Generative LA—Lightspeed x Scopely x Activision

Generative AI continues to make waves across the startup and broader technology landscape, and Los Angeles has emerged as a hub for AI-led innovation across sectors including entertainment, fintech, gaming, healthcare, and the creator economy.

In June, we were honored to host builders, founders, engineers, and leaders from the local LA AI community for an intimate fireside with Snap’s Head of Strategy Michael Greenberg, followed by demos from local SoCal startups PersonalAI, Mayk.it, and Moviebot.

Today we’re excited to announce the second edition of Generative LA on Wednesday August 30th at 6pm in Santa Monica. We’re honored to be joined by a pair of exceptional local leaders innovating at the intersection of Gaming & Artificial Intelligence: Ken Wee, Chief Strategy Officer of Activision Blizzard, and Ankur Bulsara, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Scopely.

Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard is one of the most successful interactive entertainment companies globally, reaching hundreds of millions of players monthly across its franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and Candy Crush.  Ken is an avid gamer and is the Chief Strategy Officer of ABK where he leads strategy and new initiatives, M&A, and external development.  He was previously a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he led their Global Interactive Entertainment Practice and worked with clients in their Technology, Media, and Telecom group.

Culver City-based Scopely is the leading mobile-first interactive entertainment company (named Top App Publisher of 2022 and Best Mobile Games Publisher of 2023) that was recently acquired for nearly $5B, marking LA’s largest VC-backed exit of the past 5 years. Scopely has built an ecosystem of games on top of their proprietary technology platform Playgami, and Ankur is universally regarded as a pioneer of emerging and evolving technology, including the AI x Gaming space.

We look forward to learning from Ankur & Ken’s perspectives on how AI is impacting not only the gaming world but media creation at large, how startups can think about moats & business models in the rapidly-evolving AI landscape, and how some of the world’s leading entertainment companies are working rapidly to integrate AI as a core part of their development stack & end user experience.

In addition to the fireside chat with Ankur & Ken, we will feature another set of exciting demos from local startups building in the AI space, followed by casual networking over drinks & light bites. We’re just scratching the surface on the potential for AI in both consumer and B2B use cases, with so many great builders dedicated their time to leveraging this platform shift to build the next set of generation-defining companies. Our hope is that these Generative sessions serve not only as a learning experience for all those in attendance, but more broadly serve as a connector in bringing together the robust Los Angeles AI community at large.

We’d invite all local builders to apply here — we hope to see you there!

For more information, join our notification list for future events here.