It’s been exactly two weeks since I touched down at Richmond International Airport, and I’m still riding the San Jose high after four jam-packed days at my first NVIDIA GTC. 

In those two weeks, I’ve read a lot of media coverage and lengthy LinkedIn takes on the “AI Super Bowl.” (I’ve listed a few of my favorites below.) While I’m sure I can’t add anything to the discourse that hasn’t already been said, I humbly offer a few top takeaways from a GTC newbie below. 

1. Nothing’s hotter than AI factories and tokens. I don’t think there was a single booth or session that didn’t feature the term “AI factory.” As the biggest PR and marketing agency for the digital infrastructure industry, representing 25+ data center operators, JSA has known about this lexicon shift for a while, but the volume was dialed way up in San Jose. 

There’s certainly overlap between data centers and AI factories, but the terms are not interchangeable — I think of AI factories as a certain type of data center built in a bespoke way for the AI lifecycle, all focused around mind-boggling GPU and compute requirements. Someone described it to me this way: New data center builds typically start with land and power (real estate assets), whereas AI factories start with equipment and build around that. 

Tokens are units of data processed by AI models during training and inference; this NVIDIA blog provides a good overview. During an actual heat wave in San Jose, other hot topics included agentic AI, the move from training to inference, data centers on the moon, and, of course, OpenClaw. 

2. All layers of the AI cake are critical. During Jensen Huang’s keynote, which I was thrilled to experience in person, he explained the 5-layer AI cake: energy, chips, infrastructure, models, applications. (Read the full explanation straight from NVIDIA’s blog here.) While “every layer reinforces the others,” there’s one more in-demand than any other right now — the layer everything else is built upon. “Energy is the first principle of AI infrastructure and the binding constraint on how much intelligence the system can produce.” 

3. Data center sustainability is leveling up. Data center, or AI infrastructure, sustainability is a topic we’re passionate about at JSA. (Check out our book series, Greener Data, for more.) So I made sure I was in the room for the “CSO Insights: Driving AI-Optimized Energy Efficiency and Data Center Performance” panel. When moderator Tenika Versey Walker, Global Head of Sustainable Futures for NVIDIA, asked the panelists their advice for companies trying to balance AI demand and sustainability goals, their answers were great (I’m summarizing below):
   • Jim Andrew, Chief Sustainability Officer at PepsiCo: Focus on people and change management as much as you do the technology. Do it in a responsible way with a clearly articulated set of principles. 
   • Christopher Wellise, Vice President, Global Sustainability at Equinix: Scale turbocharges innovation, and that’s the mode we’re in right now. Figure out how you’ll drive the partnerships that will create change. 
   • Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon: Don’t be afraid to be humble. We’re in Day 1, and we’re all learning. Lean on each other. 

4. Robots are among us. In more ways than one, walking around GTC feels a lot like walking around the future. Robots are roaming everywhere you look. A delivery robot will roll over to you and offer a branded bag in exchange for your badge scan. Meanwhile, the front desk assistant you passed on your way in is a 6-foot-tall humanoid bot with a NVIDIA hat on. And then in your periphery you see a cat bot purring and shaking a conference goer’s hand — all while a long-limbed robot DJ gets the happy hour started. Jensen even wrapped up his keynote by chatting with an Olaf the snowman robot. The conference featured 110+ robots in total!  

5. Next year: I’ll be back, in tennis shoes. Thankfully, I had already learned my lesson on the latter at Mobile World Congress a few years back, so nary a heel nor a support-less slip-on were in my bag. Steps-wise, the only week of the year that outperformed GTC week was PTC week!  

As promised, here’s some of my favorite reporting and commentary I’ve read so far about NVIDIA GTC:

• Matt Vincent from Data Center Frontier wrote a comprehensive roundup all about Jensen’s keynote here. “The economics of AI infrastructure revolve around a single metric: Tokens per watt,” he explains. 
• Fierce has a good roundup of comments from top industry analysts. “NVIDIA isn’t just a chip company, it’s morphing into a systems company.” 
• Find solid non-tech-jargon coverage of OpenClaw from CNBC here. CNBC also created this video covering the event. 
• Switch’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Hoffman, wrote this more technical take. “The keynote’s most durable message is that the factory is the business. Jensen repeatedly collapsed file storage, data centers, AI infrastructure, and token production into one economic picture. … He is telling the market to think in factory terms: land, power, shell, rack, throughput, and output.”

All in all, NVIDIA GTC has quickly solidified its place as a must-attend event for the AI infrastructure community. We’ll see you there next year! 

P.S. Shout out to Diana Wolf Torres for publishing a remarkably comprehensive GTC survival guide. Check it out here! 

Frequently Asked Questions about NVIDIA GTC 2026

• When was NVIDIA GTC 2026? The main portion of this year’s event lasted four days, March 16-19, 2026, with workshops occurring March 15, as well. Jensen Huang’s iconic keynote happened on March 16. 
• Where was NVIDIA GTC 2026 held? The event took place at the San Jose Convention Center, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Around the world, people also streamed sessions virtually. 
• What were the main themes of NVIDIA GTC 2026? Major conference topics included data centers and AI factories, robotics, simulation and modeling, AR / VR, quantum computing, and of course, all things AI (agentic, generative and more). That’s just to name a few! 
• What networking events happened during NVIDIA GTC 2026? Whether officially part of the agenda or not, networking events took place throughout San Jose the week of the conference. CoreWeave held its well-known house party on March 18, WEKA and Nebius collaborated on a jam-packed “Ignite the Edge — After Dark” party on March 17 and NTT hosted a late night party (Neil Diamond Tribute Band and all) on March 16, to name a few.