Kansas City-based Critical Materials Crossroads (CMC) is building a national hub towards 100,000 tons per year of critical mineral production capacity and looking for investors and corporate partners to build it with. In this reverse pitch, the CMC, backed by a $160 million U.S. National Science Foundation award, presents the challenges between promising technologies and commercial scale across materials for energy, communications, transportation, defense, and health markets including battery supply chains, rare earth elements, recycling and more. Anthony Caruso and Ashlynn Horras will share how CMC and its ecosystem partners are forging industry partnerships and developing industrial sites to de-risk the leap from pilot to plant. Come with a solution, a problem, or an appetite for co-investment.

What happens when a 100+ year-old professional services firm starts operating like a venture studio? KPMG’s newly launched Client Technology & Innovation group is setting out to incubate AI-native businesses, back startups, and co-build products with frontier AI labs. The session opens with the thinking behind the model and how KPMG plans to evaluate and fund new ideas.
A panel with KPMG, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and Rose Rock Bridge then compares three approaches to corporate innovation: building ventures internally, using a global industrial network to drive commercial deployment, and connecting startups with corporate partners around real industry challenges.
Panelists will tackle the hard questions: What do large enterprises look for in early-stage partners? Why do promising pilots stall, and what does it take to reach full deployment? How is AI changing the build, buy, or partner decision?
Founders will gain insight into how to navigate enterprise partnerships and turn early interest into commercial opportunities. Investors will get a closer look at where corporations are placing their bets and what those decisions mean for their portfolios.

What makes some cities better places to start and scale a company, and what can Midwest startup communities learn from one another?
Drawing on experiences in Louisville, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee, this panel explores how regions turn their unique strengths, from industry concentration and research institutions to founder networks and investment capital, into advantages for growing companies.
A central thread is the path from first check to growth capital. How do regions build the investor relationships and support systems that help startups raise successive rounds, attract customers and talent, and scale without relocating? What initiatives have actually moved the needle, and what hasn't worked?
Through real examples and lessons learned, the discussion will surface practical ideas that founders, investors, and ecosystem leaders in Kansas City and other Midwest markets can apply.

Sports organizations are adopting technology across fan experience, venue operations, and athlete performance, but the path from first conversation to signed pilot varies widely depending on who’s buying. This panel brings together a Big 12 athletics program, a first-year professional women’s softball team, a global technology integrator, a sports-focused venture fund, and Kansas City’s innovation hub to show how sports innovation actually gets adopted and funded. Panelists will share their priorities, how they evaluate new solutions, and where startups can create meaningful partnerships.

Now that AI is helping all of us speed up development and improve our GTM operations, the most important lever is now the input: the actual voice of the customer. Finally!

Matt will share his perspective from his own ventures and working with dozens of software dev clients on how to use AI and customer conversations to:

• Drive product ideas
• Improve sales
• Reduce customer churn
• Create marketing content, and more

LPs want distributions, and promising portfolio companies may need more time. When do you hold out for a bigger return, and when do you take the liquidity that's available?
Join fellow investors for a closed-door conversation about what exits look like for venture-backed companies in the middle of the country. Where is liquidity coming from? Who's buying, and what are they looking for? How are LP expectations influencing decisions to hold, sell, or pursue secondaries? And what can early-stage investors do to position companies for successful exits?
This time is dedicated to peer-to-peer discussion and will not include a formal presentation. Discussion is under Chatham House Rule. Please come prepared to share one exit, secondary transaction, or attempted sale you've learned something from, or one you're working through now. The goal is to exchange practical lessons, identify potential buyer relationships, and explore how investors can help each other get more companies to the finish line.