The future of digital platforms
AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
16 June 2026
16 June 2026
An initiative by Launchworks & Co
Platforms and their ecosystems are now part of our daily lives. They are redefining the way we work, the way we learn, how we innovate and how we collaborate. As a community of platform leaders, how do we ensure that the full potential of these digital ecosystems is realised for all?
What is Platform Leaders?
Platform Leaders brings together entrepreneurs, policy makers, academics, investors and practitioners to exchange insights and best practices on the future of digital platforms and ecosystems. These communities don’t always talk to each other, yet are collectively building the platform economy. Platform Leaders provides strategic insights into key topics and allow experts to share complementary perspectives to shape the debate so that the potential of digital markets can be unlocked for all.
Agenda
Our 16 June 2026 edition will explore the rise of the agentic economy and what it means for platforms, commerce and regulation. We'll open with a keynote from Fabrice Grinda, one of the world's most prolific marketplace investors, on how AI is really transforming marketplaces, and why the biggest risk isn't disintermediation but missing the opportunity. We'll then dive into agentic commerce and what happens when AI agents become the customer, before turning to the policy challenges of governing autonomous AI.
Below are confirmed speakers for 16 June.
Fabrice Grinda
Fabrice Grinda
Fabrice Grinda is among the world’s leading Internet entrepreneurs and investors. He has over 300 exits on 1200 angel investments. Fabrice has served as CEO for three multinational companies and has an impressive track record as an early investor in Alibaba, Coupang, Flexport, Delivery Hero, Rappi, Betterment and Vinted. Fabrice is currently Founding Partner at FJ Labs. Fabrice was named the #1 Angel Investor in the world by Forbes.
Prior to FJ Labs, Fabrice was co-founder and co-CEO of OLX, one of the largest websites in the world with over 300 million unique visitors per month. The company operates in 30 countries and has over 10,000 employees. OLX is the largest classifieds site in India, Brazil, Pakistan, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Portugal and many other emerging markets.
Before his entrepreneurial endeavors, Fabrice worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company.
Fabrice holds a BA in Economics from Princeton University. He graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1996, and was awarded the Halbert White prize, given to the most distinguished economics student, as well as The Wolfe Balleisen memorial prize, awarded for best thesis. In his free time, Fabrice likes to travel the world, kitesurf, play tennis, and blog about his personal and professional life at www.fabricegrinda.com.
Catherine Chapple
Catherine Chapple
Catherine Chapple is Counsel in Google's Competition Advisory team within Regulatory Affairs, where she advises the company on competition law and regulatory matters across its products and services. She joined Google in 2019 and has progressed through roles in Competition Compliance and Regulatory Affairs, working at the intersection of antitrust law, regulatory engagement, and product strategy.
Before Google, Catherine spent nearly six years as a litigation associate at Morrison & Foerster in Washington D.C., and began her legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable George W. Miller of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
She holds a JD, cum laude, from Wake Forest University School of Law, where she served as Executive Editor of the Wake Forest Law Review, and a BS in Biopsychology from UC Santa Barbara. Catherine brings to the panel a pragmatic, collaborative approach to navigating the complex regulatory questions facing digital platforms.
Prof. Alexandre de Streel
Prof. Alexandre de Streel
Alexandre de Streel is professor of European law at the University of Namur. He is also visiting professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and SciencesPo Paris and CERRE Academic Director.
He sits on the scientific committees of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (US), the European University Institute-Centre for a Digital Society (Italy), and the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (Germany).
His main research areas are regulation and competition policy in the digital economy (telecommunications, platforms, and data) as well as the legal issues raised by the developments of artificial intelligence. He regularly advises the European Union and international organisations on digital regulation.
Previously, Alexandre held visiting positions at New York University Law School, the European University Institute in Florence, Panthéon-Assas (Singapore campus), Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, and the University of Louvain. He also worked for the Belgian Deputy Prime Minister, the Belgian Permanent Representation to the European Union, and the European Commission. He has also been the chair of the expert group on the online platform economy, advising the European Commission.
Benoit Reillier
Benoit Reillier
Benoit Reillier specialises in strategy and corporate development for innovative high growth companies and platform businesses/ecosystems. He has been advising the boards and top management teams of many blue chip companies as well as regulators and Governments for more than 20 years.
Prior to founding Launchworks Benoit was Director of Economics and Regulation at KPMG where he focused on Telecommunications, Media and Technology clients globally.
Benoit is a guest lecturer in a number of top business and engineering schools and is in charge of the executive Platform Strategy module of the HEC Paris MBA.
He is a graduate from IMT Business School in Paris and holds Master degrees in Management, Economics and Law. Benoit is also a graduate from Columbia University in New York and London Business School (MBA).
He is the co-author of Platform Strategy: How to unlock the power of communities and networks to grow your business and Mission BlaBlaCar.
Anne-Claire Baschet
Anne-Claire Baschet
Anne-Claire Baschet is the Chief Data & AI Officer at Mirakl, where she leads the company’s global AI strategy and oversees the Data & AI organization. She drives the development of Mirakl’s agentic commerce vision, implementing cutting-edge AI products—including native GenAI agents such as the Catalog Transformer—and establishing strong governance frameworks across the company.
Previously, she was the Chief Product & Data Officer at Aramis Group, where she led the group e-commerce platform and the Data/AI strategy, collaborating with teams to create value through analytics, AI, and machine learning. Anne-Claire began her career as a Data Scientist at Mercer and AXA, then held various leadership roles in Data at AXA France, followed by roles in Data & Product at Voyages SNCF (in the CRMServices subsidiary), where she led and launched products such as the TGVPro mobile app, TGV Max, and the WiFi portal in TGV trains.
Sameer Singh
Sameer Singh
Sameer, a Partner with Speedinvest's Marketplaces & Consumer team, specializes in products with network effects. He is also an instructor at Reforge and authors a widely read blog about network effects at breadcrumb.vc. Previously, he was part of the Atomico Angel Program.
Before switching to the investor side of the table, he spent 5 years at App Annie (now called data.ai) – a company backed by Sequoia, IVP, and Greycroft. He had a front row seat to App Annie’s hypergrowth journey as the company grew from $20M to $140M in ARR during this time. During this journey, he led the global value consulting team, translating the value of App Annie’s data to new and existing customers, advising customers like Spotify, Shpock, and Trainline.
Originally from Hyderabad in India, Sameer is an engineer with an MBA. He started his career in investment banking, but his interest in technology took him in a different direction. This interest led him to write a widely read blog about mobile and technology businesses, which has been referenced in Philip Tetlock's seminal book, Superforecasting. This eventually brought him to London and to the startup world. During this time, he became deeply interested in understanding the patterns of successful startups – leading to his love for network effects.
Laure Claire Reillier
Laure Claire Reillier
Laure Claire Reillier is Co-founder and COO of Launchworks & Co, the leading experts for designing and scaling marketplaces & platforms. Formerly a senior exec at eBay Europe, she has 20 years’ experience in developing, managing and marketing products and services for digital, e-commerce, and platform companies.
Laure Claire was appointed in 2019 as one of the 8 experts on digital platforms at the World Economic Forum. She is also the co-author of Platform Strategy: How to unlock the power of communities and networks to grow your business and Mission BlaBlaCar.
Prof. Yash Kanoria
Prof. Yash Kanoria
Yash Kanoria is the Merrill Lynch Professor of Workforce Transformation in the Decision, Risk and Operations division at Columbia Business School. He specializes in the design and optimization of marketplaces including matching markets and online platforms. In the MBA program, he teaches an elective on Digital Marketplaces, and the Business Analytics core class.
Yash obtained a BTech from IIT Bombay in 2007, a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford in 2012, and spent a year at Microsoft Research New England during 2012-13. He has won several research and practice awards including the MSOM Young Scholar Prize, the Lanchester Prize, the Sigecom Test of Time award, an Amazon best Operations Research paper award, and the NSF Career Award.
3:30PM – 3:35PM
WELCOME TALK
Introducing Platform Leaders.
3:35PM – 4:05PM
KEYNOTE: MARKETPLACES IN THE AGE OF AI: OPPORTUNITY OR EXISTENTIAL THREAT?
AI agents are buying, selling and negotiating on behalf of users. Payment networks are building agent-to-agent infrastructure. Marketplace founders are facing what may be "peak fear" about disintermediation by large language models. But is the panic justified?
Fabrice Grinda has invested in over 1,300 marketplace businesses and seen more than 300 exits, making him one of the world's most prolific marketplace investors. He founded OLX, which grew to 11,000 employees across 30 countries and over 300 million monthly users. Forbes has called him the #1 angel investor in the world.
In this fireside conversation, Fabrice will draw on decades of pattern recognition across thousands of platform businesses to challenge the prevailing narrative around AI and marketplaces. He'll explain where he sees AI already reshaping marketplace economics in ways most founders are underestimating, and what the history of technological revolutions tells us about what comes next.
Whether you're a marketplace founder navigating the AI transition, an investor reassessing platform defensibility, or a policymaker trying to understand what the agentic economy means in practice, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.
4:05PM – 4:45PM
AGENTIC COMMERCE: WHEN AI BECOMES THE CUSTOMER
Nearly half of consumers already use AI as part of their shopping journey. But we're moving beyond recommendations. AI agents can now browse, compare, negotiate and purchase autonomously. OpenAI has partnered with Walmart for in-chat checkout. Google's Commerce Protocol lets agents buy from retailers directly. Visa and Mastercard are building agent-to-agent payment rails.
This panel explores what happens to platforms, marketplaces and e-commerce in general when a growing share of "users" are AI agents rather than humans.
• What happens to pricing and discovery when agents initiate transactions?
• How do you detect and prevent agent biases? Whose interests is the agent really serving?
• Is brand loyalty dead if every option is compared instantly?
• Who gets disintermediated as interfaces shift from human UX to agent APIs?
• And how should merchants prepare when their primary "customer" is an algorithm?
Join us for a forward-looking discussion on the future of agentic commerce, and what it means for businesses, consumers, and the wider economy.
4:45PM – 5:25PM
GOVERNING AI AGENTS: SHAPING THE RIGHT POLICY PRINCIPLES
AI agents are rapidly moving from experiment to deployment: intermediating discovery, transactions and decisions at scale. This raises important questions for policymakers, regulators and businesses about how to create governance frameworks that protect consumers and promote competition, while enabling innovation and growth.
The timing is significant: the EU's Digital Markets Act review suggest AI and Cloud are new priorities while the AI Act becomes fully enforceable in August 2026 and most regulators continue to examine the development of foundation models. These overlapping frameworks are shaping the environment in which platforms deploy AI agents. At the same time new agents from Claude, Google, OpenAI and others are coming to market with increasing capabilities.
Join us to discuss the future of regulation in an agentic world and what it means for you, your organisation, and the wider economy.
• What regulatory principles should guide regulators?
• How do we balance consumer protection, competition and innovation in this fast-moving landscape?
• Who is responsible when an AI agent acts on behalf of a user?
• The EU, UK and US are taking different approaches to AI governance. Where is convergence possible, and how can businesses navigate the differences?
• As agentic capabilities increase exponentially (e.g. Mythos) how can we be confident that they remain aligned with our needs?
5:25PM – 5:30PM
CONFERENCE WRAP UP
Closing remarks and key insights from the event by our conference co-chair.
