8:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.

Registration and breakfast at The Taj Campton Hotel

Address:  The Taj Campton Hotel, Campton Room, Second Floor | 340 Stockton Street, San Francisco

Collect your registration credentials and meet your tour mates over breakfast

8:30 a.m - 10:00 a.m.

Introduction to the study tour and Silicon Valley ecosystem

In the opening session, we will have a welcome address for the tour, icebreakers to get to know each other, and a briefing on the intersection of Silicon Valley, media, and technology.

Jodie Hopperton

Lead, Product & Tech Initiative, INMA

Craig Forman

Executive Chair CNTI, General Partner, Next News Ventures, Former CEO McClatchy (USA)

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Travel to Palo Alto

11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

Address:  800 W El Camino Real, Suite 170, Mountain View, CA 94040, Stanford

Otter.ai has pioneered the use of AI assistants in meetings, transforming how audio and transcription are integrated into business workflows. As one of the first companies to explore AI agents and personas, Otter.ai continues to shape the future of workplace collaboration. Join founder Sam Liang and the Otter.ai team as they share insights on maintaining their market leadership, addressing privacy in an era of smart devices, the evolving role of AI agents, multilingual innovation, and the future of “liquid content” in both speech-to-text and beyond.

Sam Liang

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Otter.ai

12:15 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Travel to Stanford

12:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

A visit to Stanford

Address:  Brown Institute is in Computing and Data Science (CoDa) at Stanford. 389 Jane Stanford Way

Over lunch at Stanford we will meet two executives working on different areas of AI. Cheryl Phillips’ Big Local News initiative at Satndford lowers the cost of accountability journalism by pooling and sharing critical datasets—tracking layoffs, local government agendas, and police misconduct. The project now integrates AI tools like DataTalk to make complex datasets searchable through natural language, powering local investigations while keeping data secure from commercial scraping. Prof. Nate Persily explores how AI and major platforms shape news visibility, neutrality, and trust. He’ll examine the risks of bias in AI tools and strategies to counter it, from transparency to stronger editorial standards. With new regulatory frameworks emerging in Europe and beyond, he’ll also highlight opportunities for media and policy collaboration. The session will close with practical guidance for news leaders on how to engage proactively with AI, balancing innovation, governance, and accountability in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Cheryl Philips

Founder and Co-director, Big Local News at Stanford Journalism & Co-founder, Stanford Open Policing Project

Steve Henn

Entrepreneur in Residence, Brown Institute

Nate Persily

McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School

3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Google

At Google’s Mountain View campus we’ll have an in-depth session exploring how AI is reshaping the news and information landscape. This visit will offer a look at Google’s latest innovations in search, media integrity, and data privacy, with a focus on how these advancements are impacting newsrooms worldwide. We will dive into the challenges and opportunities presented by AI-driven content discovery, fact-checking, and audience engagement, while also discussing strategies to uphold trust and editorial quality in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.

Etan Horowitz

Global Innovation Programs Manager

Simon Rogers

Trends Data Team Lead

4:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Travel to next stop

5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

The future of New York Times Games

Address:  585 Bryant St, Palo Alto

Discover how the New York Times’ head of games is steering an incredible journey — from record-breaking engagement to groundbreaking product evolution. Experience firsthand how NYT Games has become a cultural phenomenon with crossword records shattered, Wordle crazes fueled, and new puzzle titles captivating millions. Now, with emerging AI tools and tech breakthroughs, NYT Games is entering its next era. Learn how AI is enhancing personalisation, enriching user experience, and inspiring smart, adaptive gameplay — while maintaining the human creativity and editorial quality at its heart.

Jonathan Knight

Head of NYTimes, Games

6:30 p.m.

Return to San Francisco

8:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.

Please arrive in time for a sharp 8:00 a.m. departure from the Taj Campton Hotel

Address:  The Taj Campton Hotel | 340 Stockton Street, San Francisco

8:15 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.

What media needs to know about AI scraping and enforcement

Address:  101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107

As large language models (LLMs) grow, the active scraping of publisher sites—followed by large-scale harvesting of that data—often happens without visibility or consent. Many content creators remain unsure which bots are accessing their work, where it ends up, or how it’s being used. Cloudflare—leveraging its global scale—has introduced tools to bring friction into this process, from a “block” button to halt unauthorized scraping in real time to a pay-per-crawl beta program that explores new economic models. These measures are part of a broader, meaningful discussion about the conditions needed for a fair market to emerge—one where publishers can protect their work, set access terms, and ensure equitable value exchange with AI developers. Attendees will gain a rare inside look at how Cloudflare detects scraping activity, enforces policies, and works to create a healthier balance between openness, control, and sustainable content economics in the AI age.

Will Allen

VP Product, Cloudflare

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

OpenAI, the forefront of AI innovation

Address:  1515 3rd Street, San Francisco, CA 94158

Arguably, the company that has pushed Generative AI to the forefront, OpenAI has led the way for mass consumer adoption. In this session, we’ll talk with OpenAI about the future of the technology and how they see AI and news working together.

Christina Lim

Partner Manager, Media Partnerships, OpenAI

12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Bus to lunch

12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Lunch at Microsoft

Address:  555 California St, Suite #200, San Francisco, CA, 9410

1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Inside MSN’s AI evolution: ranking, personalisation, and audience impact

How is MSN rethinking the news experience in an AI-driven world? In this session, Aparna Lakshmi Ratan — a seasoned AI product leader now heading MSN’s ranking and personalisation efforts — will share how Microsoft is applying cutting-edge AI to improve discovery, relevance, and engagement across its platform. From large-scale recommendation systems to LLM-powered summarization features like “gems” and Copilot Daily, we’ll explore how MSN is using AI to guide users to quality journalism. With a focus on product strategy, user impact, and data-backed results, this session offers an insider’s view of how one of the world’s largest news aggregators is evolving to meet the moment.

Aparna Lakshmi Ratan

Partner Product Director, Microsoft AI

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Why LinkedIn is emerging as a news discovery platform for professional news audiences

Address:  Microsoft

LinkedIn is rapidly becoming a key top-of-funnel channel as search traffic declines, offering media companies a growing opportunity to reach professional audiences at scale. On this visit, we’ll explore how the platform is evolving its news experience — from a curated headlines tab and executive-driven updates to a high-performing news trends module and new video formats. With a broader definition of news that now includes world events through a professional lens, LinkedIn is positioning itself as a vital distribution and engagement platform for publishers seeking relevance and reach in a changing discovery landscape.

Catherine Taibi

Senior Business Development Manager at LinkedIn

4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Detecting, tracking and attributing content in AI Models

Address:  Microsoft

Vermilio’s TraceID platform gives publishers the ability to see where and how their content is being used in AI systems. It can monitor text, images, video, voice and music, detecting usage at a far more granular level than most tools—down to 100 tokens (words) for text, compared to the industry norm of around 250 words. For news organisations, that means identifying when specific articles, key lines, or even an individual writer’s style have been absorbed into a model. The technology can also reverse-engineer model knowledge to understand how publisher content is being combined with other sources in AI outputs. These insights can be used to quantify unlicensed use, inform negotiations, and verify that licensing agreements are being honoured—similar to how Content ID works for video (nonAI) but built for an internet flooded with Generative AI content.

Dan Neely

CEO and Co-Founder, Vermilio

7:30 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.

Please arrive in time for a sharp 8:00 a.m. departure from the Taj Campton Hotel

Address:  The Taj Campton Hotel | 340 Stockton Street, San Francisco

8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Demystifying the black box: copyright, brand safety, and AI accuracy in newsrooms, CTGT

Address:  550 California

Cyril Gorlla, Stanford-trained AI researcher and founder of CTGT, works with Fortune 500 companies and cybersecurity leaders to bring transparency to high-risk AI deployments. In this session, he’ll explore how media companies can apply the same rigor to newsroom AI. Drawing on CTGT’s proprietary system for analysing the “anchors” large language models (LLMs) rely on, Cyril will address two urgent challenges: first, a cost-effective method to assess how much copyrighted material is embedded in any given model; second, how to ensure newsroom AI tools are accurate, brand-safe, and hallucination-free. With examples from live partnerships and insights from national security work, Cyril will make a compelling case for why transparency and auditability in AI aren’t optional — they’re essential.

Cyril Gorlla

Co-Founder and CEO at CTGT

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Inside Hearst’s AI playbook for newsrooms: Lessons from the front lines

Address:  901 Mission St

How do you roll out AI across a news network with titles ranging from major metros to hyperlocals? In this session, Hearst shares its journey — from early experiments to today’s evolving strategy. Get an inside look at how the central editorial innovation team bridges product, tech, and newsrooms while driving AI usage and cross-team collaboration. We’ll explore early projects,current initiatives, key learnings, and how Hearst is approaching accuracy, safety and scale across publications of all sizes.

Tim O’Rourke

VP Editorial Innovation and AI Strategy

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Lunch

Over lunch with Publisher and CEO Bill Nagel, we’ll discuss how they capitalise on being the main media in the tech epicenter of the world, challenges for local media in the US, and how he is thinking about AI.

Bill Nagel

Publisher & CEO, San Francisco Chronicle and SFGATE

1:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Travel to AWS

1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

What’s possible with AI: AWS perspectives on media & entertainment

Michael Schmidt, global director for industry solutions in Media & Entertainment at AWS, and Demian Hess, solutions architect in Digital Publishing, will share an inside look at the impact AI is having on media and entertainment and key trends in the publishing industry. From Agentic AI, to content provenance with C2PA, to the importance of content protection and Model Context Servers, this session explores the infrastructure and innovations powering the future of publishing. Hear firsthand from AWS customers Arc XP and Vercel, who will share how they are building AI-powered solutions for content creation, personalization, and performance.

Michael Schmidt

M&E Global Directors, AWS

Demian Hess

Senior Partner Solution Architect, AWS

3:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Travel to next stop

3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

On-site answer engines and AI agents: Rethinking research and workflow

This session will dive deep into on-site answer engines, including a look at both knowledge and action-oriented AI agents. We’ll discuss You.com’s innovative AI agents — like ARI — and explore how their chat-first assistant is revolutionising media research, content strategy, and workflow efficiency. We’ll discuss how editorial teams are leveraging intelligent agents (e.g., fact-checkers, headline generators, trend trackers) to automate routine tasks and surface valuable insights across hundreds of sources in minutes.

Richard Socher

CEO, You.com

Kady Srinivasan

CMO, Hightouch

Saurabh Sharma

CPO, You.com

Peter Grant

CRO, You.com