If you’ve been anywhere near downtown San Jose this week, you couldn’t have missed the presence of Nvidia GTC — the massive AI conference that kicked off Monday, bringing some 30,000 attendees.
Lines of Waymo taxis politely waited their turn at stoplights as traffic jammed downtown. Ads for cloud computing and AI companies plastered buses and billboards, and hordes of conferencegoers avoided any pinches on St. Patrick’s Day, wearing the bright green lanyards — the must-have fashion accessory of the week downtown.
Audience members watch as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang gives the keynote address at the NVIDIA GTC 2026 at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., on Monday, March 16, 2025. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Even coffee shops and street corners buzzed with activity and people Monday and Tuesday morning in ways rarely seen since the dot-com days of the late 1990s.
“It’s the best convention since I’ve been here in San Jose,” said Adolfo Gomez, owner of Mezcal restaurant on San Fernando Street. “In terms of vibes, the only thing that comes close is when we had the Grand Prix.”
For the third year in a row, St. Louis-based WorldWide Technology bought out the restaurant for the conference, and this year expanded to include neighboring Rookies for some events. About 250 conferencegoers gathered at the two eateries at midday Monday to watch a livestream of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech, which took place at a packed house at SAP Center.
Huang — who started his company at a San Jose Denny’s — gets credit for keeping the conference in San Jose, which is challenged by a lack of hotel rooms in the downtown core. “He loves San Jose,” Gomez said. “That’s why it’s here.”
The main conference floor is at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. But the conference’s footprint is much larger, with conference events at the Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt Place and the Signia by Hilton hotel, as well as the Tech Interactive, Civic Auditorium, the Montgomery Theater and the Center for the Performing Arts.
Plaza de Cesar Chavez has been transformed into GTC Park, a playground for conferencegoers both during the day and at night. Companies like Hitachi, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and more are showing off their products with pop-up structures outside the park. Red Had features an “AI Fun Zone,” and rows of white tents are ready for the hungry masses with offerings from local eateries like Poor House Bistro, Het Say and Curry Up Now.
The San Jose Museum of Art smartly programmed for the conference and has free “Art + Tech” days all week, with a Retro Tech Night party on Thursday night featuring the band Character Select, which specializes in video game music.
Mezcal isn’t the only downtown bar or restaurant that’s getting a boost from GTC.
The Grill on the Alley became a VIP lounge for Vast Data. Livermore-based Computacenter took over craft-cocktail lounge Paper Plane. New Jersey-based Cloud computing company CoreWeave turned Poppy & Claro at 50 W. San Fernando into CoreWeave House — complete with an Aston Martin F1 simulator, which was drawing a lot of fans.
Rishik Pavani, a student at North Carolina State University, flew to San Jose to attend GTC for the first time. After climbing out of the simulator — an experience he described as “incredible” — he said he was really surprised with the way San Jose allowed Nvidia to take over downtown.
“It’s a good way to see the city and enjoy the atmosphere,” he said.
The atmosphere may not be as enjoyable for locals, who aren’t used to this level of traffic (both car and foot) downtown or might be shut out of their favorite watering hole because it’s closed for a tech party. If that’s you, remember that this, too, shall pass. And, in the meantime, maybe pay a visit to one of those hidden gems you like that hasn’t been rebranded for the week.