Welcome to

The AI ecosystem of the North

aiGrunn brings together developers, businesses, researchers, educators, and policymakers for one unforgettable day of ideas, innovation and inspiration.

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Eight Tracks

One ecosystem

aiGrunn 2026 covers every nook and cranny of AI in the North (and beyond), from deep tech to public sector, from education to creativity. Explore our tracks below.

Tech track
Tech
Tech

The heart of aiGrunn. Expect deep dives into AI architecture, open-source tooling, MLOps, and the latest advances in model building.

Business track
Business
Business

Real-world AI application, ROI, automation strategy and what it means to become an AI-native organization.

Government track
Government
Government

How AI is reshaping public services, policy-making, and civic infrastructure, and what responsible adoption looks like when the stakes are society-wide.

Education track
Education
Education

AI in the classroom, in curriculums, and in research. What do these tools mean for the future of learning?

Sensible AI track
Sensible AI
Sensible AI

Ethics, transparency, regulation and the human side of building AI we can actually trust.

Science & R&D track
Science & R&D
Science & R&D

AI accelerating discovery: from lab automation and drug research to climate modelling and beyond. Where scientific ambition meets machine intelligence.

AI in Healthcare track
Healthcare
Healthcare

From diagnostics and clinical decision support to patient outcomes and medical imaging. How AI is transforming care delivery and saving lives across the region.

pyGrunn track
pyGrunn
pyGrunn

15+ years of Python, now a track at aiGrunn. One of the Netherlands' longest-running developer conferences brings its deep-dive talks, open-source spirit and community of Pythonistas to the AI ecosystem.

Tickets

Join 600+ professionals
at aiGrunn 2026

📅 November 14, 2026 📍 Forum Groningen
💛 aiGrunn is non-commercial and organized by volunteers. Sponsors keep ticket prices as low as possible.
aiLand

Going beyond the conference hall.

Join us as we expand into a city-wide celebration of AI innovation. aiLand, held at the heart of Groningen, brings together the regional AI ecosystem: solution providers, funding opportunities, AI hubs, and education.

Explore Forum Groningen for paper sessions and our AI Tools in Education event. One day, endless excitement!

Discover aiLand →
aiLand 2025
22 September 2026

Lutje aiLand

On September 22nd, Lutje aiLand brings together leaders and builders around one question: how do you build an intelligent company? Expect sharp talks, including a keynote by Peter Wennink, and the conversations that follow them.

More information coming soon.

Stay updated →
Sponsors

Made possible by our sponsors.

aiGrunn is kept accessible by the generous support of organizations that believe in the North's AI future.

Organized by
Blast from the past

Three years of ideas.
Still relevant.

Catch up on some of our favourite talks from aiGrunn 2025, 2024 and 2023.

2025 22 talks
We Put YOLO on a Tractor — What could go wrong?
Wieneke Keller & Navaneeth Krishnan
Evaluation-driven product development
Òscar Vilaplana
Engineering Ethics into AI
Jorn de Vreede
19 things I learned from AI coding, after not coding for 10 years
Mark Vletter
How AI is helping you back on the road
Yke Rusticus
Teaching AI to Hunt for Vulnerabilities
Roald Nefs
The Modern AI Stack: From Function Calls to Federated Agents with MCP and A2A
Maarten Smeets
GPT-NL: Developing a Dutch LLM from scratch
Julio A. de Oliveira Filho & Athanasios Trantas
Automating myself: From Customer Intent to Information System
Valentin Bister
AI-First Playbook: How Leaders and Pros Stay Ahead of the Curve
Yonatan Alexander
MLOps Magic: Templates & Monorepos for Production
Jeroen Bleker
Vibe Coding: The Revenge of Requirements and Architecture?
Jan Salvador van der Ven
Interacting with a billion records using (semi-)autonomous agents
Tim Kreutz
Private LLMs, when ChatGPT isn't an option
Remi Baar
Why Care About AI Safety?
Alexander Müller & Thomas Brcic
Near-Zero Defects: Visual Anomaly Detection on Edge Devices
Rajesh Gangireddy & Ashwin Vaidya
Local-first AI
Erik Poolman
Liar Lair! Assess the Correctness of an LLM Chatbot
Ayushi Rastogi
The Storyteller Project
Artur Barseghyan
Building interactive AI vision tools for the browser
Mark Redeman
Think Like a Doctor: Theory of Mind for Explainability and Trust in Human-AI Collaboration
Wico Mulder
Learning From Biology: The Evolution of Self-Supervised Vision
Jordy de Lange
2024 28 talks
Digitising the (geospatial) world with AI
Ruud Henken & Stefan Wierda
RAGing agents
Sven Vintges & Jelle Klaver
Shimmers: building a GenAI indie game
Jochem Kleine
Is your database designed for AI?
JP Hwang
Challenges with Human Digital Twins
Harald Rietdijk
Going beyond tabular data with graphs
Chris van Riemsdijk
Manual to Massive: Scaling AI Without Losing Your Mind
Sebastiaan den Boer
Hallucinations and Hyperparameters: Navigating the Quirks of LLMs
Yonatan Alexander
From RAG to riches: How LLMs can take enterprise search to the next level
Marten Koopmans
Powering Productivity: The Energy Costs of Generative AI
Bram de Wit
AI in Education and Research at Hanze
Rix Groenboom & Joran Arends
Beyond Buttons: How Chat is Revolutionizing Software Interaction
Alexander Jeurissen & Willian van der Velde
Autimaatje: genAI & mental health
Sven Warris
Using causality theory to correct for training set bias
Onno Zoeter
Contextual Artificial Intelligence
Jean Paul van Oosten & Edzo Botjes
Building agents with GPT-4o-realtime
Henk Boelman
Make LLM inference go brrr
Daniël de Kok
Wattflex: AI in the Energy Transition
Steven Warmelink
AI-Infused Software Architecture
Marcel Schutte
AI Agent UX Patterns: Lessons From 1000 Startups
Jonas Braadbaart
Designing Human-AI Interaction for Effective Assistance
aiGrunn 2024
A Large Language Model took me on vacation
Jorrik Klijnsma
Real-World Insights: Lessons from Using Azure AI and ChatGPT in Live
New Nexus
Software for AI for software
Willem Jonker
Panel: The future of AI development
Niels Taatgen, Willem Jonker, Onno Zoeter, Yonatan Alexander
Opening talk
Berco Beute
The future of AI
Niels Taatgen
2023 17 talks
Partner with aiGrunn

Invest in the North's
AI future.

With your support, aiGrunn books great venues, reimburses speakers, keeps tickets affordable and records every talk for those who can't attend.

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Call for proposals

Share your expertise with the North.

aiGrunn is a unique stage for developers, researchers, practitioners and thinkers. If you have something worth saying, we want to hear it.

Submit your talk proposal for aiGrunn 2026 and join a lineup of inspiring speakers from across the Netherlands and beyond.

Submit your talk →
Submission guidelines
  • Open topics welcome: tech, business, ethics, education, creative AI, public sector
  • No sales pitches. All talks must deliver genuine learning value
  • Technical depth is welcome and appreciated
  • Slots: 30 minutes including Q&A
  • English submissions only
  • All talks are recorded and published on YouTube
  • Dutch and English submissions both accepted
aiGrunn Café
aiGrunn Café

Join the conversation at aiGrunn Café

The aiGrunn Café is a get-together of the North's brightest minds in AI. It's an evening of real-world AI use cases, sharp discussions, and hands-on experiments with fellow pioneers from the region.

The third edition is taking place @ Bossers & Cnossen on the 10th of June.

Sign up →Coming soon
Hackathon

Two days of building before the big day

On November 11 & 12, two days before aiGrunn, the Niemeijer in Groningen becomes the arena. Bring your ideas, your team, and your laptop.

More information coming soon. Stay tuned.

November 11
Challenge

A focused, single-day AI challenge to sharpen your edge and compete against the best minds in the North.

November 12
Hackathon

Build something that matters. A full day of hacking, collaborating, and turning bold ideas into working prototypes.