Something is off in the AI conversation right now. Not broken. Not stalled. Just louder than it needs to be. Models are shipping faster than judgment. Demos are outrunning outcomes. Everyone is talking about leverage, fewer people are talking about consequence. When cycles move like this, the serious builders stop broadcasting and start gathering. Quiet rooms. Sharp minds. No fog machine. Just work. This is how real inflection points surface inside a living startup ecosystem, not through headlines, but through proximity.
That is the lane NY AI Engineers has been carving out, and on February 18, 2026, it tightens the focus. Brooklyn. Fonzi AI HQ. Ground floor. Not a conference center designed to impress tourists, but a space where decisions get pressure tested. The format stays disciplined. Short talks. Real Q&A. Conversations that assume you know the basics and care about what actually ships. This is not about spectacle. It is about signal, the kind that only emerges when people who build for a living are willing to disagree in the same room.
The crowd is self-selecting. Engineers who have already broken systems that mattered. Founders who have felt infrastructure choices echo 6 months later. Operators who understand that scale is less about volume and more about alignment. Pizza and soft drinks are there because people stay. Networking happens because the content gives everyone something real to argue about, and because the startup ecosystem only advances when builders compare notes without a sales deck between them.
The voices shaping the night carry real weight. Clinton Robinson, Co-Founder and CTO of Parable, shows up with scar tissue and receipts. A $200M exit with Lane Technologies to VTS tends to clarify how you think about systems and incentives. At Parable, alongside Adam Schwartz (CEO), Steve Tam (CMO), and Alex Terrien (COO), Clinton Robinson is focused on operations intelligence that treats AI impact like a balance sheet, not a vibe. A $16.5M seed led by HOF Capital buys time, not forgiveness. The work still has to justify itself.
AWS enters through Kanta Garg, Solutions Architect, carrying the gravity of platforms that do not get to be wrong at scale. When AWS speaks, it is about constraints, tradeoffs, and what fails first when ambition outruns architecture. Fonzi brings its own builder perspective through Hegar Garcia, listed as Tech Lead, grounded in the code paths that turn hiring marketplaces into actual markets.
This does not happen by accident. Fonzi AI, backed by Lightspeed Ventures, is built by Yang Mou (CEO) and Brett Martin (President), founders who understand that talent is infrastructure. Drew Moffitt shapes the narrative without sanding off the edges. They curate these nights the way strong teams ship product, intentionally, with memory, and with respect for the broader startup ecosystem they are helping organize.
There is a parable in all of this, and yes, the name fits. Tools are maturing. The questions are getting heavier. Measurement is replacing mythology. On February 18, the room in Brooklyn is not predicting the future. It is deciding which version of it is worth building, and which ideas need to be retired quietly before they get too expensive to ignore.
