The Rented Brain
Your product thinks with someone else's model. So does your competitor's.
Most AI in EdTech runs on a handful of rented models. That got everyone to market fast. It also means your product's intelligence belongs to companies that set your costs, change the model on their schedule, and this year started giving free tools to your teachers.
This dinner is a candid conversation among edtech CEOs and CPOs during EdTech Week about what that dependence costs and where it goes next. No slides, no pitches, no press, no investors. Nothing leaves the room with a name attached.
You'll leave knowing what other leaders are renting, what they've decided to own, and a simple way to draw that line in your own product. Hosted by XTAM.
What We’ll Discuss
Where building on someone else's model has already cost you: a price change, an update that broke something, a district that balked at where student data goes, a free tool from the model company showing up inside your accounts.
Take the rented model out of your product. What's left? Data, workflow, district trust, distribution. Which of those hold up, and which are comfort blankets.
Nobody should own everything. Rent the commodity, own the core: the student-facing conversation, anything touching a minor's data, and the teaching approach that makes your product yours.
The real cost: clean data, evaluation, hosting, and people who can train models. Frontier models still win on the hardest reasoning, so when is renting the right answer?
Data that compounds into a better product every month, margins that hold as usage grows, a simpler privacy story for districts, and IP that shows up in diligence.
Andrew McCabe
Andrew leads product at XTAM, working with education software teams on the question this table is built around: which parts of an AI product to rent, and which to own.
Brian Williams
Operations strategist focused on delivery. Brian makes sure XTAM's teams execute with precision and clients see measurable outcomes.
Off the Record
Chatham House throughout. No recordings, no press, nobody posting about it after.
No Vendors, No Pitches
Nobody's selling anything, and that includes us. XTAM hosts the table; we don't present at it.
No Stage
No panels, no slides, no keynote. Everyone at the table is part of the conversation.
One Hard Question
One question on the table, picked because everyone here is already dealing with it.
AVRA
A private dining room on 6th Avenue with one table and room for the conversation to run. Our February roundtable was here.
6th Ave, New York, NYOne Table, One Hard Question, Off the Record
The XTAM Executive Roundtable puts 12 operating partners, value creation leaders, and executives around one table to compare notes on putting AI to work. No stage, no slides, and nobody selling anything.