January is a month for reflection, and for us at Daytona, it’s a chance to look back at an incredible year of building community through in-person events for the AI ecosystem.

Throughout the year, we organized a series of gatherings designed to bring together people who are not just talking about AI, but actively building with it. Most of our events took place in San Francisco, with several in New York City and one in Paris, allowing us to engage with different local communities, cultures, and perspectives.

We hosted three types of events:

• AI Builders — meetups for people building agents, not just talking about them

• HackSprints — elevated, seamless hackathons where creativity meets execution

• DevTool Gatherings — relaxed networking events for genuine conversations and connections

Each format served a different purpose, but all shared the same goal: building meaningful relationships and supporting the people shaping the future of AI.

Events by the numbers

• 19 events across three continents

• 1,600+ attendees

• 68 speakers

These numbers reflect not just scale, but the depth of engagement and energy we saw across communities.

AI Builders

We organized 11 AI Builders meetups, primarily in San Francisco, but also in Palo Alto, New York City, and Paris.

Across these events, we hosted 68 talks from founders and builders from some of the most exciting AI companies in the ecosystem. We partnered with and were hosted by incredible companies including GitHub, AWS, Datadog, Sentry, SambaNova, and Brex.

With an average of 100+ attendees per event, each meetup was consistently a full house, and more importantly, a place where like-minded builders connected, shared lessons, and formed long-lasting relationships.

HackSprints

We ran three HackSprints in October and November. We hosted two HackSprints in San Francisco and one in New York City. These hackathons took engagement to the next level. Builders didn’t just attend, they built.

Across the three events:

• 105 projects were submitted (an average of 35 per event)

• Participants built with Daytona and a strong group of partners, including Anthropic, Sentry, ElevenLabs, Galileo, CodeRabbit, WorkOS, Browser Use, Tigris Data, and Brex

HackSprints became a space where creativity, execution, and collaboration came together, and where builders could turn ideas into real products in just a few days.

DevTool Gatherings

Our third event format was DevTool Gatherings. These gatherings were designed to be lower-pressure and more conversational: a place to meet peers across DevRel, product, marketing, and engineering, and build authentic relationships in a calm, welcoming environment.

Looking ahead: Plans for 2026

In 2026, we plan to continue expanding our in-person presence by hosting events in San Francisco and the Bay Area, New York City, and Paris, while also growing into new cities, including:

·       London

·       Boston

·       Singapore

·       and more to come.

As the centerpiece of our in-person initiatives, we’re excited to host Daytona Compute, our flagship conference at Chase Center in San Francisco on March 8–9, 2026.

If you’re interested in partnering with us on future events, you can apply through our Pacer community ambassador program using this link or reach out to us at events@daytona.io.