Leyden’s Network of Remarkable Innovators
Leyden has built up an extraordinary network in the 30 years since he came to work with the founders of WIRED magazine at the beginning of the digital revolution. He has followed the front edge of technological change and come to know a large number of top innovators pioneering a wide range of fields.
Early in his time in the Bay Area, he worked at Global Business Network (GBN), which was co-founded by Stewart Brand, the founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, pictured above. Brand has influenced many of the top tech leaders in the region over the years (including Steve Jobs) and he made a big impact on Leyden too.
Brand was known for his uncanny ability to find remarkable innovators and build them into networks on the front edge of pioneering fields. Leyden learned from the master and continues to carry out that legacy today.
Below are a dozen of the most remarkable ones and videos of them laying out their ideas in events that Leyden hosted or convened. And then we tee up some playlists of many more of them too.
The Legendary Stewart Brand
The adjacent video captures an entire event that Leyden hosted and curated to celebrate Stewart Brand on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his highly influential Whole Earth Catalog.
The video shows Leyden’s deep dive interview with Brand but also a dozen other well-known speakers who gave 3-minute talks about how Stewart and the Whole Earth Catalog had influenced them and made an impact on their diverse fields.
The event also had a documentary film crew attend who were creating a feature-length film on Brand called “We Are As Gods.” that came out in 2021.
Cofounder of Siri
Adam Cheyer is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and AI expert best known as a co-founder of Siri, which was later acquired by Apple and became the foundation for its voice assistant.
He was one of the key speakers at Leyden’s The AI Age Begins series who revealed that he had worked on AI: for 40 years, and conversational AI for 30 years, and he never thought he would live to see the arrival of Generative AI that we all use today.
Watch the short video to get all the nuance of his answer.
Former Director of Patent Office
Michelle Lee is an attorney, engineer, and former public official who served as the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 2015 to 2017, making her the first woman to hold the position.
Before leading the USPTO, she was Deputy Director and had a background in intellectual property law, previously serving as Google’s Head of Patents and Patent Strategy.
With degrees from MIT in electrical engineering and computer science, she has been a key figure in shaping modern patent policies, particularly in the tech sector.
Cofounder of Goggle Brain for AI
Greg Corrado is a neuroscientist, AI researcher, and one of the co-founders of Google Brain, the deep learning research team at Google.
He has contributed to major AI advancements, including work on deep learning, natural language processing, and healthcare AI applications like Google’s AI-powered medical diagnostics.
Corrado has also played a key role in the development of Google’s AI products, such as TensorFlow and Google Assistant, bridging neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
Leyden has known Gavin Newsom, the two time governor of California, since he was the tech-savvy mayor of San Francisco in the critical years from 2004 through 2010.
When he served as a two-time Lieutenant Governor through 2018. Leyden hosted him in a couple high-profile public events where he interviewed Newsom.
The adjacent video is an event featuring Newsom in the week after Donald Trump won his first presidential election in 2016. Hear how Newsom handled the story and the audience jammed into an innovation lab in San Francisco.
Governor of California
Founder of One of the First AI Companies Ever
Jerry Kaplan is an entrepreneur, computer scientist, and AI expert known for founding Teknowledge in 1981, one of the first artificial intelligence companies.
He later co-founded GO Corporation, a pioneer in pen computing, and has written extensively on AI, including books like Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Here he tells a packed audience that he thought he would live to see the day where AI would work as well as it does now. He called AI probably the most important human invention ever. Listen to his exact words in the adjacent video.
Kevin Kelly - One of America’s Most Original Thinkers
Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of WIRED magazine, was the person who hired Leyden and got him to move to San Francisco to work with him and his editorial team.
Kelly is one of the most original thinkers in America for those who know him and read his many books or seen him speak. He has been ahead of the curve on many, many tech developments. He also has become a rock star of technology in China.
Kelly has remained an influential mentor to Leyden to this day. In almost all of Leyden’s various event series he gets Kelly to get involved in one of the first episodes.
The adjacent video is a recap of a roundtable that Leyden hosted but that Kelly led a decade ago on Artificial Intelligence with AI experts at the time. It’s fascinating to see what has changed and has not changed in the conversation around AI then and now.
Cofounder of Coursera & Storied Stanford Professor
Daphne Koller is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and AI researcher known for her work in machine learning and biomedical AI applications.
She co-founded Coursera, a leading online education platform, and later founded Insitro, a company using AI for drug discovery.
Koller has also been a professor at Stanford University and has made significant contributions to probabilistic graphical models and computational biology.
Here she’s talking about AI’s positive impact on education and what would happen if every student got a virtual tutor.
Convener of the Alpha Geeks
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, a publishing and education company that has played a major role in popularizing open-source software and web technologies.
He is known for coining and promoting key tech concepts like Web 2.0 and Open Source, influencing the way people think about the internet and innovation.
Through his writing, conferences, and advocacy, O’Reilly has been a thought leader in technology, emphasizing ethical business practices, platform dynamics, and the societal impact of AI and automation.
A Breakout Next Generation AI Founder
May Habib is the co-founder and CEO of Writer, a generative AI platform for enterprises. She is part of a new wave of AI founders and builders who are congregating in San Francisco and what they call Cerebral Valley.
She was ahead of the curve with the explosion of Gen AI, launching Writer in 2020. Before that she co-founded Qordoba, a localization software company, in 2015.
Serial Entrepreneur of 10 Energy & Climate Startups
Leyden has known Saul Griffith for 25 years or so and repeatedly gets him involved in his many events and projects.
Griffith is an Australian-American inventor, engineer, and entrepreneur focused on climate solutions, particularly electrification and renewable energy.
He has founded multiple companies, including Otherlab, and has advised governments on transitioning to a clean energy future.
His work emphasizes large-scale electrification, energy efficiency, and practical pathways to decarbonization, as outlined in his books like Electrify and The Big Switch.
The video shows an event of Leyden’s where Griffith revealed a prototype for an interactive map that showed the energy flows of the entire United States. In the audience was former Energy secretary Steven Chu, and later the US Department of Energy fully funded the project.
Driving Force Behind US Digital Service
Jen Pahlka is the founder of Code for America, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve government services through technology and innovation.
She also served as the U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama, where she worked to modernize government IT.
Pahlka is a leading advocate for using digital tools and agile methodologies to make government more effective and accessible.
The List Goes On & On
Here is a playlist of more than 60 videos of thought leaders in Artificial Intelligence that Leyden has come to know over the years.
The list starts with Kai-Fu Lee, one of China’s top AI experts who also has worked with many of the top American AI companies.
You can watch his whole presentation right here or click through to see the whole playlist and watch everything on YouTube.