Mike Butcher (TechCrunch): Armenia has been a source of incredible talent for many years

The Emerge 2022 International Conference is being held in Yerevan on June 1 and 2, with the participation of more than 2 800 IT industry representatives from the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Central Asia.

The special guest of the conference is Mike Butcher, Editor-at-Large of the leading technology platform TechCrunch. This is his second visit to Armenia after "ArmTech 2017" global conference.

Itel.am had a short talk with Mike Butcher:

- The first time I was here before the COVID-19 pandemic, so lots of things have changed. Most of the industry has gone to remote working. And I think here is an explosion of energy, explosion of startups, explosion of creativity.

Because of the war in Ukraine, there is an interest in countries like Armenia for Russians, people who are not part of the regime, still want to do technology, still want to be creative and they came here today to do that.

I think that the confluence of meeting minds between Armenians and Russians can be a huge explosion of technology and absolute creativity in this country. So many interesting people getting involved in technology in local ecosystem is going be a great drive for the economy.

The trends I see here are great mathematical talents. This country has been a source of incredible talents for many-many years. And the Silicon Valley start to take notice not only hiring people but startup eco-system here. For example, Krisp, which has hundreds of developers giving neuron network, deep AI stuff.

Nune Grigoryan talked to Mike Butcher