AI at Scale: How Booking.com Puts Machine Learning to Work

Description
Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of one of the world's largest digital travel platforms?
Join us for an exclusive lunch lecture with Alibek Datbayev, Engineering Manager for the AI Platform at Booking.com.
Alibek will share how the tech giant moves machine learning from research to massive production, managing infrastructure that handles a staggering 500 billion daily predictions. Perfect for anyone interested in MLOps, cloud infrastructure, and real-world AI applications.
Bio
Alibek Datbayev is an Engineering Manager for the AI Platform at Booking.com (Amsterdam, Netherlands), where he leads the infrastructure that is powering distributed inference systems processing over 500 billion predictions daily.
He works on strategic partnerships with OpenAI, AWS, and Google. With 15 years in tech and over 8 years in engineering leadership, Alibek combines deep technical expertise with product and commercial thinking.
He delivered a keynote on AI at Digital Bridge 2025 (Astana Kazakhstan), has participated in international academic discussions as an expert (SIG), and is an angel investor in technology companies including Stripe, TradingView, and RunVille.ai. Alibek is actively involved in Kazakhstan's tech ecosystem: he co-founded Digital Nomads Kazakhstan (a community of ~400 Kazakhstani tech professionals working at leading global companies), serves on the Presidium of the Kazakhstan Federation of Competitive Programming (cpfed.kz), and has represented the community at the level of the President and Chairman of the Senate. For three consecutive years, he has served as an independent committee member of the national IT education program Tech Orda.
He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Kazakh-British Technical University (Almaty, Kazakhstan).
Notes
Free lunch will be provided for attendees.
EEMCS - Ampere Lecture Hall