How HumanX is using the latest technology to boost human connections

In a packed year of AI conferences, it might have been easy to overlook HumanX as just another new AI event. For the 3,500 participants who made the trip to Las Vegas, it totally redefined the category. Co‑founded by Stefan Weitz (formerly at Microsoft) and Jonathan Weiner (Money20/20 and HLTH founder), HumanX was created to be the world’s leading event for navigating AI transformation.

“You speak to heads of AI across the enterprise, people whose job it is to deploy AI in their organization, and they’re not sure what they should do,” says Emily Narcessian, Head of Product at HumanX. “Our goal is to help them go from confusion to clarity and confidence.”

From the beginning, HumanX was built differently. With ticket prices ranging from $995 to $3,995, the event was always going to be about quality over quantity. The premium positioning meant every touchpoint had to deliver value for the audience of C-suite leaders, founders, investors and VPs.

Connections, content and careful planning

That commitment to quality was obvious with the exclusive content at the event. There were plenty of standout moments on the stage, from pitch competitions and expert roundtables to a conversation with former Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris and a closing-party performance from Wyclef Jean. Whether it was unique insights or unforgettable moments, HumanX delivered an event that used the latest event innovation to exceed expectations.

However, the value went beyond the content to include arguably the most important element of any in-person event: connections. A core goal of the event was to facilitate genuine business outcomes between participants, with four distinct networking programs tailored to the needs of specific attendee groups. These meetings were vital for exhibitors and sponsors as participants had serious purchasing power. Nearly 75% of the attendees were at VP level or higher, with a significant purchasing authority. 

The four meeting programs offered by HumanX, included:

1. Peer [X]change

Available to all registered attendees, Peer [X]change was a meeting program to connect participants in the same job roles. It brought together professionals by job role, such as marketing, sales, IT, HR, finance, or operations. Attendees could use Grip’s platform to opt into small-group breakfasts, receptions, and moderated roundtables, offering a rare chance to connect with peers facing similar challenges and share proven AI strategies.

2. HumanX Connect

Designed as an open-access networking layer for all attendees, HumanX Connect offered high-impact, one-on-one meetings scheduled entirely on attendees’ own terms. Participants could browse and schedule 15-minute conversations with peers and potential collaborators using Grip’s award-winning Event App.

3. VentureConnect

Designed specifically to connect startup founders with venture capitalists, VentureConnect used Grip’s platform to schedule 15-minute one-on-one meetings based on AI-driven matchmaking suggestions. Importantly, only investors could initiate meeting requests, ensuring a curated, high-value experience and protecting investors from being overwhelmed.

“We asked that all startup reps in VentureConnect be either CEOs or founders,” says Emily. “It gave the meetings more weight and made them more productive.”

4. SolutionBridge

HumanX’s monetized meeting program was SolutionBridge, where sellers (or ‘sponsors’) could purchase bundles of meetings with qualified buyers. Sellers paid for each meeting, while buyers committed to taking a minimum of eight meetings in exchange for a free pass to the event. 

“We like to think of these as introductory meetings, first dates with a purpose,” explains Emily. “If there’s synergy, the sponsor already has a booth and can take the next meeting right there on the floor.”

Whether it was buyers and sellers, startups and investors, or media and thought leaders, every connection was backed by purpose and powered by Grip.

Smart technology for a smart event

It’s rare to see a first-time event take such bold strides, but HumanX wasn’t built to follow convention. The inaugural HumanX event launched with a suite of advanced offerings that most conferences take years to implement, including pre-scheduled meetings, AI-powered recommendations, Smart Badges and more. This was a result of HumanX selecting two of Grip’s product modules: Engage (featuring Event App, MustMeet and more) and Onsite (Smart Badges and more). 

The addition of Grip’s Smart Badges was a bold but decisive move. With thousands of high-level attendees and a packed schedule, HumanX needed to make it easy for participants to identify, connect with, and remember the right people. That’s where Grip’s latest innovation came in.

Making connections effortless with Smart Badges

Grip’s Smart Badges meant event participants could exchange contact information with zero friction, perfect for the kind of spontaneous, high-value interactions that HumanX enabled. Whether it was an investor getting a startup founder’s contact details or a buyer collecting information from a vendor, participants could exchange details with a quick tap; no fumbling for business cards or manually adding contacts to their phone.

Smart Badges enable event participants to easily exchange contact information with the click of a button on their electronic smart badges. By using these bluetooth hardware badges, organizers typically receive a 10x increase in participant connections. Other benefits include rich insights, like heat maps showing where connections are taking place on the show floor, plus session tracking so organizers know which participants attended which sessions.

To get everyone comfortable with this new technology, during Kamala Harris’s keynote, the MC encouraged everyone to connect with the person beside them. By showing how simple and quick it was to make connections using Smart Badges, there were more than 19,000 connections made on the first day alone.

“It was cool to see everybody make those connections, people were pumped about it,” says Emily. “A lot of people thought that you had to actually be touching for the Smart Badges to work. But when you told people that you only have to be within five feet and you just click the button at the same time, people really went with it. It was a great feature.”

The system automatically synced these connections to the Grip platform, enabling post-event follow-up and data-driven insights.

Beyond fostering fresh connections, Smart Badges made it easier to understand attendee behavior. “Seeing that a user favorited a session doesn’t mean they actually attended it or how long they stayed for,” says Emily. “With Smart Badges, we could track actual session attendance, giving us more accurate insights into their popularity. As a result, we understand what people are really interested in and what to cut or add for next year.”

The information from the Smart Badges also helped with sponsors, allowing them to see who visited their booths or listened to their sessions. The organizer was also able to analyze which booths had the most traffic with real-time heat maps and play that back to help with rebooking for next year’s event.

Curating meaningful meetings with MustMeet

The HumanX team also used Grip’s MustMeet, an AI-powered pre-scheduled meeting tool for the SolutionBridge networking program. This ensured each meeting delivered valuable business relationships for participants. Vendors and buyers were connected based on mutual interest and metadata, with the meeting booked through MustMeet. 

This led to a much more streamlined experience for both parties. “Some folks don’t have time to send meeting requests and log back into the platform again and again,” explains Emily. “With the MustMeet scheduler, they only have to log in twice at most, once to finish their profile onboarding and once to select their preferences.”

With the simplified setup, sellers who selected their preferences were more likely to have higher-rated meetings. They were also more likely to rebook for next year’s event. “All the companies with the top number of leads had already rebooked onsite for year two, that was before we even left Las Vegas,” says Emily.

MustMeet also gave the organizers visibility and control. The system gave the organizers AI-generated scores to predict the quality of their meetings, while they could also move meetings around where necessary. Sellers had a four-day review period where they could ask the organizers to cancel or reschedule meetings for any reason. “What I loved about MustMeet is that, if you go to cancel Meeting A, you can see the different options along with the meeting score,” explains Emily. “It makes it really easy to reschedule so that the meetings are a good fit for the sponsor.”

By using MustMeet’s scheduler, the organizers were able to fulfill 99% of the purchased meetings, which also helped eliminate any refunds or credits given to sponsors.

Bringing it all together with seamless integrations

Behind the scenes, Grip’s flexible integrations played a critical role in helping the HumanX team run a seamless, data-connected event. Rather than juggling each tool and its data separately, the organizers used Grip’s Native Integrations to connect with multiple third-party platforms, such as Swoogo for registration and Xtag for badge printing.

“It made it really easy for us as event organizers to know that Grip, Xtag, and Swoogo worked well together,” says Emily. “We have an instant webhook that sends the data from Swoogo to our custom central database, then to Grip and Xtag. The data just flows seamlessly.”

At the same time, the team used BundleIQ’s Alani AI to turn session audio into transcribed, searchable content, reached through a direct link in the Grip mobile event app.

By linking their tools through Grip, HumanX created a smoother, smarter event, with richer data, easier workflows, and post-event content that their audience could revisit.

Together, these tools helped HumanX strike the perfect balance between structure and serendipity, enabling curated networking at a scale that would have been impossible to manage manually.

“We have top-level speakers, but at the end of the day, people are coming there to do business and to make connections,” explains Emily. “Grip is one of the ways that we facilitate that, by making sure that we can create these micro-marketplaces for our audiences to network, whether that’s startups and investors or buyers and sellers.”

HumanX, version 2.0

HumanX set a new benchmark for what’s possible in a first-year event, merging innovation with high-value networking in a space that’s often crowded with theory over results. From the clarity of its mission to the precision of its execution, the event delivered on its promise to guide leaders from confusion to confidence in AI deployment.

As HumanX looks to year two, the goal is intelligent scaling, with plans to double but cap attendance at 6,000, preserving the premium experience. With the venue already booked for San Francisco, Emily and the rest of the team already have ideas for how to make the next event better than ever.  

“As an AI event, we’re asking how we can leverage AI to make the event experience better,” says Emily. Current ideas include interactive maps and customized agendas based on LLMs, enabling a more curated experience for each attendee.

Eventually, the team plans to bring HumanX to a wider audience, expanding the event to Europe. With a proven playbook and a powerful platform behind them, the HumanX team is poised to redefine what a high-level AI event looks like, where every meeting counts, and every attendee walks away more confident in their next move.