NVIDIA GTC 2026: Live Updates on What’s Next in AI

Build-a-Claw at GTC Park 🔗

GTC attendees can be among the first to get their hands on a fresh “claw” — or long-running agent — using OpenClaw, the fastest-growing open source project in history.

Stop by NVIDIA’s build-a-claw event in the GTC Park March 16-19, anytime between 8 a.m.-6 p.m. (except during Monday’s GTC keynote), to customize and deploy a proactive, always-on AI assistant.

With support from NVIDIA experts, GTC attendees can quickly have an AI agent at their fingertips. Whether technical or just curious, participants will name an agent, define its personality and grant it access to the tools it needs. Think of it as the personal assistant you’ve always wanted, reachable via your preferred messaged app.

To run the custom agent, use cloud compute provided onsite, or harness local accelerated computing by bringing your NVIDIA DGX Spark or GeForce laptop. NVIDIA hardware — including DGX Spark and Jetson modules — will also be available to buy. 

These always-on AI assistants can be applied to virtually any task, including managing a calendar, suggesting vacation destinations, recommending new workout routines and coding a useful app. Make it a specialist or a generalist: it’ll continuously learn new skills that it’s directed toward and prompt the user with new findings. 

Check back for updates and see the full lineup of events and activities at GTC, with highlights below.

Wednesday, March 11, 8 a.m. PT

GTC 2026: What to Expect From the Biggest AI Conference of the Year🔗

Every March, San Jose gets a little electric.  

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will walk onto the floor of the SAP Center — home of the San Jose Sharks — on Monday, March 16, at 11 a.m. PT to deliver a keynote to a crowd that has been arriving since Sunday from 190 countries. 

Thirty-thousand attendees. Ten venues across downtown. Register, and you’ll hit your step count. The keynote streams free from nvidia.com for those who want to attend virtually. 

This year’s GTC spans topics from physical AI and AI factories to agentic AI and inference. Huang’s keynote will cover the full stack: chips, software, models and applications. It’s a buildout measured in gigawatts. More than 700 sessions provide all the details. 

The pregame show — featuring the CEOs of Perplexity, LangChain, Mistral, Skild AI and OpenEvidence — starts at 8 a.m. PT on Monday, three hours before Huang takes the stage. And the keynote is just the capstone of day one. 

On Wednesday, March 18, at 12:30 p.m. PT, Huang will moderate a panel on open models with Harrison Chase, cofounder and CEO of LangChain, and leaders from A16Z, AI2, Cursor and Thinking Machines Lab. The conversation will be about where open models stand against the frontier closed ones, and what it means for everyone building on top of them. Doors open at 11:30 a.m. PT. Seating is first come, first served. 

Tuesday, March 17, at 9 a.m. PT, Dario Gil, Undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Energy, joins NVIDIA Vice President of Hyperscale and High-Performance Computing Ian Buck to discuss AI in climate and energy research. At 2 p.m. PT later that day, Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge joins NVIDIA Vice President of Media and Entertainment Richard Kerris on music and AI.

On March 18, tune in to the GTC Developer Community Livestream for a full day of real-time coverage of hackathons, show floor demos and developer spaces. Ask questions, request deep dives and engage directly with NVIDIA engineers in the YouTube chat. 

Off the main stages: 150 researcher posters on robotics, model innovation and systems architecture, with the researchers there to talk through their work. Seventy-plus hands-on training labs, an hour and 45 minutes each. Certification exams onsite, no extra cost.

There are snacks, too. At Cesar Chavez Park, the center of the GTC campus, a day market runs 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The night market goes until 9 p.m. 

The conference ends Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned all week on the blog for updates.

NVIDIA GTC runs March 16-19 in San Jose, California. Register at nvidia.com/gtc — use code GTC26-20 for 20% off. The keynote streams free at nvidia.com, no registration required.