Talks
I've spent the past decade building technology products and the teams behind them. That includes Veriff's first AI product and team, NFTPort, and Pactum's AI agents. I'm now Pactum's CIO, after serving as CTO.
I speak about getting AI beyond the prototype, how to tell whether it works, and what changes when the technology meets a real organization.
Speaking enquiries: taivo@pungas.ee.
I've presented 104 sessions since 2013, roughly 96 hours on stage across 8 countries.
Full-length examples
- Beyond Prototypes: Shipping Trustworthy AI — keynote talk, Nordic Testing Days conference, Tallinn 2025 · video · slides
- AI in Your Org: What to Automate, What to Keep Human — panel, Latitude59, Tallinn 2026 · video
- Future of e-Estonia: a young engineer’s view — talk, Digital Agenda for Estonia 2021+, Tallinn 2019 · video · slides
Invite me to speak
I charge for company-funded events: conferences, customer events, strategy days, leadership offsites, and engineering all-hands.
I usually give a 30 to 60 minute talk followed by Q&A. For company events, I can add a 90 to 120 minute closed session with the product, engineering, or leadership team around a real decision they are facing.
In your email, include the date and location, who will be in the room, what you want them to leave with, and your working budget range.
I also take on a few unpaid community events each year when the topic and audience are reason enough. Ask.
I am based in Tallinn. I usually speak in English and can speak in Estonian on request.
Speaker bio
Taivo Pungas has spent the past decade building technology products and teams, from inception through Series C. He is CIO at Pactum, after serving as CTO. Before Pactum, he co-founded NFTPort and built Veriff's first AI product and team. He writes at taivo.ai about systems, products, companies, and the feedback loops that make each better.
Headshots
For event pages and programmes. I prefer the cartoon where possible. Click to open full size.
Talk history
All 104 sessions since 2013, most recent first
- talk, Defence-sector organization, 2026
- Making Pactum's website Claude-able for Marketing — talk + demo, Roleo Show & Tell for Marketers, Tallinn 2026
- Making AI agents part of Pactum's everyday — talk + Q&A, Telecommunications company leadership offsite, 2026
- Pactum's agents, external and internal (with CEO Kaspar Korjus) — fireside, Estonian Founder Society meetup, Tallinn 2026
- Introduction of Pactum to London Business School MBA students — fireside, Pactum AI, Tallinn 2026
- AI in Your Org: What to Automate, What to Keep Human — panel, Latitude59, Tallinn 2026 · video
- Internal AI usage at Pactum — talk, KPMG Estonia strategy days, Tallinn 2026
- Fireside chat with the CTO of Pactum AI — fireside, Vibe Code Atelier, Tallinn 2026
- AI implementation knowledge sharing — workshop, Palo Alto Club, Tallinn 2026
- If AI Can Do Most of the Work - What Makes Humans Valuable? — panel, Nex Conference, Tallinn 2026
- Leading Engineering in 2026 [CTO panel] — panel, Karma VC, Tallinn 2026
- The Founder’s Story Tallinn — panel, Google Founder Stories, Tallinn 2025
- Lightyear investment festival — panel, Lightyear, Budapest 2025
- What can you really do with AI? — fireside, TECHnically a conference, Tallinn 2025
- Impact of AI on what is valuable in the future — talk, International conference on science instruction, Tallinn 2025
- Panel on AI [in Procurement] — panel, Aalto EMBA student study trip, Tallinn 2025
- AI ranch podcast — podcast, AI ranch podcast, Tallinn 2025 · video
- My startup attempts — talk, Hüppelaud, Kuressaare 2025 · slides
- Impact of AI on the education and economy of Estonia in the next decade — panel, Estonia's Friends International Meeting, Tallinn 2025
- Beyond Prototypes — talk, Scoro, Tallinn 2025
- Beyond Prototypes: Shipping Trustworthy AI — keynote talk, Nordic Testing Days conference, Tallinn 2025 · video · slides
- Beyond Prototypes: Solving Complex Problems With Software — workshop, Digit conference, Tartu 2025 · slides
- AGI panel — panel, EstoniaAI meetup, Tallinn 2025
- Speeding up LLM responses — talk, Practical GenAI meetup, Berlin 2023 · slides
- Man vs Machine — panel, Telia, Tallinn 2023
- From mind to machine: Exploring the cutting-edge of Generative AI and its possibilities for the future — panel, Latitude 59, Tallinn 2023 · video
- Context and current state of AI — talk, Estonian Business School, Tallinn 2023
- Kas tehisintellekt võib maailma üle võtta — TV interview, TV3 show "Stuudio", Tallinn 2023 · video
- Chain-of-thought: from zero to Agents — talk, LLM meetup, Tallinn 2023 · slides
- Recruitment at NFTPort — podcast, TalentHub podcast, Tallinn 2023 · video
- What will be the impact of AI on education in 10 years? — panel, IT-education conference by Minisry of Education, Tallinn 2023 · video
- Hands-on integrating NFTPort with Unity — talk, IPFS camp, Lisbon 2022 · video · slides
- Why and what to build with NFTs — talk, Hüppelaud, Tallinn 2022
- Vehicle Fraudsters podcast — podcast, Vehicle Fraudsters podcast, online 2022 · video
- Let's Talk About Founder Taboos — talk, Berlin Startup School, online 2022
- NFTPort: How to Bring your NFT Game to Market in Hours — virtual workshop, ETHGlobal BuildQuest hackathon, online 2022 · video
- NFTPort: How to Bring your NFT Application to Market in Hours — virtual workshop, ETHGlobal Road to Web3 hackathon, online 2022 · video
- Nazari Goudin podcast (topic: AI) — podcast, Goudin podcast, online 2022 · video
- Datasets for Software 2.0 — podcast, DataCast podcast, online 2021 · video
- The Best Approach to Data — fireside, Growth School, online 2021 · video
- Datasets: the source code of Software 2.0 — talk, ICS Data Science Seminar, Tartu 2020 · video · slides
- Kas andmed juhivad meid või meie andmeid? — panel, Arvamusfestival, Paide 2020 · video
- How To Build Your AI Startup — fireside, Superangel webinar, online 2020 · video
- Machine Learning at Veriff — talk, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tallinn 2020 · slides
- AI safety basics — workshop, Effective Altruism meetup, Tallinn 2019 · slides
- Machine Learning at Veriff: what is possible in a year? — talk, Eesti Energia IT summit, Tallinn 2019 · slides
- How math is useful in my life and work — talk/workshop, MAT-INF tudengiselts, Tartu 2019
- Machine Learning at Veriff: what is possible in a year? — talk, Codetecon, Krakow 2019 · slides
- Student question-driven fireside chat — fireside, Introduction to CS course at Institute of Computer Science, Tartu 2019
- Machine Learning at Veriff: what is possible in a year? — talk, devclub.lv meetup at Mintos, Riga 2019 · video · slides
- Future of e-Estonia: a young engineer’s view — talk, Digital Agenda for Estonia 2021+, Tallinn 2019 · video · slides
- Data science — panel, Digital Methods in Humanities and Social Sciences, Tartu 2019
- What is Data Science — panel, Arvamusfestival, Paide 2019
- Entrepreneurs in Computer Vision / Machine Learning — panel, Eastern European Computer Vision Conference, Odessa 2019
- The hard thing about building AI products — panel, Pirate Summit, Cologne 2019
- Machine learning and my career path — speech, Baltic Informatics Olympiad opening ceremony, Tartu 2019
- AI safety — panel, MAT-INF tudengiselts, Tartu 2019
- Veriff, trust online, and human-machine collaboration — talk, MELT innovation forum, Tallinn 2019 · slides
- The two loops of building algorithmic products — talk, Zen of Data teams meetup, Tallinn 2019 · video · slides
- Automation principles at Veriff — talk, North Star AI conference, Tallinn 2019 · video
- The importance of math — talk, Introduction to CS course at Institute of Computer Science, Tartu 2018 · video · slides
- Machine learning — talk, Estonian AI working group, Tallinn 2018
- My career path from middle school to now - to 10th graders — talk, Tallinna Reaalkool, Tallinn 2018
- Machine learning and applications in banking — talk, Swedbank, Tallinn 2018
- Tips for university: an all-emoji talk — talk, STEM freshmen's conference, Tartu 2018 · slides
- Machine learning — workshop, DataMob, Tallinn 2018
- Machine learning — talk, DataMob, Tallinn 2018
- MAT-INF tudengiselts history, my university life, etc — talk, MAT-INF tudengiselts, Tartu 2018 · slides
- Machine learning — talk, DataMob, Tallinn 2018
- Parallel track moderator (with 5 hours' notice) — moderator, North Star AI conference, Tallinn 2018
- Computers, the future, and careers - to highschoolers — talk, Õpi Tartus, Tallinn 2018 · video · slides
- Anyone can be a hero — moderator, sTARTUp Day 2017, Tartu 2017
- AI and its impacts — fireside, Taltech economics student body, Tallinn 2017 · video
- Machine learning and data science — talk, Introduction to CS course at Institute of Computer Science, Tartu 2017 · video
- Minimalism — talk, Swedbank, Tallinn 2017
- Machine learning — talk, Swedbank, Tallinn 2017
- Effective altruism — panel, Effective altruism meetup, Tallinn 2017
- Machine learning (30min notice) — talk, 24-hour post-truth hackathon, Tartu 2017
- Machine learning — talk, Estonian Physics days, Tartu 2017
- Difference between school life and real life — talk, Hugo Treffneri Gümnaasium, Tartu 2017
- Photodition - photo expedition app — pitch, ETH Entrepreneur Club pitch contest finals, Zürich 2016
- Making data useful — workshop, Analyst Conference, Tallinn 2016
- Elderly life in 2050 — panel, Arvamusfestival, Paide 2016
- Practical machine learning — workshop, Helmes, Tallinn 2016
- Data science for everyone — talk, ML meetup Estonia, Tallinn 2016 · video
- Why data science? — TED talk, TEDxYouthTallinn, Tallinn 2015 · video
- Making choices in life and at university — talk, Introduction to CS course at Institute of Computer Science, Tartu 2015 · video
- Valedictorian speech — speech, Graduation ceremony of Faculty of Math & CS, Tartu 2015
- Participating in student project contests — talk, Tartu Microsoft User Group, Tartu 2015
- Mindfulness and dreaming — workshop, MAT-INF tudengiselts, Tartu 2015
- General life tips — talk, Introduction to CS course at Institute of Computer Science, Tartu 2014 · video
- Being more effective — talk + workshop, Estonian Physics Union Summer School, Elva 2014
- Heuristics and biases — talk, Domus Dorpatensis Thinking Festival, Tartu 2014
- Being more effective — talk, Tartu Microsoft User Group, Tartu 2014
- Being more effective — talk, National round of Estonian Physics Olympiad, Tartu 2014
- Interesting school for talented students — moderator, The Gifted and Talented Development Centre’s event for Estonian medalists of international olympiads, Tartu 2014
- Learnings from a CFAR workshop — The Gifted and Talented Development Centre’s event for Estonian medalists of international olympiads, Tartu 2014
- Preparing the Estonian team for EUSO ’14 (essential mathematics) — workshop, Tartu 2014
- Preparing the Estonian team for IJSO ’13 (experimental methods) — workshop, Tartu 2013
- Preparing the Estonian team for IJSO ’13 (essential mathematics) — workshop, Tartu 2013
- How and why to study mathematics — talk, Tartu Kutsehariduskeskus, Tartu 2013
- Studies and career opportunities in computer science and physics — talk, Tartu Tamme Gümnaasium, Tartu 2013
- Preparing the Estonian team for EUSO ’13 (experimental methods in physics) — workshop, Tartu 2013
- Preparing the Estonian team for EUSO ’13 (plotting and interpreting graphs) — workshop, Tartu 2013
Invite me to speak at your event: taivo@pungas.ee.