BrainTrust Partners, an Austin-based firm that helps brands navigate the AI era, has signed on as the Founding Title Sponsor of the YOU × AI Summit, Waco's first conference dedicated to artificial intelligence. The event is scheduled for Saturday, September 12, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Performing Arts & Community Center in downtown Waco.
The sponsorship underscores a critical message for businesses: the key to successful AI adoption lies not in buying the latest tools, but in leveraging the data and intelligence already embedded within their operations. Tim Hayden, CEO of BrainTrust Partners, will deliver a keynote titled “Your Data, Your AI, and Your Future” at 9:50 a.m., guiding business owners on how to assess their current operations and identify use cases before making further investments.
“You have intelligence sitting somewhere within the pipes of your business,” Hayden said. “That's your brand. It is your brand DNA that can shape AI in your brand voice.” Hayden founded BrainTrust in 2016 to help companies structure and make sense of their data for personalization and improved analytics. He notes that even a decade later, many companies have not fully unified and labeled their data, which he says is essential for AI to work effectively. “Data resolved, unified, structured and labeled has AI work stronger for your brand. Skip it, and it's going to cost you much more in budget and accuracy to use any AI,” he added.
Hayden also challenges the assumption that businesses need to rely on popular AI models like ChatGPT or Claude for all their needs. “There's no reason why you have to look at ChatGPT or Claude to run everything,” he said. He points out that open-weight models can be trained on a company's own data, run privately, and cost a fraction of enterprise subscriptions that are trained on other businesses' information.
The summit will feature 23 speakers across four concurrent tracks: Build, Get Found, Sound Like You, and AI Safety. Sessions include hands-on workshops where attendees can build an AI assistant or develop practical AI tools. “Most people think AI is the great equalizer,” said Fernando Labastida, co-organizer and founder of the Viral Genius Institute. “It's a multiplier, and multipliers widen gaps. A business with nothing to say brings a 1, and AI takes it to 2. The competitor with a real point of view brings a 10, and the same AI takes them to 20. Same tools. Bigger gap.”
The event begins with a keynote by Bryan Eisenberg, a Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestselling author who helped coin the term “conversion rate optimization.” His talk, “Before the Algorithm, There Was Your Story. That Hasn't Changed,” emphasizes that people buy stories, not rates. Dr. Hope Koch, who holds the Godfrey Sullivan Endowed Chair of Information Systems and Business Analytics at Baylor University and serves on the Texas Artificial Intelligence Council, will close the day with a session called HOPE, focusing on human opportunity in an era of exponential change.
Hayden expressed enthusiasm about participating. “I'm excited to join the event, hear other viewpoints, and meet folks who are on their AI journeys, actually experimenting and building,” he said. The summit is produced by the Viral Genius Institute and Rogue Media Network, and tickets are available at youxai.live. For more information about BrainTrust Partners, visit braintrustpartners.ai.
