Ventures · Blake Becker

Business with Intelligence Conference

The first AI and business conference at Michigan · November 6, 2026

I co-founded the first conference at Michigan built on where AI and business actually meet, running November 6 out of the Ross School of Business. The premise is that students have to become the specialists in this, and that reaching it takes undergraduates, graduate students and working professionals in the same room. I run growth, which here means widening both what students are permitted to use and what they know how to do with it. To make that case I authored an AI-equity study, surveying 300 Ross undergraduates on what they pay for AI out of their own pockets. That figure sits against UMGPT, the tool Michigan provides, which goes largely unused because it does not do what students are already paying elsewhere to get, and against the free Claude rollout at Wharton. I presented the findings to the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education. I also write Maize and Machine, a newsletter for students that names the specific tools worth using for coding, slides, design and research and explains why each one and how to work with it.

516 Socials

Bringing AI into a business that had none

An events company on Long Island that had barely a website and no AI anywhere in how it operated. I brought AI into the business and rebuilt what it runs on, so a crew competing in a young and very fast market can work at the pace that market sets. The companies moving quickest in this industry are already the ones using these tools, and this one had none of them.