NVIDIA's Strategic Shift: GTC Debuts in Washington, Bridging AI Innovation and Policy

Nvidia's D.C. moment

Driving the news: Axios got a sneak peek at themes of Huang's keynote tomorrow. "AI is the most transformative technology in human history -- and the race is on," Huang says. * "GTC D.C. brings together researchers, developers, business leaders and policymakers in the heart of our nation's capital to explore breakthroughs in AI, robotics, life sciences, energy, quantum, and 6G -- advancing innovations vital to America's technological leadership." The conference will be held today through Wednesday at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, with live demos and 70+ sessions on chip design, superintelligence, quantum computing and more. * In conjunction with the conference, Huang and Eric Schmidt, chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), will announce a Task Force on AI and the Future of Work, including representatives from industry, academia and government. * The task force will be established in early 2026, deliver an interim report at SCSP's AI Expo in May, and a final report in October 2026. What they're saying: Nvidia Vice President of External Affairs Ned Finkle said that to "strengthen America's global leadership in AI, we must invest in our people." * SCSP CEO Ylli Bajraktari said: "AI is remaking the economy, and this task force is about equipping every American to participate fully in that new era." The bottom line: The impact of AI on the workforce is top-of-mind for politicians in Washington, whose constituents worry about job displacement. * At a conference that's largely about advancements in computing, questions about how people and their livelihoods could be impacted will loom large. Sign up for Axios AI+ Government, our new Friday newsletter focusing on how governments encourage, regulate and use AI.

Nvidia GTC: What to expect as the AI roadshow comes to D.C.

At Nvidia's first-ever Washington GTC, the dress code will skew fewer hoodies, more Hill badges. With more than 70 sessions on "responsible AI," quantum computing, digital infrastructure, and beyond, the company is staging the quiet sequel to Silicon Valley's biggest export: persuasion. The company's annual GPU Technology Conference has long been a Silicon Valley ritual -- a glossy pageant of chips, demos, and developer swagger. CEO Jensen Huang's leather jacket has become as recognizable as his chip diagrams, and every March, he fills arenas in San Jose, California, with developers eager to see what's next. But this week's three-day summit (Oct. 27-29) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center swaps out the coders for contractors. The shift to Washington will likely say as much about the company's ambitions as much as its timing. AI infrastructure is quickly becoming a matter of statecraft -- the kind of national-interest project that invites regulation, subsidies, and oversight in equal measure. (There's a labeled Government Affairs track on the agenda.) As federal AI guidance continues to take shape, Nvidia is positioning itself as the vendor that can make Washington's digital dreams real without rewriting its bureaucracy. Nvidia is courting a market that buys at scale and rarely switches vendors. Monday was the conference's quieter on-ramp -- think check-ins, workshops, and campus activations -- but it sets the tone for an event built for buyers as much as builders. The show really kicks off Tuesday, with Huang's keynote address; he'll take to the main stage at 12 p.m. ET, with an expanded pregame beforehand -- and a livestream for anyone who isn't within badge-scanning range. Huang's keynote is expected to double as a civics lesson: a reminder that in an age of tariffs, export bans, and trillion-dollar compute budgets, AI supremacy is as much about influence as innovation. The Nvidia CEO is likely to emphasize power efficiency, secure supply chains, and "AI factories" -- talking points that translate easily into Washington shorthand for jobs, infrastructure, and national competitiveness. Expect nods to "agentic" or "physical" AI and to quantum/HPC -- the themes Nvidia is spotlighting for Washington -- and expect them framed in the language of deployment rather than demos. Expectations are calibrated toward execution: reiterating the spring roadmap (Blackwell Ultra now, Rubin/Vera Rubin on the horizon) and translating it for a Washington audience that cares about supply, reliability, and the total cost of inference almost as much as raw TOPS. If March's GTC was about unveiling, October will likely be about deployment -- how to get these systems into data centers with megawatt budgets and agencies with RFP checklists. Investors will listen for near-term signals on networking and power constraints, public-sector demand, and any color on delivery timing. And if Huang's keynote threads the needle -- performance per watt, time-to-value, and a story about connecting millions of accelerators without melting the substation -- the week will have done its job. Nvidia's "Connect with the Experts" stations -- drop-in consults on accelerated computing, agentic AI, CUDA tuning, vision stacks, Omniverse twins, and even quantum via CUDA-Q -- are a triage desk for teams trying to harden a pilot into a program. Certifications are running on-site, too, including new generative-AI credentials, slotted to make "we have certified staff" a slide you can show your contracting officer. Nvidia is preaching stability, resilience, and domestic sourcing. Federal customers want less about what's possible and more about what's allowed. The same photonics, interconnects, and inference optimizations that wow investors in San Jose will likely be framed as power-management and energy-security solutions. Set against that pitch are the usual Washington cautions -- vendor lock-in, export-control exposure, and simple energy availability -- which are likely to surface in Q&As and side-room briefings. Startups get their moment once the keynote glow fades. Nvidia's Inception program is staging a startup pavilion on the floor and a Wednesday morning pitch hour where founders have five minutes each to win over investors, integrators, and the odd colonel who wandered in from a JADC2 meeting. This is the "receipts" part of the story: edge robotics, security, synthetic data, and healthcare triage -- the applied demos that show what a federal checkbook might actually buy. Nvidia is betting that the agencies walking out of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center will see AI as an asset to commission, not as a risk to manage. This version of GTC is about showing that the next wave of innovation will need as many signatures as it does transistors -- and that Nvidia already speaks both languages. The near-term tells will be prosaic: who books follow-ups, which pilots get named, and whether any agencies telegraph budget intent coming out of the show. If San Jose is the birthplace of hype, Washington is its proving ground. This is where Nvidia will work to show that its machines can coexist with the bureaucracy they're meant to modernize -- that AI can fit inside the rulebook without losing its edge. Whether anyone in the federal government actually buys that argument might not matter right away. In Washington, ideas tend to take hold long before the contracts do. By the time the lights go down on Wednesday, the takeaway won't be about what Nvidia revealed, but whom it impressed. The company that turned chips into symbols of ambition is now trying to turn them into policy. And in Washington, that might be the most powerful upgrade of all.

NVIDIA's GTC Comes to Washington for the First Time, As CEO Jensen Huang Is Expected to Champion America's AI Leadership

NVIDIA's GTC 2025 has kicked off today, marking the first time Team Green is holding the event in Washington, as it is directed towards America's leadership in the AI segment. Well, it seems like NVIDIA has expanded its GTC event this year by holding it twice in 2025, and the last time we saw Jensen appear at this particular event was back in March, when we saw the unveiling of the GB300 'Blackwell Ultra' AI servers, as well as the future AI roadmap. However, this time, GTC is returning in October, and surprisingly, the venue is set for Washington, which in itself is quite a significant move from NVIDIA. The event will take place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, with Jensen's keynote scheduled for October 28th. The event officially begins today, with workshops taking place throughout the venue. Well, since this GTC is a relatively new venture by NVIDIA, details about what we could see happening are uncertain for now. However, at a dedicated blog page, NVIDIA claims that CEO Jensen Huang will unveil information around "how AI will reshape industries, infrastructure, and the public sector" in the form of a roadmap, so it's likely that we'll see various computing architectures being discussed. Hence, Jensen will discuss the Blackwell Ultra production ramp-up and the next-gen Rubin AI lineup, which will be the highlight. Factoring in geopolitical concerns has become crucial for NVIDIA, which is why GTC Washington is an event that will be more focused on the efforts Team Green is making to ensure the US stays ahead in the AI race. The event will feature several key individuals in the AI supply chain, such as Foxconn's Young Liu. NVIDIA labels the event as "See What's Next in AI," so announcements around AI and industries are likely to be a common topic discussed by Jensen as well. Jensen's keynote will take place at 12:00 p.m. ET tomorrow, and this will be one of the most critical highlights of NVIDIA's AI journey in 2025; hence, make sure to stay tuned.