Aaron Frank
The hard question for senior leaders is no longer what generative AI does. It is what comes after: spatial computing, digital twins, autonomous machines, physical AI. Each arrives with a vendor narrative and a decision attached: where to invest, and which shifts actually reshape the business.
Aaron Frank is a Singularity University principal faculty member and lead facilitator of its Executive Program, where he helps senior leaders read which emerging technology shifts will reshape their industries and which can wait.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Aaron Frank
- As one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship five-day Executive Program, he translates emerging technology trajectories into specific decisions a senior team can make this quarter, not abstract futures.
- He has taught the same material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, GE, and The Economist Group, which means his frame is tested across regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators.
- He guest lectures inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School Digital Transformation course, evidence that his content survives peer scrutiny in a serious executive-education environment.
- He writes a steady stream of analysis for Singularity Hub, Wired, Forbes, Vice, and VentureBeat, and authored Singularity’s 2026 executive briefing on Physical AI, so audiences get a speaker whose arguments are already pressure-tested in print.
- His current research focus is the convergence of generative AI, spatial computing, 3D simulation, and physical AI, a frame that gives him a concrete read on where the next wave of enterprise infrastructure is heading.
Biography highlights
- Principal Faculty, Singularity University, and one of only two lead facilitators of its flagship five-day Executive Program.
- MBA, University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, where he also guest lectures on the Digital Transformation course.
- Bylines in Vice, Wired, Forbes, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub.
- Author of A Business Leader’s Introduction to Physical AI (Singularity, 2026).
- Has spoken to or advised the United States Marine Corps, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, GE, The Economist Group, Coca-Cola, Under Armour, FC Barcelona, the NBA, Sony, and Honeywell.
- Board member, Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.
Biography
Generative AI is now familiar territory for most senior leaders. What comes after is the harder question: which emerging shifts genuinely reshape an industry, and where capital should actually move. That interpretive read is what Aaron Frank does for a living.
He is one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship Executive Program. The five-day intensive puts him in a room with around a hundred senior leaders, working through emerging technology trajectories as a structured curriculum. Few speakers test their arguments against a senior audience that often.
His range covers rapid technological change, spatial computing and 3D simulation, digital twins as enterprise infrastructure, and the move toward physical AI. He has taught that material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, and GE. His bylines appear in Wired, Forbes, Vice, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub.
Outside Singularity, he holds an MBA from Oxford’s Saïd Business School and guest lectures on its Digital Transformation course. He also sits on the board of Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. His current research focus is the rise of physical AI, set out for Singularity in a 2026 executive briefing on the convergence of robotics, simulation, and spatial intelligence.
Key speaking topics
- Exponential technology trajectories and leadership decisions
- Innovation strategy under technology acceleration
- Spatial computing, 3D simulation, and digital twins
- Physical AI and robotics
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams setting AI and emerging technology investment direction
- CTO, CIO and head of digital transformation audiences
- Industrial, manufacturing, defence and supply chain leadership planning around physical AI and digital twins
- Strategy and innovation leads in financial services, sport, media and government
Audience outcomes
- A clearer read on which emerging technology shifts actually reshape their industry, and which are noise.
- A working vocabulary for generative AI, spatial computing, digital twins, and physical AI that a senior team can use in the same conversation.
- Specific examples of how regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators are deploying these technologies today.
- A view on the next two to five years of enterprise AI infrastructure beyond the chatbot, drawn from operating deployments.
Talks
A grounding talk on why technology trajectories now compound faster than most planning cycles can absorb, and what that does to leadership decisions.
Key takeaways:
- A working model of exponential feedback loops and the democratisation of advanced tools
- Specific cases where acceleration has already reshaped a sector
- A framework for separating signal from hype in board-level technology decisions
An argument that computing is moving off the screen and into three-dimensional space, with implications for product, operations, and customer experience.
Key takeaways:
- Where mixed reality, digital twins, and spatial computing converge for enterprise
- Industrial, sport, and consumer examples already in production
- A view on what senior teams should be piloting now, and what they can wait out
Originally developed for Oxford Saïd’s Digital Transformation course. A practitioner-grade walk through deploying spatial computing inside a working business.
Key takeaways:
- Use cases that have moved past pilot in industrial, training, and design contexts
- The infrastructure decisions that determine whether a spatial deployment scales
- Common failure patterns observed across enterprise programmes
On how simulated environments and digital twins are now the training ground for the next generation of robots and autonomous systems.
Key takeaways:
- Why 3D simulation is becoming the dominant training surface for physical AI
- Industrial robotics applications already moving from research into deployment
- What this means for capital allocation in manufacturing, logistics, and defence