An evening for the Jordanian professionals financing the AI era.
Jordanians aren't watching the AI transformation from the sidelines — they're helping finance and build it.
Keynote announced — Fadi Ghandour · The Entrepreneur and the Capital Stack
Now announced — Scott Storkamp & Faris Gammoh · Seeing Value Before the Crowd
Jordan Innovation began in San Francisco with the engineers building at the frontier of AI — an evening that ended on the fact that some of the world's largest data centers already run on cooling engineered in Jordan. New York turns to the other side of the same story: the people inside the institutions financing that buildout. They rarely gather in one room. This evening brings them together.
AI is creating an entirely new capital stack around compute, data centers, power and digital infrastructure. NVIDIA has announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish AI compute infrastructure financing platforms aimed at mobilizing more than $500 billion of third-party capital. The people participating in that transformation — across private equity, infrastructure, private credit, investment banking, venture and institutional capital — are the reason for this gathering.
Surfacing the Jordanians inside the institutions assembling the AI capital stack — private equity, infrastructure, private credit, investment banking, venture capital, data centers, energy and compute. Most have never been in the same room.
Making that participation visible, at home and abroad. A young Jordanian shouldn't experience AI as something happening to other people in Silicon Valley or New York. They should see their own in consequential seats and conclude: I can be part of this.
Putting those people in one room — not to speak on panels, but to know each other. The aim is a network that outlasts the evening, across finance, technology and infrastructure, between the diaspora and Jordan.
This is deliberately not an investment-promotion event. The proposition is Jordanians financing the AI economy, globally. Jordan's gain comes from the network itself: once connected, it finds its own way home.
Around 75–100 seats, curated. People who should know each other, finally in one room — and on stage, the people doing this work day to day. The first confirmed conversation is below.
The capital-stack architects — PE, infrastructure and private-credit principals who structure large, complex deals.
The allocators — sovereign, pension and insurance investors deploying into infrastructure and emerging markets.
The AI-infrastructure financiers — practitioners at the compute, energy and data-center frontier.
The operator-investors — senior people inside leading institutions, sharing where the AI economy is heading.
The global perspective — investors who place the AI buildout in a wider emerging-markets context.
Colleagues, institutions & partners — perspectives and relationships that broaden the conversation.
Jordan & the next generation — leaders, builders and emerging talent connecting the diaspora with home.
The network is the opportunity.
Bring together Jordanians already participating in one of the defining transformations of our time. Let them know one another, share what they are seeing, and make their journeys visible to the generation coming behind them.
Three conversations, opening with the keynote — followed by dinner and discussion from 8:30 PM.
Keynote — Fadi Ghandour in conversation with Walid Faza
On entrepreneurship, capital formation and building enduring companies from the region into global markets. Read more ↓
Scott Storkamp in conversation with Faris Gammoh
An early NVIDIA thesis, and where the value of the AI revolution will actually accrue. Read more ↓
Speakers to be announced.
From Amman to Nasdaq — capital seen from every side of the table.
Recorded at Wamda Capital in Dubai and presented exclusively to guests attending Jordan Innovation Finance in New York. This conversation will not be published or distributed online.
Few entrepreneurs from the Arab world have experienced capital from as many sides as Fadi Ghandour: building Aramex as a founder, taking it through international public markets, working with private and strategic capital, and ultimately becoming an allocator himself. In conversation with Walid Faza, he looks across that whole journey — how founders should think about ownership, control, valuation, partners and patient capital, and why the source of capital can matter as much as the amount raised.
Then the conversation turns forward. As Jordan sets out to build globally relevant companies in AI and other capital-intensive industries, what financial architecture will those founders need — and where should venture end and growth, strategic, institutional or public-market capital begin?
Founder of Aramex, which he built from a Jordanian startup through international public markets. Today, as Executive Chairman of Wamda Capital, he backs entrepreneurs across the region — the entrepreneur–capital relationship, lived from both sides.
Connect on LinkedIn
Walid joins Fadi founder-to-founder: what entrepreneurs learn about capital only after living through multiple stages of company building — structuring ownership, choosing partners, preserving optionality.
Connect on LinkedInTwo Columbia students of value investing. One early NVIDIA thesis. One question: where will the value of the AI revolution actually accrue?
Years before generative AI made NVIDIA synonymous with the boom, Scott Storkamp and his team were building an investment thesis around the company and the shift to accelerated computing. He and Faris Gammoh — both formed by Columbia Business School’s value-investing tradition — revisit that thesis: how the change was identified, what created conviction, and how you value a business when “cheap” stops being a useful word.
From one company, the conversation widens to the whole capital cycle — semiconductors, compute, data centers, electricity, models and physical AI — and to the harder question underneath the buildout: where scarcity, pricing power and durable advantage will actually emerge, and where enthusiasm for a transformative technology could still produce poor returns on capital.
Decades of fundamental research across technology, semiconductors and high-growth companies — including an early thesis on NVIDIA and the transition to accelerated computing.
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A fellow student of the Columbia tradition, working at the intersection of capital, technology and infrastructure — the power, compute and industrial systems underneath the global AI buildout.
Connect on LinkedInOn the Brooklyn waterfront, between the bridges.
The evening is hosted at Soho Works in DUMBO — an intimate setting across the river from Manhattan, built for a long table rather than a stage. Address and arrival details are shared with confirmed guests.
The room is kept small. Request your place, and we'll be in touch.
The conversations will be recorded. Highlights and full sessions will be shared on Jordan Innovation's channels after the evening — follow along for the release. The keynote is the exception: it is presented to guests in the room only and will not be published.
New York is the second edition. The first gathered Jordanian builders and investors in San Francisco — the full evening is public.
We'd rather a couple of institutions host the evening than sell space around it. Three simple ways to be involved:
Back the platform across editions, not just one evening.
Support one of the evening's three conversations.
Host the part of the night where the real work happens.
Partners will be announced once confirmed.
Jordan Innovation is a platform for discovering, connecting and celebrating Jordanians helping shape the technologies transforming the world — and for bringing that knowledge, ambition and network back into the broader Jordanian community. San Francisco convened the people building the technology. New York convenes the people financing it.
The finance chapter: the diaspora building the capital stack behind AI.
You are hereThe engineers building at the frontier of AI, convened in Silicon Valley. The first completed chapter.
View the first edition →