GTC 2026 After Hours: From Models to Agents to Infra
Novita AI, together with FounderCoho, is hosting a high-energy after-hours event during NVIDIA GTC 2026, featuring speakers from NVIDIA, Google DeepMind, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence (Qwen/Wan), Hugging Face, MiniMax, OpenRouter, RadixArk, and Kilo Code.
AI is moving fast — from stronger models, to agents, to the infrastructure + product solutions that make everything real in production. Join us for two curated panels covering deep insights across the stack, plus plenty of time to meet builders and operators across the ecosystem.
🌟 What You’ll Experience:
Deep Insights & Practical Techniques
Hear candid lessons on building, deploying, and scaling modern AI systems — from model trends and production deployment to agent stacks, infrastructure optimization, and what to expect in 2026.
Real-world Operator Perspectives
Learn how leading teams think about models and agents, distribution, and what it takes to deliver production-grade performance.
Networking Opportunities
Connect with builders, researchers, founders, and AI practitioners in a vibrant, relaxed environment during GTC week.
🍹 Complimentary food and drinks provided!
🎟️ The event is free to attend, and no GTC ticket is required!
(RSVP may be approval-based due to venue capacity.)
Agenda
6:00 – 7:00 PM: Doors Open & Networking
7:00 – 7:10 PM: Opening Remarks
7:10 – 7:55 PM: Panel 1 — Frontier Models → Systems → Product Solutions
7:55 – 8:00 PM: Break
8:00 – 8:45 PM: Panel 2 — From Models to Market: Distribution and the Agent Value Chain
8:45 – 9:00 PM: Closing + Announcements
9:00 – 10:00 PM: Continued Networking & Collaboration
🎤 Featured Panelists
Ari Messer, Head of Partnerships @ Kilo Code
Ari leads partnerships at Kilo Code, where he helps users take advantage of the latest LLMs and inference technology to power every aspect of agentic engineering. Kilo is the top open-source coding agent, with over 1.5M Kilo Coders around the world.
Banghua Zhu, Co-Founder & CTO @ RadixArk
Banghua is the CTO & co-founder of RadixArk and a key builder behind the SGLang ecosystem (LLM serving / inference stack). He earned his PhD from UC Berkeley, advised by Michael I. Jordan and Jiantao Jiao, and is joining the University of Washington faculty—bringing a rare “research + systems + open infra” combination.
Jiantao Jiao, Director of AI & Distinguished Scientist @ NVIDIA
Jiantao is Director of Research & Distinguished Scientist at NVIDIA and a professor at UC Berkeley (EECS + Statistics). He previously co-founded and served as CEO of Nexusflow.ai (agentic LLM startup) through its acquisition by NVIDIA, and his work spans the full LLM/agent pipeline—from data and training to post-training and systems.
Jeff Boudier, Head of Product @ Hugging Face
Jeff leads product at Hugging Face, one of the world’s most influential developer platforms across models, datasets, and tooling. He previously co-founded Stupeflix (acquired by GoPro) and held product, growth, and business leadership roles—bringing deep experience building platforms that developers and enterprises actually adopt.
Jeff Fu, Sr. Director of Product Solution Architect, Qwen & Wan Models @ Alibaba Cloud Intelligence
Jeff is Senior Director of Product Solution Architecture at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence (Tongyi Lab). Jeff leads the commercialization efforts for the Tongyi model family, including the Qwen and Wan multimodal models.
Linda Sheng, Head of Global Business @ MiniMax
Linda is Head of Global Business at MiniMax, leading global expansion and partnerships. Previously she was a tech investor at Warburg Pincus and SoftBank Vision Fund.
Ravin Kumar, Senior Researcher, Gemini & Gemma Models @ Google DeedMind
Ravin is a Senior Researcher at Google DeepMind working on the Gemini and Gemma model series. He has 10+ years building applied generative and probabilistic models—including bespoke Bayesian systems for SpaceX—and is a core contributor in the PyMC ecosystem and co-author of Bayesian Modeling and Computation in Python.
Ron Shepherd, VP, Business Development @ OpenRouter
Ron leads business development at OpenRouter, working at the center of model distribution, marketplace, and ecosystem partnerships. He’s also been active as an investor/advisor across AI and games, with prior experience including Polygon, Unity, and Electronic Arts.
Moderator: Junyu Huang, COO @ Novita AI
📍 Reserve your spot now—space is limited!
Community Partners
Organizer
Novita AI: Novita AI is an AI & agent cloud platform helping builders serve and scale models and agentic workloads with strong performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.
Co-Hosts
FounderCoHo: FounderCoHo is a community where founders support each other by sharing knowledge and building connections. Starting a company is a brave endeavor. Many of us have faced numerous challenges and learned valuable lessons along the way. FounderCoho aims to be that supportive community where founders can share their stories and get fueled for their company-building journey.
Plug and Play Tech Center: Plug and Play is the largest open innovation platform that brings together the best startups, the world's largest corporations and seasoned investors. It aims to drive the future forward with corporations, governments, startups, investors, and universities.
Disclaimer
NVIDIA’s involvement in this event is limited solely to the technical insights provided by its invited speaker. This event is not sponsored or endorsed by NVIDIA. Any opinions expressed by NVIDIA representatives are their own and do not necessarily reflect official NVIDIA policy.