Right now the AI market feels like a casino at 2 a.m. The lights are still flashing, the drinks are still pouring, and everyone swears they are up big. But listen closely and you can hear the chips getting counted tighter. Enterprise buyers are no longer dazzled by demos. They want proof, process, revenue that shows up on a balance sheet instead of a keynote slide. The bubble narrative is loud. The giant narrative is louder. Trust is the only currency that clears, and in today’s startup ecosystem, credibility compounds faster than hype.
That tension is exactly why on February 12, 2026, in Back Bay, Boston, EliseAI is hosting AI Bubble vs. AI Giants: Earning Buyer Trust in the AI Era. Not a spectacle. Not a manifesto. A room designed to interrogate what actually moves a deal from curiosity to contract. The agenda runs from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM, beginning with arrival and check in, followed by a focused 30 minute talk, then 2 hours of networking that will likely surface more signal than any slide deck.
The premise is blunt because the market demands it. AI hype is everywhere, yet enterprise buyers are more skeptical than ever. This conversation drills into how buyers evaluate AI, what truly advances deals, and how GTM roles are evolving as AI reshapes revenue motion. In a startup ecosystem saturated with product claims, the differentiator is execution inside complex workflows, not model size or press cycles.
Ben Rey, VP Enterprise Sales at EliseAI, hosts the Welcome and Talk. That detail matters. This is a revenue operator addressing revenue operators. The focus is the evolving GTM landscape in an AI driven world and the lessons from scaling EliseAI in live markets. While much of the AI sector is still proving value, EliseAI positions itself on delivering real world sales impact for housing operators. Impact that justified expansion into Boston. Impact that supports scaling a GTM organization and deploying agentic AI that changes how teams work and how revenue is generated.
Back Bay will not be filled with tourists chasing a trend. It will be Boston’s GTM community, leaders carrying quotas, designing comp plans, forecasting pipelines, absorbing the weight of missed numbers. The structure says everything. A tight operator led talk, then 2 hours of collisions. Deals rarely originate on stage. They are born in conversations where someone admits what is not working and someone else has a system that is.
EliseAI has built a pattern of operator first gatherings, from healthcare focused discussions on better patient access to broader dialogues about building durable AI companies. The through line is depth over spectacle. The February 12 session sharpens that edge for a startup ecosystem navigating the line between inflated expectations and sustainable value.
In a market where everyone claims intelligence, the real advantage is credibility. Back Bay at 6:30 PM becomes more than a venue. It becomes a filter. Between check in and last call, someone will decide whether they are buying into a bubble or aligning with a giant, and in this startup ecosystem, that distinction will not be philosophical. It will be financial.
