Name: GraphQL Meets LLMs & Agents: Building Production AI at Starbucks Scale - Sharon Gorla, Starbucks
Start: 2026-05-20T10:50:00-0700
End: 2026-05-20T11:15:00-0700

May 19 - 20 | In-Person Only
GraphQLConf 2026 website

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GraphQL Meets LLMs & Agents: Building Production AI at Starbucks Scale - Sharon Gorla, Starbucks

Wednesday May 20, 2026 10:50am - 11:15am PDT

Boardroom

GraphQL isn't just an API technology—it's the perfect foundation for AI agents and LLM-powered applications. At Starbucks, we built GraphQL platforms at massive scale (180M+ queries/day, 10,000 stores, 31M+ app users) before GenAI became mainstream. Now, as we explore AI integration, we're discovering that GraphQL provides fundamental advantages for AI that are impossible with REST.

This talk explores the AI systems we're building on our existing GraphQL infrastructure:

In-store AI assistant (planned for Order Engine GraphQL BFF)
Mobile/web AI platform (exploring on Apollo Supergraph)
On-call automation using Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers
You'll learn how GraphQL reduces AI token costs by 75x, enables zero-configuration AI tool discovery, provides built-in guardrails through type systems, and why federation is the perfect architecture for enterprise AI agents. Real demos, proven patterns, lessons from building GraphQL at scale.

Speakers

Sharon Gorla

Engineer Lead, Starbucks

I’m an engineering leader with 16+ years of experience driving digital transformation, modernizing systems, and building high-performing teams. At Starbucks, I'm lead engineer for Next‑Gen POS modernization, earned a U.S. patent, and founded the GraphQL Community of Practice... Read More →

GraphQL Meets LLMs Final pdf

Wednesday May 20, 2026 10:50am - 11:15am PDT
Boardroom

AI and LLMs

Audience Level Any
Presentation Slides Attached Yes

GraphQLConf 2026

Sharon Gorla

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