3686 takes over Germantown with hundreds of attendees spread across three venues
For its 13th year, Tennessee's flagship entrepreneurial conference brought together founders, investors, and innovators for a day of programming on quantum, AI, energy, and the future of the state's innovation economy.
Not much happens in Tennessee’s entrepreneurial ecosystem without LaunchTN knowing about it. The nonprofit startup support organization’s depth of knowledge was on full display in Tuesday’s 3686 programming — Tennessee’s flagship entrepreneur conference, named for Nashville’s geographic coordinates.
Now in its 13th year, 3686 moved to a new home this year: the heart of Nashville’s Germantown neighborhood. Programming spanned three venues — Brooklyn Bowl, TailGate Brewery, and Von Elrod’s Beer Hall and Kitchen.
The day’s programming concluded with the annual 3686 Pitch Competition, which Teknovation’s Lindsay Turner covered extensively.
Topics of Momentum: Quantum, AI, Energy, and Lifestyle
Shaun Gleason, Director of Partnerships at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), opened Tuesday’s programming by moderating a panel on the future of Tennessee innovation and venture investment. Four industries dominated the discussion: quantum, artificial intelligence, energy, and defense.
Joining Gleason were Gary Landuyt of the U.S. Department of War, Frank Salomone of the U.S. Department of Energy, John Gordon of Claritas & Blackbird Capital, and Ryan McKenney of Quantinuum, one of the world’s leading quantum computing companies.
Queue up the quantum conversations
Quantum remains an emerging industry across the state, region, and nation — but Tuesday’s conversations suggest that’s changing fast. In 2026, Governor Bill Lee allocated $43 million in the state budget to quantum research and development, a move that has fueled a surge of quantum-related activity in Chattanooga, Knoxville-Oak Ridge, and Nashville.
Read Teknovation’s breakdown of the Tennessee quantum ecosystem here.
Gleason pointed to two East Tennessee examples of quantum commercialization already underway: “DOE’s lab-embedded entrepreneurship program, Innovation Crossroads, has supported two quantum companies to date: Qubit Engineering, founded by Marouane Salhi, and Atom Q, founded by Kevin Roccapriore,” he said.
Panelists agreed quantum could reshape nearly every industry (science, energy, defense, logistics, business, etc.) but the real test ahead is making the technology commercially viable.
AI initiatives spread across the state
AI has dominated Tennessee’s entrepreneurship conversations for the past couple of years, and Tuesday’s panel was no exception — this time with a focus on how Tennessee can position itself to help bring AI technologies to market.
Caleb Knight, Director of AI TechX at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), moderated the discussion.
Panelists included Jude Olesh of NTT Data (Tokyo, Japan), Ines Voellinger of IV.ai Solutions (Chattanooga), and James Buck of Enterprise Sensor Systems (Alamo, north of Memphis) — all three closely tied to the AI Tennessee Initiative, led by UT.
Asked how university systems could better support tech and AI-enabled startups, Buck didn’t mince words.
“The biggest challenge is that startups and universities operate on a different clock. In business, I’m trying to outrun the person that has a similar idea. When it takes six months to get through one process in a university, I’m six months behind my potential competitor,” he said. “It is better in some cases — the university validates your idea; or it’s worse in some cases — you get to market too late.”
Smart cities and civic innovation
Elsewhere in the day’s programming, a conversation about the Nashville Innovation Alliance (NIA) Tech Studio showed how cities and municipalities are tapping into the innovation ecosystem to solve problems and improve life for residents.
The NIA Tech Studio gathers data and input from community members, universities, commuters, and companies about some of the biggest challenges facing greater Nashville.
“At our civic tech jam event, we invite metro departments and agencies to come and reverse pitch their challenges. We literally ask them to air out their dirty laundry to us,” said Sally Parker, Interim Executive Director of the NIA and Associate Vice Chancellor at Vanderbilt University.
Once a challenge is identified, the NIA plays matchmaker between city officials and innovators to find outside-the-box solutions. One example: traffic congestion on the I-24 corridor, brought to the table by Brad Freeze of the Nashville Department of Transportation & Multimodal Infrastructure.
“How could we maximize the capacity on one of the most congested roads in Tennessee? We brought that issue to Vanderbilt,” Freeze said. “First, we needed visibility into the situation. We convinced the commission to deploy eight cameras in a four-mile section on 150-foot poles near the corridor. And it created a great environment for us to learn.”
The result: a new decision-support system that helps traffic operators manage the corridor and automate traffic flow during peak hours.
The people, places, and faces that make the ecosystem special
From all four corners of Tennessee, entrepreneurs, innovators, and ecosystem builders converged on the state capital Tuesday, united by one mission: making Tennessee a great state for entrepreneurship.
Tuesday’s programming shows how Tennessee’s innovation story isn’t being written in one city, but rather it’s being written by partners among various industries statewide.
Programming continues on Wednesday, September 16. See full schedule here.
Follow Teknovation on LinkedIn to catch more coverage.
Like what you've read?
Forward to a friend!