Operationalizing AI for Scale and Sovereignty

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Companies are taking control of their own data to tailor AI for their needs. The challenge lies in balancing ownership with the safe, trusted flow of high‑quality data needed to power reliable insights. This conversation from MIT Technology Review's EmTech AI conference examines how AI factories unlock new levels of scale, sustainability, and governance—positioning data control as a strategic imperative for governments and enterprises.

About the speakers

Chris Davidson, Vice President, HPC & AI Customer Solutions, HPE

Chris Davidson is Vice President of HPC & AI Customer Solutions at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He leads HPE’s global strategy for AI Factory solutions and Sovereign AI, working with governments, enterprises, and research institutions to build secure, scalable national- and enterprise-grade AI capabilities.

He also directs Product Management and Performance Engineering across HPE’s HPC and AI portfolio, including large-model training platforms and Cray exascale systems. His teams define product strategy, performance architecture, and deployment models that position HPE at the forefront of high-performance and AI computing.

During his nine years at HPE, Chris has led key initiatives across Performance Engineering, AI Cloud, and Professional Services, shaping how HPE delivers optimized, cloud-native, and globally deployed high-performance systems. He previously held technical and leadership roles in the biotech and medical diagnostics sectors.

Chris holds an M.B.A. in Entrepreneurship and Finance and a B.S. in Biology from Loyola University Chicago.

Arjun Shankar, Division Director, National Center for Computational Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Mallikarjun (Arjun) Shankar is the Division Director for the National Center for Computational Science at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His research focuses on the interdisciplinary bridge between computer science and large-scale scientific discovery campaigns that rely on scalable computing and data science. He is a joint faculty appointee at the University of Tennessee’s Bredesen Center, a senior member of the IEEE and a senior member of the ACM.

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