Dr. Julius Fridriksson is CEO and Founder of ALLT.AI, where he's applying 25 years of neuroscience research to solve artificial intelligence's efficiency crisis. His breakthrough: using brain damage patterns from thousands of stroke patients to reveal which components of large language models are essential versus redundant, achieving comparable AI performance with far fewer computational resources.

As the architect of ALLT.AI's patented Brain-LLM Unified Model (BLUM), Fridriksson has created a technology that systematically translates neurobiological constraints into AI architectures. BLUM implements precise brain lesion patterns in LLMs, then observes their recovery to identify optimal efficiency pathways. This approach, validated through the world's largest neuroimaging database of language disorders, represents the first scientifically proven method to achieve order-of-magnitude efficiency gains in AI systems.

Fridriksson brings strong scientific credentials to ALLT.AI: over 250 peer-reviewed publications in journals including PNAS, Brain, and Neurology; $50 million in NIH funding; four NIH- classified clinical trials; and almost 15,000 citations of his work on cortical reorganization. His seminal research identified specific neural pathways that predict language recovery in aphasia with great accuracy, setting the foundation for clinical standards worldwide.

At the University of South Carolina, where he serves as Vice President for Research and directs the NIH-funded Center for the Study of Aphasia Recovery (C-STAR), Fridriksson has spent decades studying how the human brain recovers language after stroke. His discovery that damaged brains reveal optimization strategies unavailable to healthy systems became the foundation for ALLT.AI's radical approach to AI efficiency.

The bidirectional nature of BLUM technology delivers dual impact: every AI optimization simultaneously advances treatment for 2 million Americans with aphasia. By simulating language disorders in virtual systems, ALLT.AI creates testing environments for rehabilitation strategies, accelerating the development of personalized therapies. Fridriksson's transcranial brain stimulation protocols are now undergoing testing in a phase III definitive clinical trial funded by the NIH.

His leadership extends beyond research on the neurobiology of language. Fridriksson oversees the University of South Carolina's over $300 million research enterprise, co-directs the McCausland Center for Brain Imaging, and secured $45 million in state funding to establish a statewide clinical service that cares for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia via the Brain Health Network.

Born and raised in Keflavík, Iceland, Fridriksson grew up in a landscape where volcanic eruptions reshape geography overnight and Arctic winters demand ingenious resource management. This Icelandic heritage, where survival historically depended on extracting maximum utility from minimal resources, shapes his scientific philosophy. As a first-generation college graduate from a nation that transformed itself from Europe's poorest country to a tech innovation hub through sheer determination and clever engineering, Fridriksson embodies Iceland's ethos: when you can't outspend competitors, you outthink them. Through ALLT.AI, he's applying this Nordic pragmatism to prove that AI's future lies not in brute force computation, but in the elegant efficiency of constrained systems.

Jeff Charney, one of the most decorated marketers of his generation and a two-time CMO of the Year, has built some of the most iconic campaigns in modern culture—from the Aflac Duck to Progressive’s Flo and Dr. Rick. After disrupting the $1 trillion marketing industry with bold, character-driven work that earned him more than 100 national and international awards, Charney has turned his focus to doing the same with artificial intelligence—this time on the subject of creativity. His mission is to apply the same disruptive instincts that transformed marketing to reimagine how creativity itself is sparked, scaled, and commercialized through AI.

He founded MKHSTRY and its AI extension, MKHSTRY.ai, to collapse months of creative development into minutes—proving how human creativity, when amplified by AI, can scale with unprecedented speed and impact. Building on that foundation, he co-founded ALLT-AI, a joint venture between MKHSTRY Labs and NXT LLM, where he now serves as President, reimagining how AI is built, scaled, and commercialized.

From early roles at Rockwell and Raytheon, to leadership at QVC, Homestore.com, Aflac, and Progressive, Charney’s career has been defined by a consistent pattern of reinvention and disruption. At Progressive, he transformed the in-house marketing model and created a roster of enduring brand campaigns. Recognized as Ad Age Brand CMO of the Year in 2021, he gave a year’s notice and officially stepped down in 2022—leaving at the top of his game and beginning his bold “second act.”

Today, through ALLT-AI, Charney brings the same bravery that built brands into cultural touchstones to the frontier of artificial intelligence. His mission is not to replace human ingenuity, but to expand it—applying his brand-to-bot-to-brain creative mindset to reimagine how ideas are built, scaled, and commercialized. A recognized expert on creativity, he is focused on broadening the spectrum of what machines can achieve. Where traditional AI predicts, Charney is pushing to teach AI how to create—commercializing creativity itself on a bigger, broader, and bolder scale.