The countdown has begun for Kiss the Future 2025, the largest artificial intelligence summit in Southeast Europe. When Microsoft’s Director of Applied Engineering for Azure AI, Eve Psalti, confirmed her arrival in Sarajevo, it became clear that this would not be just another tech conference. Together with senior representatives from Google DeepMind, Samsung Global Research, IBM, and international AI safety councils, Psalti’s presence signals a profound shift: the Balkans are no longer a peripheral market, but a region where the future of AI innovation and infrastructure will be tested.
Through exclusive interviews with confirmed speakers, IT Logs has obtained rare insights into why these global tech giants are turning toward Sarajevo and what they expect to contribute to regional AI development.
AI safety beyond the silicon valley model
One of the most anticipated voices at the summit is Marjana Skenduli, founder of AI Albania and a recognized authority on AI safety. Skenduli will highlight how smaller nations, with limited resources, can approach AI not as generalists, but as focused innovators. “Instead of trying to cover the full spectrum of AI, the Balkans can specialize in sectors where they can excel—such as agriculture, tourism, renewable energy, or low-resource language processing,” Skenduli explained.
Drawing on her work with international safety councils, she will argue for “intentional development,” where AI systems are designed around local languages, cultural contexts, and specific social challenges. In countries where institutions are still taking shape, Skenduli sees the opportunity to build trust and accountability into AI systems from the very beginning. “Rather than retrofitting generic tools built elsewhere, we can define different priorities from the start,” she emphasized. This approach is a direct counter-narrative to the one-size-fits-all model often exported from major tech hubs. For the Balkans, it means that a local, problem-solving mindset can lead to globally relevant innovations.
Microsoft Azure: Infrastructure meets regional strategy
The arrival of Eve Psalti represents Microsoft’s highest-level Azure AI engineering presence at any Southeast European event this year. Her role in scaling AI solutions across Azure’s global infrastructure provides her with a unique perspective on why regions like the Balkans matter. “Scaling requires robust distributed systems, regionally diverse data centers, AI-optimized hardware, and enterprise-grade orchestration,” Psalti told IT Logs. “Latency, uptime, responsible AI, and customer trust are at the core of mission-critical workloads.”
Her keynote will explore the technical backbone of global AI- load balancing, GPU capacity, inference latency—and how modular architecture prevents vendor lock-in for smaller companies. This is particularly relevant for Balkan startups hesitant to rely fully on global providers. The core message is that Microsoft is not just a provider of generic tools, but a strategic partner invested in building sustainable, resilient local ecosystems.
Sustainability will be another focal point. Microsoft, she explained, is embedding efficiency at every layer: model compression, low-rank adaptation, inference acceleration, and a push toward carbon-neutral, renewable-powered data centers.
Psalti’s talk will show how these large-scale technical decisions have a direct impact on the viability of small, regional projects.
Psalti’s talk will show how these large-scale technical decisions have a direct impact on the viability of small, regional projects.
Samsung global research: The geopolitical dimension
Adding a striking geopolitical angle is Sean Gourley, founder of Primer.ai and advisor to Samsung Global Research. Gourley frames AI as the “third technology offset” in defense history—after nuclear weapons and precision-guided munitions. “The third offset is artificial intelligence,” he noted. His Sarajevo talk will connect AI to conflict zones, citing Ukraine’s use of drone operations as a live example of how AI is reshaping modern warfare.
But Gourley’s perspective is not limited to military power. For smaller nations, his message is clear: participation in technological transformation does not require massive defense budgets. Instead, it requires strategic positioning in AI research, chips, and material sciences. His collaboration with Samsung bridges commercial AI, research frontiers, and national security, offering a template for how a nation can build a reputation and a strategic advantage in the AI era. His presence highlights that the conversation about AI is no longer confined to technical specifications—it is a conversation about power, security, and global influence, and the Balkans are now part of that dialogue.
Research meets commerce
A unifying theme among confirmed speakers is the blurring of academic research and commercial development. Gourley underscored this shift with a startling statistic: in 2024, 90% of significant AI models were produced by industry rather than academia. This seismic shift has profound implications for how tech ecosystems develop.
For the Balkans, this means traditional divisions between universities and startups may no longer apply. Successful companies will need integrated research and commercial pipelines from the start. “Many VCs are funding deep-tech companies precisely because they carry research weight,” Gourley explained. “If you’re aiming for world-class impact, your commercial team may also need to be a research lab.” This approach challenges the region to move beyond being a provider of outsourced services and to become a hub for genuine, deep-tech innovation.
Why Sarajevo matters
The confirmed participation of global leaders from Microsoft, Samsung, DeepMind, and IBM underlines a broader reality: the next phase of AI growth depends on diverse perspectives and specialized expertise unlikely to emerge from Silicon Valley alone. By combining Skenduli’s work on safety in low-resource contexts, Psalti’s expertise in scaling infrastructure, and Gourley’s insights on geopolitics, Sarajevo becomes a testbed for how AI can evolve outside traditional power centers.
The summit’s theme, “The End of Hype, The Start of Impact,” sets the tone. Rather than abstract visions, speakers are expected to present practical strategies—on infrastructure, safety, commercialization, and resilience—that local companies can implement. The focus is on tangible solutions that can directly address regional challenges. This is not about celebrating what AI might do someday, but about building what it can do now.
For the Balkan tech ecosystem, the real question is not what will be presented on stage, but how local stakeholders will respond. Global players are opening the door, but meaningful progress depends on whether startups, universities, and policymakers in the region move from passive spectatorship to active participation in shaping AI’s future. The summit represents a call to action, an opportunity to leverage global expertise to build a locally-relevant, sustainable, and secure AI future.
Kiss the Future 2025 takes place September 25–26 across multiple venues in Sarajevo, with the National Theatre Sarajevo hosting the main stage. The event is organized by the Blum Institute, under the patronage of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and with the support of UniCredit Bank.
This feature is based on exclusive interviews with confirmed speakers. Full coverage of the summit and its outcomes will follow in IT Logs’ post-event reporting.
