Houston AI Club

Houston has heard plenty about what AI might do.
On September 3, we’re bringing together two leaders who have already put it to work—building an AI company used around the world and helping lead an enterprise AI rollout reaching roughly 100,000 employees.

Join the Houston AI Club, Allenix, the Ion District, and Collide, for the inaugural AI Operator Spotlight at the Ion.

This won’t be a parade of polished pitches or abstract predictions. We’re opening the playbooks behind two very different AI journeys:

• What does it take to build one of Houston’s fastest-growing AI companies?
• How do you introduce AI across an enterprise of roughly 100,000 people?
• What assumptions fall apart when a rollout meets the real world?
• What can Houston’s business leaders, founders, and investors learn from the people doing the work?

Meet the speakers
Chuck Yates — Co-Founder, Collide
After two decades in energy private equity, Chuck co-founded Collide, a Mercury-backed company building the first generative AI platform designed specifically for the energy industry. Collide now serves more than 6,000 users across 122 countries.
Chuck is also the host of the Chuck Yates Got a Job podcast—and he won’t be giving us the sanitized version of the founder story.

Charles Jessup — Senior Manager, AI Fluency at Raytheon, an RTX business
Charles has helped bring AI to roughly 100,000 employees in one of the largest enterprise AI deployments you’re likely to hear discussed firsthand.
He’ll share what it takes to move AI beyond a promising pilot, what surprised the team along the way, and the important assumption that turned out to be wrong.

More than a panel
Some of Houston’s most interesting AI work is happening across energy, aerospace, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, and the startup ecosystem—but the people behind that work rarely end up together in the same room.
We’re changing that.
The evening includes 45 minutes of open networking with founders, executives, builders, business leaders, and investors from across Houston’s AI community.
Whether you’re implementing AI inside an established company, building the next AI startup, investing in the space, or simply trying to understand what is real, this is the room to be in.