About us

We are a club for people who would rather build the thing.

AI for Business & Entrepreneurship is a Registered Student Organization at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, founded in 2026 by students who got tired of hearing about what AI could do.

The short version

Why AIBE started.

In the fall of 2026 a group of Illinois students kept running into the same problem from two different directions.

Some of us could build. We could get a model running, wire up an agent, ship a working prototype in a weekend — and then stall, because nobody had ever taught us how to find out whether a single human being wanted it.

The rest of us could see the opportunities. We understood markets, customers, positioning, money. And we were still waiting for a technical co-founder to come along and make something real happen.

What changed is that the wait is over. The tools got good enough that one student with a laptop can do market research, build a prototype, write the marketing, automate the operations and read their own numbers — the work that used to need a team. The bottleneck moved. It isn't capability any more; it's judgment, taste, and actually starting.

So we wrote a constitution, found an advisor, and built the organization we wanted to join: one where the default activity is building something, and where the person who builds it owns it.

AIBE was registered with Student Engagement in fall 2026. Our founding Executive Board serves until the first regular officer selection in spring 2028.

Our mission

AIBE is a student-led community for exploring how AI is creating new business and entrepreneurial opportunities — and for helping students turn those opportunities into real projects and ventures.

AI is changing how companies are started, built and run faster than most coursework can follow. Students across every major should have a place to learn by building.

  • Run hands-on workshops on applying AI tools, agents and workflows to real business problems
  • Support member-led Project Teams from idea to working prototype
  • Host speakers, demo days and idea sprints with founders, operators, investors and faculty
  • Connect members with employers, industry partners and sponsors
  • Plug teams into the University's entrepreneurship ecosystem — competitions, accelerators, advising
  • Contribute to the campus conversation on responsible and ethical use of AI in business

What we believe

Five things we'd defend in an argument.

01

Building beats reading about building

A workshop that ends with a slide deck has failed. Every session is designed so that you leave with something that exists — a prototype, a research brief, a working automation, a page that's live.

02

The idea is yours, not ours

We publish a Project Slate each semester so nobody is stuck at a blank page, but you are always free to bring your own idea and recruit a team around it. Not just software — services, media, hardware, anything.

03

Whoever builds it, owns it

Ideas, work and any venture that comes out of a project team belong to the people who created them. AIBE takes no equity, no revenue share, and no financial interest. That's written into our constitution, not just our culture.

04

Mixed teams win

The best teams here will have someone who can build, someone who can sell, and someone who notices what everyone else missed. We recruit across the whole campus on purpose.

05

Use these tools honestly

Respect the terms of the tools you use, the privacy of the people around you, and the University's academic integrity policies. Disclose AI use where it's required. Don't put other people's confidential information into a model. Nobody records a meeting or runs an AI note-taker without announcing it and getting consent first. This is Article IX of our constitution and we take it seriously.

Where we fit

We're designed to complement the clubs you're already in — not replace them.

vs. AI research clubs

They go deep on the model. We go deep on the business around it.

Illinois has excellent organizations for ML research and engineering, and you should join one if that's your thing. AIBE starts at the point where a working tool needs a customer, a price and a reason to exist.

vs. general startup clubs

They teach the playbook. We assume you have AI in your hands while you run it.

Every part of our curriculum — discovery, marketing, ops, pricing, analytics — is taught on the assumption that you have a capable model sitting next to you. That changes what's possible for a team of one or two.

vs. coursework

No grade, no syllabus lag, real deadline.

Demo day is the deadline and your peers are the audience. The field moves faster than a course catalogue can; a student club can change its workshop list in a week.

Collaboration

We'd rather co-host than compete.

We actively want to run joint events with other RSOs, and to grow our hackathons toward inviting other schools. If you lead an organization that overlaps with us, come talk to us.

On campus

Illinois is an unfair advantage. We intend to use it.

Few campuses have this much startup infrastructure within walking distance of a lecture hall. Part of our job is making sure members actually touch it.

Research Park, two blocks away

Corporate innovation offices sit right here — State Farm, Caterpillar, John Deere, Capital One and others. We're building a speaker pipeline out of the people who work in them.

Gies, Grainger and Siebel

Faculty working on AI and business, and students from three very different buildings. Our workshops are written so a Gies sophomore and a CS junior get something out of the same hour.

The entrepreneurship ecosystem

Campus competitions, accelerators, funding and advising already exist. We connect project teams to them rather than pretending we're the only route.

Faculty advisor

Frank Liu

Associate Professor of Marketing, Gies College of Business. Professor Liu advises the Executive Board, sits in on meetings, and helps shape our training program and our approach to responsible AI use.

What's next

Come to one meeting before you decide.

That's genuinely the whole pitch. One workshop, ninety minutes, and you'll know whether this is your kind of room.

How to join What we run