🔥 October 14, 2025 from 5:30PM to 8:00PM 🔥

Join us for the October 2025 AI Tinkerers - Chicago Meetup

Sponsored by Programmers Inc

Programmers is a software consulting company with 35 years of experience helping companies. They are primarily focused on AI with an emphasis on production viable use cases.

☝️☝️ Register above to join us for an evening of kick-ass demos and networking with other active builders. This is an event you do not want to miss!

What is AI Tinkerers?

AI Tinkerers is a meetup designed exclusively for practitioners who possess technical, machine learning, and entrepreneurial backgrounds and are actively building and working with foundation models, such as large language models (LLMs) and generative AI. If you’re deeply passionate about creating LLM-enabled applications, have hands-on experience in building such systems, and are eager to connect with like-minded individuals who share your level of commitment, then this group is the perfect fit for you. With AI Tinkerers meetups taking place in multiple cities, we cater to a dedicated community of practitioners.

Who is this for?

We’re not “AI Enthusiasts”, we are AI Tinkerers. And there’s a difference. The core essence of AI Tinkerers lies in active collaboration surrounding early-stage discovery and innovation, which requires a high degree of experimentation, vulnerability, openness to sharing challenges and learnings, and collaboration among individuals with a shared level of expertise. This unique environment allows us to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI and LLMs while maintaining a strong sense of camaraderie and mutual support.

The goal here is to connect like-minded folks in the Chicago area who are actively building a more interesting future with LLMs. We can’t let the folks in Silicon Valley have all of the fun!

Tentative Schedule

• 5:30: Doors open
• 5:30 - 6: Networking
• 6 - 6:45 Demos!
• 6:45 - 7:15 Dinner
• 7:15 More demos!

Demo Submission

We are actively looking for more demos! A demo is about five minutes in length and demonstrates a work in progress. Pitch decks are forbidden - we want to see your messy work in progress! Please use the “Demo Submission Form” link at the top of the page to apply! We are actively looking for more presenters don’t be shy!

Sponsors

This event is generously sponsored by Programmers Inc. Programmers is a software consulting company with 35 years of experience helping companies. They are primarily focused on AI with an emphasis on production viable use cases.

And also Drive Capital which is the largest venture capital firm between the coasts, with $2.2B in assets under management. They invest in world-class founders building the next generation of market-defining companies, and have backed companies like Duolingo and Root Insurance.

📊 AI Tinkerers Chicago Stats

• Attendees: This exclusive community of 2,189 subscribers comprises 52% AI/ML specialists and 68% full-stack engineers, with 32% holding founder or executive titles. Members represent elite institutions like UChicago, UIUC, and Google. Notable achievements include deploying production-grade agentic workflows, building open-source developer platforms, and engineering FDA-cleared medical AI, making this Chicago’s premier hub for high-signal technical collaboration.
• Companies Represented: Featuring tech giants and AI leaders like Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Waymo, alongside fast-growing platforms such as DoorDash, Robinhood, TikTok, and Pinecone, and emerging startups like ElevenLabs, HumanLayer, Autonoma AI, and pieces.app, and more
• Demos: 184 demos have been submitted and 107 have been presented. The most exciting themes have centered on agentic workflows, retrieval and knowledge-centric systems, and production-grade reliability via evals, observability, and guardrails. Technical exploration has also highlighted structured generation (function calling and schemas), efficiency/cost optimization for LLM pipelines, and practical multimodal/document processing.
• Testimonials:

  “Please continue organizing interactive AI events with industry professionals and real-world discussions about technology trends, career opportunities, and practical AI applications. ... Events like this are very helpful for students and professionals looking to grow their technical skills and better understand the future of AI and technology.”

  — QA engineer, cloud support

  “For the people that don't get to present, what if their work could be featured in some way that allows others to see a demo online or read a deck describing the work (or both)... This is such a great idea. I signed up right away. ... Your network puts you in a unique position to really make this idea scale...”

  — Founder, crypto AI

  “Such a cool concept”

  — Devrel @ web3 foundation

  “Leaders from successful startups as speakers is great. Love hearing from my tinkerers but it was clear alpha in building a business and companies actually hiring created a different vibe.”

  — Founder, GTM strategy

  “Keep up the good work. This group is a really great way to stay connected to what's happening with AI in Chicago.”

  — Founder, crypto AI

  “Please keep organizing highly technical, builder-focused AI events like this in Chicago.”

  — R&D engineer, defense tech

  “I enjoyed the breakout room like discussions from the previous Meetup hosted by Zapier. Those allowed us to easily connect and talk about experiences.”

  — Applied AI engineer