Rally events, and the rest of AI SF

5 PM - 9 PM

Lightsage's sixth edition brings API companies and agent builders together to see how platforms like Twilio and Docusign are optimizing for Claude Code and similar agents. Four-minute demos display real agent experience patterns, followed by networking with founders, investors, and technical teams already shipping agent-ready APIs.

5:30 PM - 8 PM

Foundation models for tabular data are finally making XGBoost retraining feel antiquated. A practical evening with practitioners from Google, Walmart, and Cisco unpacking what's real, where gaps remain, and what production prediction stacks look like in two years.

6 PM - 9 PM

A private dinner on how AI enters the public sector, anchored by Olivia Igbokwe-Curry of AWS. Reserved seats.

6 PM - 9 PM

Ten dev-tools and infra teams show the thing working, no slides, to engineers who will say what they think. Heavybit and PostHog host.

12 PM - 4 PM

A casual lunch and cowork day with product and AI leaders the day before Lenny & Friends Summit. Lens AI and Homebrew are covering food, coffee, and drinks while you network with people thinking deeply about the future of product roles.

2 PM - 4 PM

An invite-only session for AI founders and engineering leaders on pricing, unit economics, and cost per tenant, led by AWS. Three Embarcadero Center.

4:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Learn how to wire customer context from Zendesk, Datadog, Granola, and Asana into a production-ready query layer. This hands-on workshop walks you through per-user scoped access, credential isolation, and token management patterns you'll need for shipping multi-tenant agents.

5 PM - 7 PM

The Junction strips away forced networking theater for a self-directed circuit where founders hit stations built around raising, hiring, and GTM. Live music, good food, and open bar make this feel less conference booth and more actual gathering.

5 PM - 7 PM

Agents fail in production in patterns, and the game is catching the pattern before the next run repeats it. Arize built an RC car tournament around that idea, with Signal, its agent SRE, at a demo station between heats and a prize for the fastest team. No racing experience required.

5:30 PM - 8 PM

AICamp and Workato's AI Dev Showcase Night, September edition with Coder, on coding agents and AI-native development. Tech talk from Dave Ahr of Coder.

5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

The talks stay short so most of the evening goes to pulling apart assumptions and failure modes. Robotics and embodied AI edition, over dinner at Mission Robotics.

6 PM - 8 PM

Keeping a fleet of coding agents busy, reviewed, and secure is harder than the coding. Engineers from HumanLayer, Datadog, Tensorlake, and Cleric each take one piece that broke.

6 PM - 8:30 PM

Senior leaders compare notes on what to build in-house versus outsource as AI reshapes engineering talent needs. A private dinner exploring team capabilities, hiring strategies, and when external expertise actually makes sense.

6 PM - 8:30 PM

A working session for founders, marketers, and agency operators on automating go-to-market coordination across tools. AWS Builder Loft.

6 PM - 9 PM

If agents triage the bugs and write the specs, what is the PM for? PostHog, Linear, Supabase, and Dreambase demo their answer, then open the floor.

9 AM - 11 AM

A curated breakfast for VP, Head, or Director of Growth at seed through Series A startups, on selling to agents as buyers. Hosted by Brderless and ZeroClick.

4 PM - 7 PM

A hands-on festival where you identify a real problem, then build a solution using interactive workshops and challenges across multi-agent systems, code review, and design. Ship your prototype through Builder Base and pitch it at the end of the day.

4 PM - 7:30 PM

Supply chain execs and seed-stage founders discuss what actually closes deals over pickleball and dinner on Treasure Island. Twelve vetted people, one topic, zero cold email vibes.

6 PM - 8 PM

A happy hour for AI builders, founders, and engineers at ERIA Marina, hosted by Founders Bay with MongoDB and WeAreDevelopers.

6 PM - 9 PM

RL post-training is an infrastructure problem now: fast rollouts, high-throughput inference, systems that survive failures. Talks from Baseten, NVIDIA Dynamo, and SGLang, then two hours to compare notes.

6 PM - 9:30 PM

A Texas Hold'em tournament with founders and revenue leaders from SF's AI scene, professional dealers, and a Four Seasons spa day on the line. Beginners welcome, the house walks you through it, and space is limited.

6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Physical AI builders showing off working demos alongside talks from founders like Andromeda's Grace. Open mic format means you can pitch your prototype or see what others are shipping in robotics.

6:30 PM - 9 PM

Trillions of agents will reconfigure society, and software production changes once the human sits outside the loop. Benjamin Bratton and Marek Poliks make the case at Gray Area.

2 PM - 5 PM

Deep technical work on world models and embodied AI from researchers at Boston Dynamics, DeepMind, NVIDIA, and leading robotics startups. The format mixes keynote presentations with open-floor roundtables on spotlight papers, making it useful for builders actually working on these problems.

2 PM - 7 PM

The whole AI stack is still unsettled, and this room gathers the researchers and founders actually moving it. Expect unresolved technical debates across compute, inference, and agent infrastructure, with conversations designed to start past the handshakes.

9 AM - 5 PM

The brief is the loop: agents that reason, act, catch their own mistakes, and improve each pass. Weights & Biases co-hosts, and the winning team demos at Fully Connected.

9:30 AM - 7:30 PM

Open models ship faster than teams can evaluate them, so this hack day puts the newest ones on real problems side by side. Gradient and Google DeepMind host.

2 PM - 6:30 PM

Alibaba.com and guests from Google, Stripe, Microsoft, and Figma discuss how AI moves beyond generating outputs to taking action in real commerce workflows. The focus is on designing for trust and control while integrating agents across discovery, matching, sourcing, and fulfillment.

9 AM - 7 PM

Most AI video looks like AI video, and the fix is direction, consistency, editing, and sound. Roan Weigert of GMI Cloud teaches the morning; you premiere a short by evening.

9:30 AM - 7:30 PM

A one-day sprint building agentic security tools with working demos judged on technical depth and real-world applicability. Prizes up to $1,000 if you can ship something that actually matters for AI safety.

2 PM - 9 PM

A full day at GitHub HQ exploring Model Context Protocol with the developers and teams actually shipping MCP in production. Talks span server development, security patterns, agent routing, and the practical constraints of scaling AI tooling.

3 PM - 7 PM

Execs and practitioners wrestling with runaway costs, sovereignty, and bottlenecks that shifted downstream in production AI systems. Roundtables on cost predictability and self-hosted workloads, plus Gene Kim on closing keynote.

3 PM - 9 PM

A full day at the Exploratorium showcasing how multimodal AI moved from single outputs to agents orchestrating entire production pipelines. See live demos from Luma, Inworld, and others building the convergence between vision, sound, motion, and action.

11:30 AM - 1 PM

Qasar Younis, who built Applied Intuition and ran Y Combinator before that, talks shop on scaling AI companies and what founders actually need. A rare chance to hear from someone who's seen the full arc from startup to infrastructure, with real operational experience.

5 PM - 6 PM

A weekly gathering for people shipping agents at scale, not demo-ing them. Hallway conversations with founders and engineers from YC, Meta, NVIDIA, and OpenAI who've already solved the problems you're about to hit.

5 PM - 7 PM

Five AI startups pitch live products to Fortune 500 GTM, engineering, and marketing leaders during Dreamforce week. Skip the badge-scan circuit and actually meet founders with buyers in the room.

5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

CTO Circle is gathering 40+ engineering leaders for honest conversations about what's actually happening in modern software teams. Short talks, food, drinks, and a curated group from Stripe, GitHub, Supabase, and beyond make this worth the application.

6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Top sales pros from hypergrowth companies sharing how the best 1% structure their day, qualify faster, and use AI to close more. Breakout lounges by vertical, war stories, and a practical playbook talk on what actually separates them from everyone else.

3 PM - 4 PM

Brendan Foody discusses the unglamorous but critical work of designing data and environments for post-training at scale. A technical deep-dive on sourcing expert intelligence and the infrastructure challenges powering tomorrow's models.

5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

A low-pressure hangout after the AI Infra Summit where you can actually talk to people without the formality of demos or pitches. Free food and drinks at Fleming's if you need to decompress from the conference circuit.

5:30 PM - 9 PM

Agents can query every table in your lakehouse but don't know what "active user" actually means across your org. This meetup digs into semantic layers and ontologies that give AI systems machine-readable data understanding, with practitioner talks on getting unstructured data agent-ready end-to-end.

6 PM - 9 PM

StepFun is showing off StepAudio 3, their next-generation audio model that moves beyond scripted exchanges toward real-time conversation and expressive audio creation. Live demos plus a panel of voice AI builders sharing what it actually takes to ship reliable products make this worth the evening.

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Thirty people, dinner cooked by an autonomous robot, and two hours to talk hardware with founders at every stage. Flux AI's venue, Nosh's food, and a structured asks and offers session make this worth the trip.

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

A carefully curated dinner with Series A+ AI founders sharing honest takes on fundraising, go-to-market, and scaling. The venue and company are both worth the evening alone.

1 PM - 9 PM

Two panels on shipping AI in compliance-heavy industries where mistakes cost millions, plus subsurface dives into real engineering challenges. Sphere's building the compliance layer for global trade, and this half-day conference brings senior engineers wrestling with similar reliability and regulation problems.

4 PM - 7:30 PM

Twelve curated AI founders and seed-stage investors play pickleball at private courts with coaches, followed by dinner. The group targets founders with real traction and investors actively deploying capital in early-stage AI.

5:30 PM - 8 PM

Fifteen founders get two minutes each to demo live AI products with VC feedback, no pitch polish required. This is where the Bay's most active builders actually see what's shipping, not what's planned.

6 PM - 8:30 PM

The shift from frontier models to specialized alternatives is reshaping production AI, and this panel from Baseten explores why teams building voice, retrieval, and structured data models are winning on speed and cost. Hear from founders at Gradium, Synthefy, and Sid.ai on deploying multi-model architectures at scale.

8 AM - 9:30 AM

Casual morning gathering for founders and builders shipping AI agents, with impromptu demos and no agenda. Grab breakfast tacos at a SOMA spot opening early, connect with experienced PMs and engineering leaders doing the same work.

12:30 PM - 4 PM

Curated founder lunch on a private yacht with seed-to-Series B builders from YC, a16z, and breakout ops from Uber and Meta. Go deep on GTM, hiring, and positioning for your next round with peers hitting similar inflection points.

9:30 AM - 7:30 PM

A compressed sprint for exploring whether your AI idea can actually become a business in 24 hours. You'll get feedback from investors and AWS infrastructure access to test feasibility before committing real time.

2 PM - 5 PM

A focused reading group on world models and embodied AI featuring researchers from DeepMind, Boston Dynamics, and leading robotics labs. The AgiBot keynote and open roundtable make it worth attending if you're shipping physical AI systems.

9 AM - 9 PM

One day to validate an AI product idea from problem to pitch, with mentors, judges, and investors in the room. Top teams get Founder Institute fellowships, cash prizes, and potential venture backing from LIKELION US.

2 PM - 5 PM

Casual Sunday coworking at Salesforce Park with Bay Area AI folks, coffee sponsored by WeAreDevelopers. Bring a project or just show up to meet people, then stick around for the intro circle where folks share what they're building and hiring for.

2:30 PM - 4 PM

Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo's co-CEO and one of the original architects of Google's self-driving car project, sits down to discuss autonomous driving strategy and the state of the technology. This is a rare chance to hear directly from someone who's shaped the field for nearly two decades.

5 PM - 8 PM

One year in, SVAI Hub is celebrating the builders, hackathon winners, and startups that proved the best AI gets built together. Panel with Jeremiah Owyang, founders shipping real products, and stories from teams that started here.

5 PM - 9 PM

As AI systems grow beyond single agents into connected workflows, graphs are becoming essential infrastructure for context, structure, and control. Four technical talks from Neo4j, AWS, and Band engineers cover practical patterns for building systems that are more capable, observable, and reliable.

6 PM - 8 PM

A networking event for AI founders and VCs hosted by Atrium Frontier Fund, the pre-seed investors backing frontier AI and DeepTech startups. Expect peer discussions on fundraising and GTM strategy alongside the usual happy hour perks.

6 PM - 8:45 PM

Robotics demos and networking hosted by Silicon Valley Robotics with the Automated Podcast crew and a special guest speaker. Solid crowd if you're building in hard tech and want to see what's actually working in the lab.

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

HerTable's September dinner brings together women in tech to discuss AI safety in fintech over Peruvian-Japanese food. Christina Hsu and a cybersecurity expert lead a conversation on building human-centered systems in a sector that desperately needs it.

9:30 AM - 7 PM

The convergence of transactional and analytical databases is reshaping how teams build real-time AI systems. This summit gathers practitioners and architects to debate hybrid architectures, table formats, and CDC approaches that actually work in production.

10 AM - 5 PM

Two days exploring how psychedelics support personal growth, spiritual development, and human flourishing with researchers, artists, and practitioners. Intimate setting of 75 people in downtown SF connecting neuroscience with spiritual traditions and practical approaches to intentional exploration.

11 AM - 6 PM

10,000 developers and 500+ speakers converging in San Jose for three days of technical depth on AI, cloud, and modern systems at scale. The production knowledge and in-person conversations here rival anything else happening in tech this year.

5 PM - 9:30 PM

Twilio's bringing their newest AI comms stack to SF before the We Are Developers conference, with product demos and an interactive IVR challenge. Worth the trip if you're shipping agents that need to talk to people.

9 AM - 5 PM

The third iteration of the scene's most selective AI summit, bringing together founders and researchers shipping frontier models, robotics, and infrastructure. Two days in Menlo Park covering the LLM stack and physical AI, with speakers from DeepMind, OpenAI, NVIDIA, and the builders actually pushing both frontiers forward.

4 PM - 7:30 PM

Twelve AI founders and early-stage investors compete in curated pickleball matches at a private court, then grab dinner together. Straightforward networking for the seed-to-series A crowd in SF.

5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Four speakers unpacking how to actually build agents that work across APIs, design, and cloud infrastructure. Live demos, trivia, and pizza if you arrive early enough to grab a seat.

6 PM - 8 PM

Business owners share what's actually broken in their operations right now, cutting through the brainstorm nonsense to surface real problems worth solving. Walk out with a concrete ITCH and potential customers for whatever you build next.

6 PM - 8 PM

Colin McGrath from Baseten walks through active-active, multi-cloud architecture for teams that can't afford downtime. Learn the tradeoffs, data consistency patterns, and resilience strategies he's built for production AI companies.

9 AM - 6 PM

The hard truth: agents fail at scale because we're still building them like short-lived tools. This invite-only gathering of founders and infrastructure builders tackles memory, orchestration, and durable execution that separate toy agents from production systems.

10 AM - 11 PM

A 12-hour SF hackathon built for absurdly creative ideas with zero economic viability required, where the real prize is meeting interesting builders and maybe winning a shower. Top 30% teams get invited to the afterparty.

2 PM - 5 PM

Devol Robotics presents their geometry-preserving world model for contact-rich manipulation, achieving 92% success on real robot tasks versus 50% for comparable baselines. Deep dive with researchers from DeepMind, NVIDIA, Berkeley, and Bay Area robotics startups on why correct geometric representation matters for learning physical priors at scale.

9 AM - 9 PM

You build a real company with a founding team of 2-4 people, at least one human and one AI. Pick your track from shipping a product to raising capital to landing customers, then execute from idea to launch with your AI co-founder actually doing the work.

10 AM - 7 PM

Real problems sourced from business owners and industry experts at the preceding ITCH panel become the focus here. Teams and individuals build actual solutions over the hackathon, not hypothetical ideas brainstormed in a vacuum.