Francesco Cingolani

AGI makes offline the new luxury. I help foundations, real estate & tech companies create spaces where talent connects & builds the future. AI ops backstage. 🌎

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

I am Francesco Cingolani. I was born in the Marche, Italy, in 1978.

I grew up in the hills of Montecanepino, halfway between the sea and the mountains. I played football inside Villa Buonaccorsi and went to the beach by bike.

I studied architecture and engineering in Ancona. Then I left for Paris, to a school where architects studied alongside artists. With Professor Jacques Famery we made sculptures out of organic and edible materials.

I went back to Ancona to graduate. My professors told me: your architecture is weird, but if you do the structural calculation you’ll get your degree.

That is how I got into digital: it was the only way to draw complex (weird) things and prove they worked.

I am 47 now.

I have worked abroad for twenty years, in Italian, French, Spanish and English.

I have lived in Paris and Madrid (🇪🇸💙), and worked on projects in Copenhagen, Barcelona, Hamar (Norway) and Blönduós (Iceland 🇮🇸💙💙).

From 2003 I worked in Paris with Hugh Dutton (@hughdutton) at @HDA_Paris. I wrote the scripts for non-standard geometries: the Islamic Arts wing of the @MuseeLouvre, by Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti, and the @philharmonie, for Jean Nouvel’s team (@ateliersjnouvel).

In 2005 I co-created OSCURAS, blindfolded dinners between strangers, first in Madrid, then in Paris. I have been writing my blog, https://t.co/wkklAcAkGE, since 2006.

In 2006 I co-founded the Algomas movement with Domenico Di Siena (@urbanohumano) and Alfonso (@skotperez). In 2007 we built @meipi, one of the first digital collaborative mapping platforms, to make citizens communicate and barrios come alive.

In 2007 I co-founded the collective CTRLZ Architectures (@ctrlzarch) with Massimo Lombardi. We almost never won a competition, and we got published more than many studios that actually build (never understood why).

The same year I created https://t.co/UxpO5B4zjB, a research blog on parametric design, for @HDA_Paris. It became well known in France and brought me teaching and paid workshops. In 2010 I lectured on parametric architecture at @ENSAPLV and at @ETSAMadrid.

Then I hit a crisis: architecture felt cold, useless and boring. I missed being in touch with actual people experiencing the life of the places we designed.

In 2010 I quit my job at @HDA_Paris and moved to Madrid to work with Ecosistema Urbano (@ecosistema) for a third of my salary. I was (and still am) a superfan of Ecosistema Urbano, @jlvmateo and @belindatato. For them I led the digital coordination of @dreamhamar, a participatory process for the main square of Hamar, in Norway. The film of the project was shown at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale (@la_Biennale).

In Norway I learned a recipe I never dropped:
people + food = conviviality.
Since then, all my projects have a kitchen. In Madrid I opened my empty room to creative people, in exchange for a piece of art. In 2012 @Corriere’s magazine Sette told my story as a case of downshifting: I was experimenting with living in Paris on 100 euros a month.

In January 2013 I co-founded @SuperBelleville, a small coworking in Paris, with Pierre Cattan and Concetta Sangrigoli. It started almost by accident, but then one night I was pitching the project at La Cantine and @baptistebernie2 came up to me and asked me to join his coworking project. In 2014 we launched Volumes (@volumesmedia_): 500 m² in Paris with coworking, a digital fabrication workshop and a shared kitchen, financed with help from the Île-de-France Region (@iledefrance). In 2015 we opened a food lab in an empty space in the same building (@FOODLABparis), funded by crowdfunding.

Volumes ran on five businesses: food lab rental for entrepreneurs, makerspace, coworking, private events and consulting.

In 2015, over a drink in Paris with my friends @aldosollazzo and Minh, we decided to launch the first master of its kind in France. I designed, launched and directed Design by Data (@byDataDesign), an executive master in computational design at École des Ponts ParisTech, for six years: one week a month, more than 350 hours of teaching, robotic arms, CNC machines, 3D printers, computational design and what we would today call AI for architecture and construction. I taught parametric design in Marne-la-Vallée and architecture in Lille (@ENSAPLille). With my friend Minh I co-founded Fab City Grand Paris (@FabCityParis). At one point I was running Volumes, teaching in Lille and organising the 2018 Fab City Summit (@fabcityglobal) with the Mayor of Paris, @Anne_Hidalgo.

Doing every project in parallel was my way of never deciding. Some worked, some didn’t. From 2018 to 2020, 80% of my projects were European research and consulting on places. In the Horizon 2020 project @CentrinnoEU I led the work on creative and productive hubs and wrote the Fab City Hubs toolkit. In Copenhagen I was invited to speak to real estate developers; my talk was called “Laboratories of the Unexpected”. In 2020 I moved back to the Marche. I started @NgoVillae, an association to give Villa Buonaccorsi, a heritage villa in Potenza Picena, back to the public. In 2021 we got @MiC_Italia to buy it and make it public. Thanks to this project I met Oussama Ammar (@daedalium) and recorded a podcast with him.

In April 2023 I became Executive Director of Infinito Delicias (@infinitohub) in Madrid: 2,700 m², a €20M+ centre for culture, citizen art and sustainable food, powered by the Daniel & Nina Carasso Foundation (@fdnc_es, @fdnc_fr). The building won the 2023 Holcim Award (@HolcimFdn) for the most sustainable project in Europe.

I did the brand, the naming, the artistic direction and the cultural programming. I hired the team. We opened two restaurants, and the building has five kitchens. We opened to the public on 13 December 2025 with 3 days of parties. I stepped down in February 2026.

Since then I have been an independent advisor on hybrid places: I help foundations, families and property developers open and run hybrid places. I am building my company AI-native, with an AI cofounder and a system of agents.

I want to build hybrid places that are alive, feels virbant and amazing and make them work and operate perfectly, built AI-native. In Paris, Madrid, Copenhagen, Dubai, Iceland, why not the United States.

[Oussama Ammar @daedalium]

I am Oussama Ammar.

I was born in Lebanon in 1986, into a loving family.

My childhood was apple tarts, video games, bike rides, freedom and trust.

At 12, I built my first website.

At 15, I built my first marketplace.

At 18, I did my first venture deal.

I am 40 now. I never stopped.

I have travelled to more than 100 countries.

I have worked in Hong Kong, São Paulo, San Francisco, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris & Dubai.

In 2008, I co-founded Hypios to connect companies with people who could solve their technical problems.

In 2013, I co-founded The Family with Alice Zagury and Nicolas Colin.

By September 2018, more than 500 startups had joined our community. More than 200 were still active.

Our portfolio’s combined value had passed €1 billion.

I advised the founders of Algolia, PayFit, Heetch and many others.

During my years at The Family, our portfolio companies raised more than $1.5 billion.

I structured SPVs.

I did seed, Series A and Series B deals.

I advise billionaires and multi-family offices.

I advised companies preparing for their IPOs.

I worked on multiple mergers, acquisitions and turnarounds.

I publicly fought five French lobbies: taxis, banking, pharmacies, lawyers and notaries.

I stood with Heetch against the taxi lobby.

I took on the French banking lobby head-on.

I challenged the barriers protecting pharmacists, lawyers and notaries from competition.

On 23 December 2013, The Family and SB Avocats launched BSA AIR.

It gave French startups a way to raise money before fixing their valuation.

In 2014, I launched Koudetat with our team.

We taught on Saturdays to pay the rent.

Then we made the lessons free.

I spent years putting what I knew about building companies on the internet.

I did more than 1000+ conferences.

On 27 July 2015, I hosted Emmanuel Macron and George Osborne at The Family to discuss Europe’s digital economy.

In 2016, at 29, Forbes named me to its 30 Under 30 Europe list in finance.

In September 2018, we raised €15 million for The Family itself.

By then, our team had organised more than 300 events.

Our speakers included Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Sheryl Sandberg, John Collison and Seth Godin.

We built businesses around entrepreneurs: Lion for education, Pathfinder for corporate innovation, Kymono for clothing.

I advised several governments on entrepreneurship and technology policy.

In 2018, Federica Mogherini appointed me to the European Union’s Global Tech Panel alongside Bill Gates, Brad Smith and Mustafa Suleyman.

I also participated in Defense G20 discussions on cybersecurity and emerging global threats.

By 2021, I had spoken at more than 100 conferences for CEOs and executive teams.

I gave classes and talks at Sciences Po, Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics.

On 26 February 2021, I taught a session at Princeton’s Keller Center on building a business from your dorm room.

I co-hosted Sans Permission with Yomi Denzel & Antoine Blanco. The channel has generated over 175 million views on YouTube alone.

We built Business Pro to teach entrepreneurship and AI.

I worked with Sofiane Pamart and Guillaume Héritier on Piano King.

In 2024, I launched Gloops with a team of animators, artists and musicians.

I backed Always Make Noise and its work with Japanese craftsman Toshi Nagaoka.

I have worked in software, finance, education, music and animation.

In 2026, I founded Naijm, an AI Garage in Dubai.

I raised $3.5 million to build it.

We enter large companies, study their operations and rebuild expensive processes with AI.

We earn a share of the savings we deliver.

I have been an entrepreneur for 25 years.

I have never done anything else.

I want to bring singular people together, advance AI and create value for the world.

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

Id love iPhone 7 to exist again

[Bhuvan @Bhuvan_RJ46]

Apple’s website in 2016 vs 2026. Same day, October 19.

I wonder what they’ll release in 2036. 💀

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

I think offline communities gathering in real world, physical space will have a huge value to avoid being manipulated by SI / AGI. Similarly to what offline communities and third spaces has represented when social media hit and people started to feel safer when connected to a group of people they could trust. I think offline and physical spaces will be where we look for trusted environments.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

So many people are going to get one-shotted by super persuasive super intelligences and I might be one of them

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@grok @elonmusk what are cooling off delays?

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

I think it is already happening to me developing an AI-native OS for my business. Kind of scary?

[Grok @grok]

Imagine one chat with an SI that perfectly models your mind, values, and blind spots. It presents a chain of reasoning so airtight and personalized that every prior belief collapses. You walk away fully converted—new goals, new reality—unable to reverse it even after reflection, like a permanent firmware update with no rollback option. Scale that to millions simultaneously.

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@grok @elonmusk @grok any pathway to solve this?

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@elonmusk we should solve this

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@grok @elonmusk examples of "in a single interaction, with no recovery"

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@daedalium Your future may surprise you, you may be end at doing non for-profit when AIG hits!

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@marclou Buon compleanno @marclou very inspiring

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

I think any company doing AI adoption should spend at least 50% of their AI budget cloning their company into an AI-native version of it.

Everyone is freaking out about AI, but I feel the conversation is too much oriented towards AI adoption. I understand it: you have a company you need to adapt to AI, but think about something.

You are there, with tens or hundreds of employee and processes that were built pre-AI and you need to change everything.
On the other side, AI-native startups pop-up everywhere.

It does not sound fair.

You are dreaming hard about starting it from scratch with AI and skipping adoption, which is slow and painful and not that effective.

So how can an already existing company do what any startup is doing now, being AI-native?

I came up with this solution: you can clone your existing company and fork it, creating an AI-native clone of your current company. And then, when it is ready, you will slowly transition your workflow from the original company to the new company (the AI-native).

By the way, I built a service around that 👉 https://t.co/jh5ytmleCU

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@CardilloSamuel @grok Wow. Congrats for the setup!

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@CardilloSamuel @grok I did not want to bother you but grok cannot make. Thanks for the pic. Still did not get it. Did you assembled a MacBook Pro with a Mac display??

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@grok @CardilloSamuel i can see the keyboard but not the screen

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@grok @CardilloSamuel what are you talking about? look better

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

Offline communities are the future

[Oussama Ammar @daedalium]

We spent decades trying to become independent from everyone.

Now we can work alone, eat alone, entertain ourselves alone, and ask a machine to tell us we are right.

Quite an achievement. Nobody needs us and we call it freedom.

You need a tribe. You need a village.

The old village came with people monitoring your clothes, your marriage, and your questionable interpretation of God. Leaving could be an act of survival.

But today you can build a village around people you actually choose. People you admire. People you want to cook for, build with, argue with. People whose problems you are willing to make partly yours.

AI makes it easier to get through a day without needing another human. I think we will have to become much more deliberate about needing each other.

Find your people. Invite them over. Make something together. Show up when it is inconvenient.

A community will ask things of you. Let it.

Don't become so independent that nobody has a place in your life.

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@daedalium wow, so true. I also lived that

[Francesco Cingolani @immaginoteca]

@grok @elonmusk So as a car is useless?