Eric Anderegg, Co-Founder of GenAI Zürich & GenAI London, sets the stage for two days of applied generative AI in the historic Volkshaus Zürich. He outlines what to expect across multiple tracks, from enterprise use cases and deep tech talks to startup pitches, hands-on workshops, and the GenAI Zürich Award Ceremony – and reflects on what lies ahead for Europe’s applied GenAI community.

MCP adoption is accelerating, but many agent systems still misuse it. Instead of leveraging MCP as a runtime interface, tools are treated as prompt-time APIs: definitions are repeatedly injected into context, intermediate results are re-serialized, and valuable tokens are wasted. The result? Slower, less reliable agents, and the misleading conclusion that "MCP sucks, CLIs are great."

This talk challenges that narrative. We explore a better paradigm: code mode, where models generate small programs that call tools directly in a sandbox, dramatically reducing context overhead while improving multi-step accuracy. We’ll also cover dynamic tool discovery, ensuring only relevant capabilities are loaded when needed.

To make this practical, we introduce mcpc (https://github.com/apify/mcpc), an open-source universal CLI client for MCP. Built for real workflows, it combines code mode, persistent sessions, JSON outputs, and sandboxed execution, bringing MCP to where it shines: the shell.

In a live demo, we’ll orchestrate multiple MCP servers, transform results locally, and turn interactions into reusable scripts.

A brilliant AI model is only as reliable as the data powering it. For the enterprise, the biggest hurdles to GenAI aren't the algorithms — they are fragmented data, security risks, and "hallucinations."
This session cuts through the hype to show why Architectural Trust is the true engine of innovation. Learn why bringing AI to your data — not the other way around — is the only way to build secure, scalable, and production-ready applications at speed.
Stop moving data. Start driving value.

Generative AI has led to an explosion of content creation. Yet discovering relevant and inspiring content and products online is becoming increasingly difficult. Most digital experiences remain backward-looking, optimizing for historical interactions rather than understanding user interests in the moment. As a result, users are often trapped in narrow recommendation loops, while new and diverse content struggles to surface. This talk introduces a shift from AI generation to real-time perception: AI systems that continuously interpret user behavior and context as they evolve within a session. Real-time perception enables adaptive discovery, contextual search, and more effective agentic experiences; moving beyond static personalization toward moment-by-moment intelligence. Drawing from real-world deployments in large e-commerce and marketplace environments, the talk covers perception model architectures, product and system design, and concrete case studies with measurable business impact. Real-time discovery is emerging as a must-have capability for online platforms, one that directly translates into measurable gains in engagement and revenue.

Imagine you're into playing instruments, singing, and producing music, but you’re lacking the decades of practice. Still, you write great lyrics and just "want to make music". As a personal project/side quest, I bridged that gap leveraging GenAI, my production skills, and professional post-production tools.

The result is Windlereye, a fictional alternative rock band with over 100 songs. Some of them are even good!

In this talk, I’ll demystify the "one-click" misconception by sharing details on my hybrid workflow and the workarounds I used to jump the biggest GenAI hurdles (vocal consistency, artifacts, instability). I'll explain how GenAI made me a better lyricist, and how I made my first whooping $0,000,001.12 in royalties.

Finally, I'll touch on my non-expert opinion on ethics and legal matters of this new frontier.

As foundation models commoditize, the real differentiator is how well you connect them to your own data and workflows. Avolta and D ONE share hard-won lessons from moving beyond pilots: consolidating data in a modern Lakehouse-as-a-Service architecture, enabling employees with internal copilots, and building focused business agents on proprietary data. We'll cover what we shipped, what surprised us, and three decisions we'd change if starting over today.

The GenAI Zürich Award Ceremony celebrates the most outstanding contributions in applied generative AI across Europe. Winners are announced live on the Main Stage across five award tracks – Rising Innovators, Impact Achievers, Enterprise Transformers, Community Spotlight, and AI's Choice – each recognizing a different dimension of GenAI excellence, from breakthrough startup innovation to large-scale enterprise transformation and measurable societal impact. In a first for any European AI conference, the AI's Choice award is evaluated entirely by leading foundation models, giving AI itself a decisive voice in recognizing excellence. Projects are scored by an independent jury panel on innovation, impact, scalability, ethical AI practices, and production readiness – ensuring that recognition goes to solutions delivering real-world results, not just promising ideas.

Learn more about the Award: link.