AI Tinkerers - Toronto - November 2025 Meetup at Shopify is live!

We’re back at Shopify! Come meet fellow AI/ML builders, and submit a demo! As usual, the meetup series is produced by the Human Feedback Foundation.

This month we will have a special demo presenter from Google Cloud: Aurora Li - Customer Engineer, Application Modernization, Google Cloud.

🎤 Demos

We are actively looking for presenters! A demo is limited to 6 minutes in length and demonstrates a work in progress. We’ll select 6 of the most interesting topics to present. No pitches! Very few slides! We want to see your messy WIP, with running code!

We’re looking for demos of both AI tools that people are building, and clever/fun/hacky uses of AI. Our best demos tend to be those which show off personal projects, and we have a rule against “pitches” or any kind of corporate feel - this isn’t about your business; this is about the technology of AI and the personal empowerment it can provide.

Got something quirky and awesome to share? Submit your proposal by November 3rd, and we’ll let you know by November 5th. The event takes place on November 10, and yes, we move at the speed of AI 🚀 👉 Fill out the speaker submission form above.

We’ve got a What makes a great Demo at AI Tinkerers FAQ page. Please read before submitting!

Sponsors and Hosts

Thank you to Shopify! Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide. The all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow a business. Making Commerce Better for Everyone. Shopify is supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs, the world’s biggest brands, and everyone in between.

Thank you to Google Cloud!
Google Cloud is revolutionizing the cloud landscape, delivering essential AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools for the present and future. It provides a robust, fully integrated, and optimized AI stack, leveraging planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models, and a comprehensive development platform. Through its AI-powered applications, Google Cloud empowers organizations to innovate and transform. With a global presence, customers in over 200 countries and territories rely on Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner for advancing their digital capabilities.

Start building now!

We’re giving the AI Tinkerers Community free trial access to Google Cloud’s cutting-edge AI tools to power your projects.

• Build What’s Next in Generative AI
• Vertex AI Free Trial ($300 Credit)
• Google for Startups Cloud Program
• Hello Startups

🕕 AI Tinkerers Event Schedule:

5:00 Doors open
5:40 Welcome & Orientation
5:50 Talks x4 + Science Fair Explainer
6:40 Break & Food
7:30 Talks x3 
8:00 final thank yous
8:10 Networking & cold food
9:00 or after: GTFO

What is AI Tinkerers?

AI Tinkerers is a meetup designed exclusively for practitioners who possess technical, machine learning, and entrepreneurial backgrounds and are actively building and working with foundation models, such as large language models (LLMs) and generative AI. If you’re deeply passionate about creating LLM-enabled applications, have hands-on experience in building such systems, and are eager to connect with like-minded individuals who share your level of commitment, then this group is the perfect fit for you. With AI Tinkerers meetups taking place in 60+ cities, we cater to a dedicated community of AI/ML builders.

Read more in the FAQ

More Information: If you are new to AI Tinkerers, please read the AI Tinkerers FAQ and join our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/8WsqnC6Hk3.

Presentations going down at June’s Toronto AI Tinkerers Event

AI Tinkerers Community Stats 📊

• Members: This exclusive community of 5,376 technical professionals comprises 40% machine learning and MLOps engineers, 30% full-stack AI developers, and 25% applied research scientists. Members possess deep expertise in LLMs, agentic workflows, and cloud-native infrastructure. Notably, the group includes engineering leaders from Shopify, Stripe, and Google DeepMind, alongside active open-source maintainers and doctoral researchers from the Vector Institute.
• Companies Represented: Featuring tech giants and AI leaders like Google DeepMind, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Cohere, and Ollama, alongside prominent platforms such as Shopify, Instacart, Stripe, and Autodesk, and fast-growing startups like CentML, Cerebras Systems, Modular, and more
• Demos Presented: 417 demos were submitted and 111 were presented, with recurring excitement around locally deployable and agent-driven AI workflows, grounded retrieval systems (including graph-based approaches), and reliable evaluation/evidence strategies. Technical themes have frequently covered multi-agent orchestration, RAG and structured extraction, multimodal generation (images/video/audio/3D), and production-oriented safety/security controls such as policy replay, sandboxing, and constrained tool access.

🚀 Call for Venue Hosts!

Looking for a company to host our AI Tinkerers social event this December! Our past events have been hosted and sponsored by Google Cloud, Shopify, Cerebras Systems, Mozilla, Accenture, Weights & Biases, Drive Capital, Two Small Fish Ventures, and Shopify Ventures.

TL;DR: Want to host the community? Ping elena at humanfeedback dot io

Organizers

Hosted by the Human Feedback Foundation, a Linux Foundation AI & Data nonprofit advancing a human-centric future for AI.

Testimonials 💬