AI Tinkerers Atlanta Invests in Building Community and Tech Talent
What if…you could talk to your past self through an AI-backed journaling app?
What if…you could find coffee shops in a new city through a taste-based place discovery?
What if…you could transform a written document into an immersive educational experience?
These are just a few of the possibilities being developed and demoed by Atlanta’s tech talent at AI Tinkerers Atlanta’s monthly technical showcases. “AI Tinkerers is uncovering and supporting the next generation of founders, developers, and makers in Atlanta,” said Avoilan Bingham, AI Tinkerers Atlanta co-organizer who is also the Atlanta Tech Week President and the General Manager at Drive Capital.
“At the heart of AI Tinkerers is creating a welcoming place where developers and builders are comfortable sharing what they have been building with others,” said Bingham.
Since July 2024, Avoilan Bingham, Alisa Delikatna, COO at LeanSquad AI, and Andrew Tabit, Software architect, AI coder, and LeanSquad CEO, have been organizing monthly AI Tinkerers Atlanta events and building a curated technical community to support AI developers and builders. AI Tinkerers, a global AI builder network with over 200 chapters, is where artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners collaborate to build applications and push the boundaries of large language models (LLM) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).
“At the heart of AI Tinkerers is creating a welcoming place where developers and builders are comfortable sharing what they have been building with others.”
A Pivotal Year for the Atlanta AI Ecosystem
The group’s final meetup of 2025, Co-Co-Code & Cocoa, held at the Biltmore Innovation Center, featured a showcase of six demos that highlighted the community’s impactful and innovative work. Presenters shared technical details about what they are building using cutting-edge AI, including agent orchestration workflows, prompts, novel inference tricks to increase speed, advanced models, and lessons learned. The six featured demos were:
MoneyMath with Aysnc AI Coding - Runs many coding agents at the same time
Memora: Chatting with Past Self - Uses memory and reflection for emotional well-being
x402-Enabled AI Gateway - Simplifies billing and API key management
NextSpot: Review-Powered Recommendations - Finds new places to visit based on Google Maps reviews and geo-constrained locations
LumiForge: Human-Centered AI - Transforms static content into dynamic, content-aware learning experiences
Shifting Out AI: Organizational Context Translation - Translates executive strategy and standardizes language across teams
In 2025, AI Tinkerers Atlanta hosted 12 technical events, including three activations with Google. Membership reached more than 1,100 active builders and 20 partners, including AWS, Google, Block’s Square, and Microsoft. At each event, which is limited to 50-60 builders to foster connections and sharing of ideas, presenters share a 10-minute demo and engage in a Q&A session.
Understanding and Exploring Emerging AI
Image: Amit Verma via “Agentic AI vs ML vs Deep Learning”. Check out the article to learn more about (and the differences between) AI, ML, LLM, Generative AI, Agentic AI, Generative AI, and AI Agents.
Drawing from deep AI and ML expertise, members explore building with modern GenAI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), Agentic Systems (autonomous AI systems), Computer Vision systems, and machine learning operations (MLOps). They are tech leaders in companies such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Best Buy, Salesforce, Zendesk, Flexport, Jasper.AI, SuperCopy.ai, Stride Labs, Speedscale, Glean, and more.
Tinkering with Community Building around AI
“We have tinkered with the event format in 2025, and introduced workshop-based activations, in addition to the foundational demo presentations,” shared Bingham. “We’re continually discussing what is top-of-mind AI topics for members, including ecosystem trends, jobs, automation, and opportunities.” AI Tinkerers learn about using, building, automating, and reviewing AI agents in these workshop-based events, which have been in partnership with companies such as Block, Microsoft, Azure, Google, and Code Rabbit.
Looking towards 2026, AI Tinkerers Atlanta plans to add a dev tools track focused on AI coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot. The track will focus on how developers actually use these tools in practice, sharing concrete workflows, best practices, and trade-offs from their day-to-day.
Building Atlanta’s Tech Talent Community, Building the Future
Naturally, building and pushing limits come along with breaking things and unexpected challenges. “We want our builders to be supported, even when things don’t go as planned, such as when code breaks during a demo.” Bingham shared, adding, “We want our builders to learn how to work through it.”
This supportive community network that encourages exploration is possible through the welcoming environment that AI Tinkerers is cultivating in Atlanta. At events, builders meet others, reconnect, share ideas, use cases, and applications. Most importantly, whether they are working on a side project or as a founder, they get their ideas in front of people and start a conversation.
While the monthly meetups are more curated and technical by design, if you are interested in AI and ML but not a technical expert, AI Tinkerers Atlanta offers activations that are open to all, such as during Atlanta Tech Week. Bingham said, “We have been thinking about how to create more access for those who don’t come from a technical background, such as quarterly opportunities for everyone”.
So, what if…? You built your idea and demoed at AI Tinkerers in 2026?
“We’re continually discussing what is top-of-mind AI topics for members, including ecosystem trends, jobs, automation, and opportunities.”