AI Studio: a gathering for people who build with AI

On 11 July 2026, Dabtong House, together with Pelsung, hosted its first AI Studio in Thimphu: a closed, by-application gathering designed to bring together builders in Bhutan and help grow a talented, close-knit community.

Gal Raz and Daum Kim opened with an introduction to Dabtong House, Chiba Tech's home in Bhutan. Phub Dorji then spoke for Pelsung, guardians of virtuous prosperity, on our shared responsibility for Bhutan's future and the case for building the Gelephu Mindfulness City together.

Joichi Ito's keynote walked through the levels of delegating real work to AI: from chatting, to giving a model hands and context, to agents coordinating other agents. Two threads stuck with the room: agents lie, so build the checker before you trust the work; and the same AI token unlocks more here than almost anywhere else.

Community members then took the floor with live AI demos spanning brain-computer interfaces, developer tooling, and everyday knowledge work. The day closed with a lightning hackathon: in under two hours, teams shipped a meme detector, an accounting dashboard for small enterprises, a crowdsourced map of potholes, an excuse generator, and more.

Details from the day are on the AI Studio page.