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From standout stage moments to insights from leading minds in business, technology, and culture, Zeta Live 2026 offered plenty to take back to work.
Here’s your guide to the top sessions and takeaways on ambition, AI, and business growth.
Your backstage pass to bolder ideas, better decisions, and bigger breakthroughs.
We started the day with our biggest announcement yet. David A. Steinberg, Zeta’s Chairman, Co-founder, and CEO, unveiled AthenaOS, our new enterprise intelligence operating system. Designed to organize context and action around ambition, AthenaOS starts with what you want to achieve and brings together the intelligence, applications, and actions needed to move it forward.
Watch Steinberg's Opening Remarks:
The Product Vision session went deeper, showing how this ambition takes shape within the product. With AthenaOS, the interface adapts around the work, bringing together what your team needs to pursue its objective. Watch for a closer look at the operating system and Zeta’s other new offerings and enhancements.
Alex Karp on protecting what makes a business distinctive
In a fireside chat with Steinberg, Palantir Co-founder and CEO Dr. Alex Karp explored the business context AI needs to support better decisions. He pressed leaders to identify what makes their companies distinctive, make that knowledge visible across operations, and retain control over it as they apply AI.
Lindsey Vonn on having the courage to change
Lindsey Vonn shared what it takes to reconsider the methods that brought you success. She described changing her equipment and deciding to use men’s skis despite criticism, then proving the decision in competition. “I was ridiculed, but then I crushed everyone,” she recalled.
Kevin Hart on understanding your audience
“My relationship with my audience is one of understanding,” Kevin Hart said. His conversation focused on the people who give him their time, reinforcing a lesson for marketers: knowing your audience helps you offer something relevant and valuable.
Tiffany Haddish on pursuing your ambition
For Tiffany Haddish, ambition means working harder than anyone else and actively pursuing the opportunities that bring her closer to her goals. Her conversation offered a personal perspective on the effort behind achievement.
Want a backstage view of the action? See the photos.
Not surprisingly, AI was a top theme of the day, but where last year was about hype, this year was about execution and operations.
Carla Hassan, CMO of JPMorganChase, described how AI accelerated content creation but overwhelmed legal reviewers who lacked comparable tools. The team saw the efficiency only after building systems to support the entire workflow.
Grace Dolan, President of Sharp Electronics USA, similarly discussed ensuring AI insights reach across teams. She described using AI to turn customer-service calls into insights for sales and marketing. Sales could recognize emerging issues; marketing could improve answers to customers’ questions. Existing information gained value when it reached people who could act on it.
Making these types of operational changes requires developing people alongside the technology. As more work moves to agents, Hassan urged leaders to reconsider the skills their teams need:
“People are struggling most not with the build of the agent, but now with managing that agent. So you're going to have to teach people the basic managerial skills, whether it's an agent or whether it's a human.”
Carla Hassan
CMO, JPMorganChase
For customers, better coordination should translate into more useful interactions. AT&T’s Evan Sauer discussed using behavioral signals to understand when someone might need something—and when to hold back. Recognizing a preference or an unresolved service issue can change whether another message is helpful.
As customers turn to AI for help evaluating choices, marketers also have new opportunities to understand what they need. Molly Hop, Managing Partner at Havas Media Network North America, focused on “the question behind the query.”
Conversational searches can reveal the circumstances and motivations behind a request, helping brands provide more useful information.
Throughout the day, we regularly heard about intent, insights, efficiency, transformation, growth, and impact. At the core of this is intelligence.
As we closed the doors on Zeta Live 2026—after dinner and a show by Steve Aoki at the American Museum of Natural History—the excitement for the future was palpable. Attendees left inspired by the possibilities and ready to bring their ambitions to life.
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