NVIDIA’s
GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2026 returns to San Jose from March 16–19, bringing together tens of thousands of developers,
AI founders,
infrastructure engineers, and investors building the future of
accelerated computing.
While the official conference takes place at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, many of the most valuable conversations happen outside the conference halls — at founder dinners,
AI infrastructure meetups, and late-night networking events across the city.
We compiled the most interesting GTC 2026 side events, happy hours, and community meetups happening throughout the week.
If you’re attending GTC, this guide will help you plan where to spend your evenings.
Table of Contents
Official Conference
NVIDIA GTC 2026
📍 San Jose McEnery Convention Center
📅 March 16–19
The flagship event for AI infrastructure and accelerated computing, featuring:
- Jensen Huang keynote
- Hundreds of technical sessions
- Startup and venture programming
- Developer workshops
- NVIDIA ecosystem expo
Register:
https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/
Sunday & Pre-GTC Events
| Event |
Date / Time |
Location |
Link |
| GTC 2026 Welcome Mixer |
March 15 |
San Jose |
RSVP
|
|
Small curated mixer bringing together AI founders, infrastructure engineers, and investors before the conference begins.
|
|
|
|
Monday (March 16) — Opening Night Events
| Event |
Date / Time |
Location |
Details |
Link |
| AI Builders Night |
March 16 — 7:30 PM |
Fuze Bar, San Jose |
Hosted by
ClickHouse,
Docker, and
RunReveal;
a developer meetup for engineers building production AI infrastructure.
|
RSVP |
| Modular @ NVIDIA GTC |
March 16 |
San Jose |
Meet the team behind the
Mojo programming language
and the
Modular
AI platform.
|
RSVP |
| AI Infrastructure Happy Hour |
March 16 |
San Jose |
Hosted by companies across the AI compute and infrastructure stack, including startups building
GPU
orchestration, distributed compute, and inference platforms.
|
RSVP |
| Unprompted: AI Builders Dinner |
March 16 |
San Jose |
Invite-only dinner hosted by
LlamaIndex
and
Modular
for founders and technical leaders working on AI infrastructure.
|
Request Invite |
| Models → Agents → Infrastructure After Hours |
March 16 |
Palo Alto |
Hosted by
Novita AI
and FounderCoho (website unknown); focused on the evolution from
LLM
models to production AI agent systems.
|
RSVP |
Tuesday (March 17) — Founder and Developer Events
| Event |
Date / Time |
Location |
Details |
Link |
| GTC AI Summit |
March 17 — 6:30 PM |
San Jose |
One of the largest founder gatherings during GTC week, bringing together operators, researchers, and investors building frontier AI companies.
|
RSVP |
| Full Stack AI Developer Meetup |
March 17 |
San Jose |
Developer event focused on building production AI systems across the full stack; hosted by companies across the AI developer ecosystem.
|
RSVP |
| Agents After Hours |
March 17 |
San Jose |
Networking event focused on
AI agents,
autonomous workflows, and next-generation applications.
|
RSVP |
| Simplismart AI Inference Mixer |
March 17 |
San Jose |
Discussion and networking around AI inference infrastructure and model deployment.
|
RSVP |
Wednesday (March 18) — Infrastructure & Data Events
| Event |
Date |
Location |
Details |
Link |
| Next-Gen Data Infrastructure for the Agentic Era |
March 18 |
San Jose |
Discussion event featuring engineers from companies like
NVIDIA,
Neo4j, and
Fivetran
on how data architectures must evolve for AI agents.
|
RSVP |
| AI Builders Happy Hour |
March 18 |
San Jose |
Hosted by
Arize AI,
CrewAI, and
Snowflake,
bringing together builders working on production AI systems.
|
RSVP |
| Lightning AI Happy Hour |
March 18 |
San Jose |
Networking event hosted by
Lightning AI.
|
RSVP |
| Inference Happy Hour for AI Founders |
March 18 |
San Jose |
Meet founders building inference infrastructure and production AI systems.
|
RSVP |
Thursday (March 19) — Post-Conference Events
| Event |
Date |
Location |
Details |
Link |
| GTC Week After Party |
March 19 |
Palo Alto |
Closing networking event featuring founders, investors, and infrastructure engineers reflecting on the biggest announcements from GTC.
|
RSVP |
Browse the Full GTC Event Calendar
There are 90+ side events happening around GTC week, many hosted by companies building the next generation of AI infrastructure.
Browse more events here:
https://luma.com/nvidia-gtc
Why the GTC Side Event Ecosystem Is Growing
Over the past few years, GTC has evolved into something closer to a week-long festival for AI builders.
Three major themes stand out in the 2026 event ecosystem:
AI Infrastructure Is the Center of Gravity
Many of the largest gatherings are hosted by companies building:
- GPU compute platforms
- AI inference infrastructure
- Vector databases
- Distributed training systems
- Data infrastructure for AI
AI Agents Are the Dominant Conversation
Multiple meetups focus specifically on agent architectures and autonomous AI systems, reflecting one of the fastest growing areas in the ecosystem.
The Real Networking Happens After Hours
For many founders and engineers, the most valuable part of GTC isn’t the keynote — it’s the conversations happening across dozens of dinners, happy hours,
and developer meetups around San Jose.
