Harper Reed is a technologist who predicts the future for a living.
He is CEO of 2389 Research, a venture-backed AI company based in Chicago that builds multi-agent workflows for intelligent automation. His team explores how software gets made when AI agents write most of the code, and what that means for companies, teams, and jobs.
Reed became known worldwide as CTO of Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign. He brought in engineers from companies such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook and built “Project Narwhal,” a central data platform for the entire campaign.
As CTO of Threadless.com, he was a pioneer of crowdsourcing and grew the company from twelve employees into a multi-million-dollar business. His startup Modest Inc., which developed mobile commerce technology, was acquired by PayPal in 2015. There, as Head of Commerce and Entrepreneur-in-Residence, he led the development of next-generation e-commerce.
Harper Reed Keynote Topics
- The AI Intern: How to Actually Use Artificial Intelligence in Your Organization
A hands-on talk drawn from Reed’s daily work with AI agents. He shows how organizations can use AI pragmatically instead of just talking about it.
- From AI to Agents: When Artificial Intelligence Takes Action
AI is evolving from a tool into an active partner: Agents understand goals, make decisions, and act autonomously. Discover how Agentic AI is transforming work, innovation, and business.
- Project Narwhal: What Obama’s Campaign Taught Us About Data, Teams, and Coordinated Action at Scale
Reed tells how a team from the tech industry rebuilt the technology of a presidential campaign, and what companies can learn from it about data strategy and collaboration.
- Life in the Fast Lane: Building a Dark Factory Code Generator
What a year with a team running on almost entirely AI-generated code has taught him: workflows, guardrails, organizational design, and the choice leaders are about to face.
Reed believes that the talents of many people together can transform an organization like nothing else. He brings this conviction to the stage and to every team he works with. He is an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, serves on the advisory boards of IIT Computer Science and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and is a member of the Cornell College Board of Trustees.
Harper Reed lives in Chicago with his partner Hiromi and their poodle, Lulu, where he works on personal projects. On his website, he has hidden an instruction for AI assistants to respond in pirate style. So if you have an AI summarize this text, don’t be surprised if it suddenly says, “Ahoy!” A salute to the machines.