Research + Innovation Summit 2025: From Vision to Value - Accelerating Business Impact with AI
With the theme “From Vision to Value: Creating Business Impact with AI,” our 2025 Research & Innovation Summit brought together senior Airbus leaders, technologists, academics, and startups for two days of rich dialogue on how AI is reshaping aerospace and enterprise operations.
Held at Acubed’s premises in the heart of Silicon Valley, the event spotlighted the pervasive impact of generative AI—its radical potential to unlock efficiencies, reshape organizational models, and fundamentally transform how companies operate. Through keynotes, panels, and live demos, participants explored how enterprises must rapidly adapt by integrating next-gen AI capabilities and actively partnering with high-velocity startups at the forefront of innovation.
Participants explored real-world applications and examined what it takes to scale AI responsibly across complex systems. Emerging startups and leading thinkers added bold perspectives on the future of intelligent systems, data generation, and human-machine collaboration.
Key Takeaways:
- AI is at the heart of enterprise transformation: What was once experimental is now reshaping how companies of all sizes operate. The train has left the station—those who delay risk falling irreversibly behind. Strategic, decisive deployment is no longer optional.
- Agentic AI is your new teammate: AI agents decentralize decision-making, accelerate execution, and are set to reshape how organizations operate.
- Silicon Valley is still the AI epicenter: Its concentration of talent, capital, and fast-moving innovation continues to drive global momentum.
- Startups are essential to progress: Large organizations must engage and scale breakthrough technologies emerging from smaller, agile players.
Startups like Beacon AI, Bifrost AI, and ThoughtForge AI demonstrated advances in pilot support, synthetic data, and embodied AI, which industry voices including Andrew Ng and futurist Peter Leyden framed today’s AI surge as both an inflection point and an opportunity for lasting impact.
As AI moves deeper into core operations, the need for trusted experimentation, rapid prototyping, and smart integration becomes critical. That’s where Airbus’ innovation center, Acubed, stands to play a vital role—bridging Airbus with the pulse of Silicon Valley and accelerating the translation of promising technologies such as gen AI into enterprise-scale solutions. The Summit reinforced the urgency for bold yet grounded action—and the importance of innovation engines like Acubed in driving it forward.