ai-economy
(3)
Step
Step is a new-media and events company that runs one of the largest technology festivals in the Middle East and North Africa. Founded by Ray Dargham in 2011, it stages the annual Step Conference in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, publishes tech newsletters and social platforms like StepFeed, and connects founders, investors and builders. From a first edition of roughly 100 people, it has grown to draw more than 8,000 attendees, with startups featured on its stages collectively raising billions in funding. In 2026 the company extended its model to San Francisco with an AI-focused edition.
Luke Arrigoni
Luke Arrigoni is the founder and CEO of Loti, a Seattle startup that hunts the internet for deepfakes, impersonators, and unauthorized images of its users and gets them taken down - usually within 17 hours. A mathematics graduate turned data scientist, he spent over a decade running the AI consultancy Arricor for clients like Getty Images and AT&T before co-founding Loti in 2022 with his wife Rebekah Arrigoni. The company scans roughly 100 million images and videos a day, has captured a large share of the A-list celebrity market, raised a $16.2M Series A led by Khosla Ventures, and now offers free likeness protection to everyday people.
Yang Zhao
Yang Zhao is the Chief Business Officer of Handshake AI, where he runs business and operations for a fast-scaling human-data business serving frontier AI labs. He spent four years at Scale AI as Head of Product Deployment and Operations before joining Handshake, and earlier led growth and strategy at the consumer-rentals company Zumper. He pitches Handshake's edge not as tooling but as raw access to the largest expert network in the US.