Alexander CS Hendorf
Alexander C.S. Hendorf is an independent AI and open-source strategy advisor working with companies in regulated industries. With 20+ years of hands-on experience across 50+ technologies — from the Python ecosystem to vector databases — he bridges the gap between boardroom decisions and technical execution. Alexander is a Python Software Foundation Fellow, heads the Open Source Working Group of the KI Bundesverband, serves on the board of the Python Software Verband, and has delivered 100+ talks in 15+ countries.
Sessions
Chinese and American open-source LLMs are competing head-to-head — from DeepSeek and Qwen to Llama and Mistral. The model landscape is broader than ever, yet in Germany the debate still circles around waiting for the next breakthrough. Alexander Hendorf and Sebastian Raschka discuss what these models can and cannot do today, what biases to watch for, and which deployment strategies actually work in practice. The session reserves substantial time for questions and discussion with the audience.
Open source powers the world's digital infrastructure — from AI research to enterprise data pipelines. But how do you build a sustainable business on it? This panel brings together three figures from the heart of the global open source ecosystem: Yann Lechelle (Probabl), who made the deliberate switch from infrastructure CEO to open source; Sylvain Corlay (QuantStack), whose consulting business is built from and around the core of the Jupyter ecosystem and its maintainers; and Ines Montani (Explosion / spaCy), one of the most influential voices in NLP tooling. Three founders. Three paths. Real answers on what it takes to build — or switch to building — a business in open source.