The Inference Stack: Steering Models and Scaling Compute

The Frontier Research Club is a curated forum for rigorous, technical discussion at the frontier of AI. This session focuses on AI infrastructure and inference, the systems, methods, and hardware that determine how frontier models are trained, served, and steered. We convene researchers from the frontier labs, Stanford, Berkeley, and the teams building in production to examine concrete work, papers, methods, and results, with a bias toward assumptions, evaluation methodology, failure modes, and what would count as convincing evidence.

Each session features 2 talks selected for rigor and discussion value. Presentations are intentionally brief so the majority of time is reserved for questions and critique. Papers and supporting materials are shared in advance to ensure a high-baseline conversation.

Agenda

5:30pm: Doors open5:30pm – 6:30pm: Networking + light dinner6:30pm – 8:00pm: Research presentations + discussion8:00pm – 8:30pm: Networking

Presenters & topics

Talk 1: Inference-Time Steering in Diffusion Models

Steering what a model generates at sampling time, without touching the weights, and why that changes what's possible in control, safety, and reliability.

Anubhav Jain is an Applied Researcher at Apple and a 2025 NYU PhD (advised by Nasir Memon and Julian Togelius), previously at Amazon and Sony AI. His research on inference-time control of diffusion models, memorization, concept erasure, and watermark robustness, has appeared at CVPR and other top venues.

Talk 2: TBA

Want to present your work?

If you have a research paper you’d like to discuss at one of our next sessions, please submit it for consideration. ​Submit your paper here!

Who should attend

  • ML infrastructure engineers and teams deploying models in production

  • Researchers working on inference-time control, diffusion, and generative models

  • Founders and technical leaders building compute-intensive AI products

  • Engineers working on model serving, GPU optimization, latency, and inference economics

Capacity is limited.

We will take photos and short video clips for event recap and promotion. By attending, you consent to being photographed and recorded, and to the use of those images and clips by the organizers on social media and other event marketing channels.

🌐 Connect with Frontier Research Club

Hosted by

The Frontier Syndicate is a venture community connecting frontier tech researchers, builders, and investors through curated convenings and early-stage capital. Across the Bay Area, we host a recurring series of research forums, builder nights, and intimate investor dinners, and back exceptional companies emerging from the labs, communities, and technical networks we convene.

SignalFire is an AI-native venture capital firm with roughly $3B under management, backing founders from pre-seed through Series B across applied AI, infrastructure, healthcare, cybersecurity, and enterprise. SignalFire pairs early capital with hands-on data science, talent, and go-to-market support, and is co-hosting this session at its San Francisco headquarters.