The audience on its feet, arms linked, at Pete Ward's keynote for ALAB in Żnin, Poland, May 2026

Get the whole room moving.

Serial founder who reached a billion people. Now building the prediction layer for human health.

Book Pete

ALAB annual event, Żnin, Poland — May 2026

Recent stages Web SummitDavosLEAPHLTHSlushNew ScientistSiftedMaddyness

The showreel

Ninety seconds of what a room looks like when Pete is on stage.

The reel is being cut from footage of the ALAB keynote in Żnin, Web Summit Lisbon and Turn Around Aging in Munich. Until it lands, the two full talks below do the job.

Watch a full talk instead

Signature talks

Five talks, one argument: we are measuring the wrong things, too late.

Each runs as a keynote, a fireside or a panel. Tell me the audience and I will tell you which one fits.

Health

The future of health is prediction

Medicine is built to react. It waits for the event, then treats it. Pete makes the case that the decisive shift of the next decade is measurement moving upstream — from diagnosing disease to predicting it, years earlier, from data people already generate. He shows what changes for a health system when risk becomes visible before the symptom.

What the audience leaves with

  • Why prevention has failed commercially so far, and what changes that
  • What a prediction layer actually looks like inside an existing health system
  • The measurement problem nobody solves: proving an intervention worked

Formats

Keynote 20–45 minFiresidePanel

Best for

Health systems, insurers, pharma, corporate wellness

Longevity

Can we crack the code of aging?

Pete's most-requested keynote, delivered in Munich and Berlin. Aging is the largest risk factor for almost every disease that will kill you, and it is the one nobody treats. He separates what the science can now genuinely do from what the longevity industry sells, and leaves an audience with a sober, energising answer.

What the audience leaves with

  • What biological age measures, and what it does not
  • Which interventions have evidence behind them and which have marketing
  • Why the honest answer to the title is more interesting than yes or no

Formats

Keynote 20–45 minFiresidePanel

Best for

General business audiences, festivals, wealth and lifestyle

AI

More from less: why health AI has to be built differently

Consumer AI is built on effectively infinite data. Health AI is not, and never will be — the data is scarce, expensive, regulated and personal. Pete argues that this constraint is a design advantage, not a handicap, and shows what a model built for it looks like when it reaches a peer-reviewed journal and a national laboratory.

What the audience leaves with

  • Why the scale playbook from consumer tech breaks in health
  • What peer review demands that a product launch does not
  • Getting a model out of the lab and into routine clinical use

Formats

Keynote 20–45 minFiresidePanelWorkshop

Best for

Tech conferences, AI summits, data leaders

Aging

Are we cheating death because we are afraid to die?

The keynote Maddyness called one of the most captivating they have hosted. Pete turns the longevity question around: the interesting problem is not whether we can extend life, but what our scramble to do so reveals about how we think about death. Part science, part philosophy, and the talk that tends to start the longest conversations.

What the audience leaves with

  • The difference between extending life and extending health
  • What the fear of death does to how we fund and practise medicine
  • A better question to ask than "how long can we live?"

Formats

Keynote 20–45 minFireside

Best for

Keynote slots, culture and philosophy programmes

Leadership

Behaviour change at a billion scale

Before health, Pete built consumer platforms that reached over a billion people — WAYN, Badoo, AnchorFree. All three succeeded at the thing health technology consistently fails at: getting people to actually do something. This talk takes what worked at that scale and applies it to the hardest behaviour-change problem there is.

What the audience leaves with

  • What genuinely moves behaviour at scale, and what only looks like it does
  • Why health apps have retention problems that social products solved years ago
  • Building a community that outlasts the product

Formats

Keynote 20–45 minFiresideWorkshop

Best for

Founders, leadership programmes, entrepreneurship events

Why Pete

Scale, science and stage — in one speaker.

01 — Scale

A billion people

Co-founded WAYN, the travel social network with 22 million members, sold to the lastminute.com Group. Founding team at Badoo, which became the world's largest dating platform. COO at AnchorFree as it grew to 900 million users.

02 — Science

Peer reviewed, not pitched

Co-founder and CEO of Humanity, whose biological age model is peer reviewed, published in Communications Biology, and running inside national laboratories.

03 — Stage

Booked, and booked again

Keynotes at Web Summit's main health stage, the Maddy Keynote, Turn Around Aging and Life Summit. 32 confirmed appearances since 2020 — and organisers who ask him back.

What organisers say

The people who book speakers for a living.

“Peter Ward's session was one of the highlights of our event. His ability to captivate an audience, spark meaningful interactions, and inspire action is unmatched.”
Christina Mekala Tahaluf
LEAP 2025, Riyadh
“Peter has this rare gift of knowing exactly what a space needs, whether that's humour, insight, or a powerful moment of reflection.”
Julie Sellwood Co-Lead, Operations, The ICE Network
ICE gatherings / ICE Summit
“Peter has a rare gift for engaging audiences on a deeply intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual level.”
Lukasz Rzeczkowski Founder, Linkgevity
Davos (Polish Business Hub panel 2025; health breakfast 2026)
“Peter Ward delivered one of the most captivating keynotes we've ever hosted at Maddyness. His talk was thought-provoking, deeply engaging, and masterfully delivered.”
David Johnson UK Country Manager, Maddyness
Maddy Keynote 2023
“Peter delivered the keynote at one of our most important events, attended by several hundred guests, including ALAB's senior leadership and many of our key customers. He gave a truly inspiring talk that captivated the room, showing what is possible when biological age becomes accessible to everyone while bringing to life the progress we have made together as partners. Peter is a natural on stage, and we look forward to welcoming him back to speak at our next major event.”
Robert Malinowski ALAB Laboratoria
ALAB annual event, Żnin, 18 May 2026
“Peter joined our HealthTechX panel on the future of AI in healthcare and was one of the standout voices of the discussion. He cuts through the hype without losing the optimism and gave the audience a taste of what the future looks like.”
Carolyn McIntyre IBIS Capital
HealthTechX, London (Putney), 5 Nov 2025
“Peter's keynote was one of the highlights of Turn Around Aging. He stood in front of a room of scientists and clinicians and gave them a way of thinking about aging they hadn't heard put that way before. He also got everyone in the conference to connect, which is no mean feat at such a conference!”
Quintus Dienst Managing Director, Turn Around Aging gGmbH
Turn Around Aging Conference (TAAC), Munich, 24 Apr 2026
“We brought Peter onto our Precision Intervention panel a few days before our conference, and he lifted the session with his energy, expertise, and insight. He was a pleasure to work with, and the kind of speaker you can call upon at the last minute safe in the knowledge the audience will be better for it.”
Charlie Morel Content Producer, The Longevity Show
The Longevity Show 2026, Tobacco Dock London, 27 Jun 2026

The record

32 appearances, 7 years, 13 cities.

Coming up

  • Warsaw Longevity Forum 2026 Programme Council member + speaker Warsaw

2026

  • ICE Summit 2026 Host / curator / speaker London
  • The Longevity Show 2026 Panel London (Tobacco Dock)
  • Super Human Summit 2026 Panel moderator Stockholm
  • Life Summit 2026 Keynote Berlin
  • ALAB annual event Speech to ~500 guests Żnin, Poland
  • Turn Around Aging Conference (TAAC) 2026 Keynote Munich
  • Davos 2026 – Frontiers @ Science House Speaker + co-host, healthspan roundtable breakfast Davos
  • Davos 2026 – A Global Blueprint for Longevity Panel Davos
  • Davos 2026 – Unlocking the Great Health Productivity Reset Breakfast session Davos
  • Davos 2026 – House of Connection Summit Gathering Host / speaker Davos

2025

  • Full Stack Founder AI Bootcamp Speaker / contributor London
  • Web Summit 2025 Keynote, main Health stage, 12:10pm Lisbon
  • HealthTechX Panel London (Putney)
  • Leaders in Health Chair / speaker London
  • HLTH USA 2025 Attended Las Vegas
  • THE FIX Festival 2025 Sole festival curator (Longevity Tent) + panel lead + Power of Human Connection session Harwell Science & Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire
  • Health Optimisation Summit 2025 Startup pitch London
  • LEAP 2025 Panel + panel moderation + fireside Riyadh
  • Davos 2025 – Longevity Panel @ Polish Business Hub Panel Davos
  • ICE Boards & Governance Panel Curator / chair London
  • Women in Tech Warsaw Talk Warsaw

2024

  • Web Summit 2024 Lisbon
  • Slush 2024 Helsinki
  • HLTH USA 2024 5-minute session Las Vegas
  • Sifted Summit Host, Longevity Roundtable London
  • Boots Presentation
  • New Scientist Emerging Technologies Summit Solo presentation, 11:40–12:00 London

2023

  • CogX AI & DeepTech Summit 2023 London
  • Maddy Keynote 2023 Keynote

2021

  • CogX Festival 2021 – the Death Panel Panel London / online
  • WIRED Health / EY Startup Showcase Startup showcase London / online

2020

  • GIANT Health 2020 Panel host (3 sessions) Online
  • Tartu Talk Estonia

Watch a full talk

Two keynotes, start to finish.

Video not yet uploaded

Are we cheating death because we are afraid to die?

Maddy Keynote · 18:48

Video not yet uploaded

Can We Crack the Code of Aging?

Keynote, 2026 · 15:46

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