foundation for whatever I decided to do next,” Jecklin said.

Their paths to entrepreneurship weren’t straightforward. Weiss came to WashU from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with plans to play for the Bears football team and study finance. He made the varsity squad, but found he had different academic interests. “English literature taught me the sort of critical thinking I use every day,” Weiss said. “I’m constantly reading about new developments in industries and making inferences about the trends we can build on.”

Jecklin, from Richmond, Virginia, initially enrolled in architecture at Sam Fox. A single psychological and brain sciences course changed his mind. “Psychology, especially cognitive psychology and neuroscience, seemed like an exciting field,” Jecklin said.

He also knew early on that he wanted to be his own boss. As a first-year student, he purchased Bears Bikes, a student-run business that’s part of WashU’s Student Entrepreneurial Program (StEP). “That ignited my passion for entrepreneurship,” he said.

The two future business partners met at Sigma Phi Epsilon, a fraternity that attracted other WashU students with entrepreneurial ambitions. After graduation, they moved to New York City with a small group of fraternity brothers and other WashU alumni, where they began their first foray into large-scale events.

Within five years, they had launched a series of events called World's Fair Nano that brought together diverse groups of experts for lectures and demonstrations. “They were essentially technology festivals where speakers would talk about the future of almost everything, from space travel, to cities, to food and beyond,” Weiss said.

Next, they co-founded the Fora Group, a company that organizes major technology conferences. In addition to Ai4, Fora established RETCON, a tech-heavy conference for investors, developers, and others in the real estate field. The 2025 gathering attracted more than 2,500 attendees.

Still, Ai4 is the flagship event, not only for Weiss and Jecklin but for the AI community. “Michael and I have focused more deeply on our product than any other AI event organizer, of which there are now hundreds if not thousands,” Jecklin said. “We see a lot of other entrepreneurs in the space trying to make a quick buck, but it's obvious that they haven't done the legwork to truly understand the technology or their customers on a deep level.”

That legwork has paid off. Ai4 has become one of the fastest-growing conference businesses in the world, recently attracting a majority stake acquisition by the private equity-backed CloserStill Media. “A lot of people wanted to learn about this technology and how they could apply it to their industries,” Weiss said. “We knew it would be compelling enough to attract a large audience.”

For this year’s convention, they recruited Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist and Nobel Prize winner known as the “Godfather of AI,” as a keynote speaker.  Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford computer scientist who is widely regarded as the “Godmother of AI,” also gave a featured talk. These AI celebrities were joined by hundreds of other industry leaders, including AI leaders from a slew of Fortune 500 companies.

“Anyone who attends Ai4 will walk away with a deep understanding of how AI is impacting their specific industry and job function,” Jecklin said.

Weiss now lives in Austin, Texas, while Jecklin has stayed in New York City. They remain closely connected to a network of friends and collaborators from their time in St. Louis, including AI innovators who attended this year’s Ai4 conference. “WashU gave us a community of friends and business partners that we’ve carried into our 30s,” Weiss said. “I even met my wife Ally there.”

They’ve made it far since their WashU days. But, in some ways, they say, it’s like they never left.