I spoke at Atlas Digital Summit 2026, held on September 28 and 29 in Reykjavik, Iceland. This is a different kind of event from the domain and hosting conferences I usually cover on this blog (Domain Days Dubai, Domain Summit, Nordic Domain Days, CloudFest, etc.).
Read on to understand why you should attend, then request your invite here if you're a C-level hosting or infrastructure executive.
TLDR: Atlas Digital Summit 2026
Atlas Digital Summit is a private, invite-only executive summit for hosting, data center, and cloud infrastructure leaders, focused entirely on how AI is reshaping the industry.
It took place on September 28-29, 2026, at Gamla bio Theater in Reykjavik, Iceland. I was co-hosting the Hosting Track roundtable on AI Search Visibility on Day Two.
What is Atlas Digital Summit?
Atlas Digital Summit centers on a question most company owners ask today: how will AI reshape the infrastructure layer hosting companies operate every day?
From server strategy and platform automation to backup, recovery, security, customer support, compliance, pricing, workload management, and operational scale, Atlas Digital Summit is where hosting leaders will help write the next chapter of AI and infrastructure.
The event is centered on curated executive roundtables, strategic conversations, and peer-to-peer collaboration. The conversations will focus on the major questions facing hosting companies today, including AI-driven customer demand, security risk, infrastructure automation, backup and recovery strategy, privacy, compliance, support operations, vendor selection, and the changing economics of hosting.
The event took place at the Gamlabio Theater in Reykjavik.
Atlas Digital Summit 2026 Recap
I just got back from Reykjavik. It was the first edition of Atlas Digital Summit, and Jason Nickerson raised the bar for B2B events in hosting and AI. The private, invite-only format and the small-table roundtables made for sharper conversations than a stage-and-expo model usually allows.
I'm sharing the ideas that came up, not who said what. I'll also publish a dedicated post on AI Visibility and the roundtable I co-hosted with Carolyn Shelby.
Eight takeaways
1. Bots now outnumber humans. Bot traffic is over 53% of total website traffic, surpassing human traffic. Crawlers, scrapers, and agents that consume content drive much of it. Security companies struggle to distinguish legitimate AI bots from malicious ones.
2. Vibe-coded apps are a hosting problem. Every day, over 33,000 new WordPress websites and over 147,000 Lovable projects are created. Many hosting companies wonder how to host vibe-coded apps beyond the usual PHP stack built for WordPress, since the setup isn't as easy.
3. AI writes more code, and much of it is insecure. AI-generated code grew to 75% of Google's new code. Overall, however, 45% of AI-generated code fails security tests.
4. Finding vulnerabilities with AI is not deterministic. During a security panel, I learned that security companies have to run multiple tests on the same model and code to find vulnerabilities, since results differ across runs. They also differ between models. One proposed solution is to release advanced models to security companies and select developers first, so they can patch vulnerabilities before bad actors find them.
5. AI support works best under pressure. A leading hosting company has implemented AI support, which is especially helpful at peak times, when a newly discovered vulnerability or an outage makes support tickets rise sharply in a short period.
6. Hallucinations still need active management. The same company's representative said there is still a 5% hallucination rate, which they monitor closely and work on reducing. One way is to write knowledge base content that AI can read easily.
7. Search is increasingly zero-click. Over 68% of Google searches now end without a click, based on a June 2026 report. That is rewriting how people discover products and services.
8. The open question: machine-first or human-first web? One question didn't get a sharp answer: will we rewrite the web to be machine-first, or keep it human-first and make machines adapt to it? Amazon blocks assistants like Muse for now, while Shopify fully embraces agentic commerce.
Jason Nickerson, the organizer of the event
Atlas Digital Summit is the work of Jason Nickerson [LinkedIn], a 20-plus-year veteran of the web and hosting industry who cut his teeth in the first wave of open-source CMS platforms like Joomla and WordPress before moving into the backbone of web hosting at cPanel and WebPros.
Later, he led the WordPress Business Unit at Cloudways.
He is not new to organizing tech events: he founded CMS Summit, a CMS Conference, and was a founding team member of Domain Days Dubai, so this is far from his first event in the space.
With Atlas Digital Summit, he's applying that same instinct for building early industry gathering points to the AI infrastructure conversation and structuring the whole thing around small-table roundtables instead of a stage-and-expo format.
Why Reykjavik, Iceland?
The four questions the summit is built to answer
- How do hosts protect customers building with AI-generated code?
- How do data centers balance AI demand with power and sustainability?
- How do infrastructure providers prepare for larger, faster, more automated attacks?
- How do hosting companies turn AI disruption into new revenue?
Iceland isn't a random venue choice: the country runs on a 100% renewable grid and is a working example in the sustainable AI infrastructure conversation. Below are a few numbers from the summit's research that frame why this topic is urgent right now:
- 45% of AI-generated code samples still contain security flaws, even across the latest frontier models (Veracode, Spring 2026)
- 78% of tech leaders report more production incidents from AI-generated code, and 62% ship it without verifying it (New Relic, 2026)
- $661B is the projected size of the global web hosting market by 2034, up from $149.3B in 2025 (Fortune Business Insights)
Agenda: Two days, two tracks
The summit runs two parallel tracks throughout: Hosting and Security, with AI as the thread connecting every keynote, panel, and roundtable. Here's what the two days look like:
Day One - AI, Strategy & The Future Hosting Stack
- 10:30 AM - Opening Keynote: The Next Web: When Machines Browse, Build, and Buy by Luke Langford
- 11:15 AM - Roundtable Block 1: Meeting the AI-First Customer - Hosting Track led by TJ Danklefs, Security Track led by Aaron D Campbell
- 2:30 PM - Roundtable Block 2: Defending the Stack - Hosting Track led by Robbie Adair, Security Track led by Sergei Gruntovskii
- 4:00 PM - Roundtable Block 3: Operating at the Edge of Risk - Hosting Track led by Panos Kesisis, Security Track led by Aaron D Campbell
- 5:00 PM - Networking Party on the Rooftop Terrace
Day Two - AI Operations, Compliance & What's Next
- 10:30 AM - AI Fireside Chat: AI, Regulation & Resilience with Robert Jacobi, Ana Rojo-Echeburúa, Bergþóra Halldórsdóttir, and David Snead
- 11:15 AM - Roundtable Block 4: From Infrastructure to Strategic Partnerships - Hosting Track led by Jesse Friedman, Security Track led by Aaron D. Campbell
- 2:30 PM - Roundtable Block 5: Building & Securing AI-Native Hosting - Hosting Track led by me and Carolyn Shelby, Security Track led by Thomas Raef
- 4:00 PM - Roundtable Block 6: The Future Hosting Business - Hosting Track led by Nadya Frost, Security Track led by Benny Vasquez
- 5:00 PM - Summit Closing Session - What Comes Next for AI-Era Digital Infrastructure
My session: AI Visibility for Hosting & Infra Companies
I'm leading the Hosting Track table on Day Two, from 2:30 to 3:45 PM, alongside Carolyn Shelby, with Thomas Raef running the parallel Security Track table on AI-driven threat detection.
My table is built around a question I get constantly from hosting and infrastructure clients right now: how do you win discovery when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews which provider to choose, instead of typing a query into a search box?
Daniel Stanica is a speaker at Atlas Digital Summit.
We'll cover how to structure technical content, schema, and brand signals so AI engines cite your platform when someone asks which hosting provider fits their needs. This is the same AI Visibility work I do through Competico, brought to the people actually deciding how their hosting companies show up in this new search landscape. You can find out more about my session on the event’s website.
Speakers and Featured Attendees
This isn't a summit with a couple of famous keynote names and a sea of anonymous badges. The whole speaker list is short, and every single person on it is running a table:
- Luke Langford - Opening Keynote
- Robert Jacobi - Emcee and Fireside Chat
- Ana Rojo-Echeburúa, Bergþóra Halldórsdóttir, David Snead - AI Fireside Chat panelists
- TJ Danklefs, Robbie Adair, Panos Kesisis, Jesse Friedman, Nadya Frost, Carolyn Shelby - Hosting Track leads
- Aaron D Campbell, Sergei Gruntovskii, Thomas Raef, Benny Vasquez - Security Track leads
The event's platinum partner is Monarx, and the sponsor list also includes CloudLinux, WebPros - the group behind cPanel, Plesk, WHMCS, and SolusVM- as well as Blackwall, Duda, SuperDeploy, and Octa.
Sponsors of Atlas Digital Summit
Who should attend
Atlas Digital Summit is invite-only for C-level hosting and data center executives, and they specifically require a company email.
If you run or lead a hosting company, a data center, a cloud provider, or you're on the executive side of infrastructure security, this is built for you.
Keep in mind that this isn't a general digital marketing conference, and registration isn't open, so don't expect to walk in with a standard conference ticket.
Location: Gamla Bió Theater, Reykjavik
The main sessions run out of the Gamla Bió Theater, with roundtables held in the Petersen Suite and the opening party on a rooftop terrace.
Gamla Bió Theater - Atlas Digital Summit Venue
Reykjavik in late September means shorter daylight hours, cool weather, and a real shot at the Northern Lights if the skies cooperate, so if you're flying in, plan a couple of extra days around the summit to actually see the country.
Stay updated
You can follow the summit directly through these channels:
- Website: atlasdigitalsummit.com
- X/Twitter: atlasdigitalsum
- LinkedIn: atlas-digital-summit
- Get your invite: Request here
Conclusion
Atlas Digital Summit is a narrower, more deliberate event than the domain and hosting conferences I usually cover here, and that's exactly the point. Two tracks, six roundtable blocks, one keynote, one fireside chat, and a room full of people who actually run this industry rather than sell to it.
Atlas Digital Summit was well organized. It mixed keynote speeches with roundtables that sparked debate, plus plenty of networking sessions. The attendees were curious, sharp minds from across the industry, and it showed in the conversations and questions.
