AI & Big Data Expo California 2027: Dates, Speakers & Tickets
May 24-25, 2027
AI & Big Data Expo California 2027 runs May 24-25, 2027 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The 2 day event anchors TechEx North America, so one badge covers 7 co-located enterprise tech shows.
AI & Big Data Expo California 2027 runs May 24-25, 2027 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The 2 day event anchors TechEx North America, so one badge covers 7 co-located enterprise tech shows. The most recent edition pulled 8,000-plus attendees, 250-plus speakers, and 250-plus exhibitors (checked 2026-08-24, ai-expo.net/northamerica). The Expo Pass is free. The Gold Pass runs $699 to $1,399 on a rising tier.
I track AI conferences the same way I track AI tool deals. The vendors demoing on a floor this year are frequently the tools showing up in real buying decisions six months later. Most single-topic AI conferences force you to pick a lane: either you get a vendor floor with a thousand booths, or you get a closed-door executive briefing with no exhibitors in sight. AI & Big Data Expo California tries to do both at once, and it keeps growing. Whether that bet lands for you comes down to one question: are you making enterprise AI decisions on a portfolio, or picking a single tool?
The 7 event bet is the reason to book, not any single keynote
AI & Big Data Expo California is the North American edition of a global series, held annually in San Jose and built around enterprise AI adoption, data infrastructure, and physical AI. What makes it worth booking is the co-location: the AI & Big Data Expo badge also gets you into Cyber Security & Cloud Expo, IoT Tech Expo, Data Center Congress, Digital Transformation Week, Edge Computing Expo, and Intelligent Automation & Robotics Conference. Seven events, one venue, one ticket.
Contrast that with a single-vendor data event like the Databricks Data + AI Summit or its European sister expo. You get a deeper single-topic experience, but you also get one lens. TechEx bets the work inside an enterprise, AI strategy, security, IoT, data infrastructure, does not happen in separate silos, so the agenda should not either. Whether you agree decides whether the co-location is the feature or the noise.
San Jose puts the event inside Silicon Valley itself, minutes from most Bay Area campuses and either San Jose Mineta or SFO. Late May sits outside the summer travel crunch and ahead of fall conference season, which usually keeps hotel pricing more reasonable than a peak tech week would.
Who this event is built for
Enterprise AI leaders. Data platform teams. Physical AI and robotics engineers. Security and infrastructure teams who want to use the same badge across Cyber Security & Cloud Expo and Edge Computing Expo. Enterprise software vendors chasing floor time in front of 8,000-plus qualified attendees. The recent speaker list, CIOs, chief data and AI officers, VPs of AI strategy, points squarely at technical leaders and senior practitioners.
The event site’s own policy backs that positioning up. Students are explicitly not accommodated. Recruiters must buy a full Gold Pass rather than attend free. If you are early in your AI career looking for a first introduction, this is not the event; the programming assumes you already know what a foundation model or a data pipeline is and you want to see how enterprise teams deploy them.
I would send different team members on different passes. Someone senior gets the full Gold Pass for the paid Enterprise AI Implementation sessions and the VIP networking. The rest of the team goes on the free Expo Pass, which covers the Learning Hub sessions from NVIDIA, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta plus 150-plus exhibitors on the floor. That split can put 3 people in the room for roughly the price of 1 Gold Pass.
Speaker roster reflects the most recent edition, not a locked 2027 lineup
Direct flag up front. The official site had posted the May 2027 dates and venue but the ticket pricing and speaker roster still reflected the most recently completed edition at the time of writing (checked 2026-08-24, ai-expo.net/northamerica). Recent confirmed headliners are real, verifiable, and a useful signal of the caliber this series consistently attracts.
| Speaker | Title | Company |
|---|---|---|
| Lutz Beck | CIO | Daimler Truck North America |
| Cydni Tetro | CIO | Swire Coca-Cola |
| Chad Smykay | AI CTO & Distinguished Technologist | HPE |
| Jose Alvarez | Director of Research | NVIDIA |
| Dr Vinesh Sukumar | VP of AI | Qualcomm |
| Patrick Summers | Founding Enterprise Lead | Perplexity |
| Sriram Sitaraman | CIO | Synopsys |
| Sunil Murthy | AI Field CTO | IBM |
| Chris Bruman | CDAO | Dow |
Beyond the named headliners, the most recent Physical AI track pulled in speakers from NVIDIA, Microsoft, Airbus Acubed, Unitree, and Forterra for sessions on robot foundation models, vision-language-action systems, and enterprise governance of physical AI deployments. Verify the exact 2027 roster on the official speakers page before you book if names matter to the decision. See also how a Bay Area speaker mix landed at the COLLIDE Data + AI Conference, a comparable enterprise draw.
The Physical AI track is the differentiator most enterprise AI events do not run
Recent programming split into 5 AI & Big Data tracks: Data, Platforms & Systems; AI Strategy, Autonomous Intelligence & Enterprise Transformation; Data at Scale, Platforms, Pipelines & Value Extraction on day 1; Enterprise AI Implementation, ROI & Adoption plus Physical AI on day 2. The Physical AI track alone runs a full day on the “physical AI stack,” from edge sensors and multimodal perception through foundation models for robotics, autonomous vehicle development, and the governance of deploying humanoid systems at scale.
Most enterprise AI conferences treat robotics as a footnote. This one gives it a full day and books the speakers to back it up. If your team is anywhere near physical AI deployment, that track alone can justify the trip.
Alongside the paid content, the free TechEx Learning Hub runs practical sessions from NVIDIA, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. There is a separate AI Hackathon for developers building live and an AI Start-Up Area connecting early-stage founders with investors. See what other physical AI signals I track in the AI trends timeline.
Ticket pricing and the free pass math
Pricing below is the most recently published tier structure. Final 2027 numbers had not been separately confirmed at the time of writing (checked 2026-08-24, ai-expo.net/northamerica).
| Pass | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Expo Pass | Free | Learning Hub sessions, expo floor with 150-plus exhibitors, networking app |
| Gold Pass | $699 to $1,399 (rising tier) | All paid and free sessions across 7 events, VIP networking |
| Startup Pass | $699 (50% off Gold, application required) | Full Gold Pass access |
| Enterprise Leadership Pass | Free (application, senior leaders with buying authority) | Full Gold Pass plus curated 1:1 meetings |
| Media Pass | Free (application) | Full Gold Pass for press |
The free Expo Pass is a real entry point here, not a stripped-down teaser. It covers the Learning Hub sessions from NVIDIA, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, plus floor access to 150-plus exhibitors. That is enough for anyone mainly scouting vendors or testing whether the paid tier is worth it next year. The Gold Pass earns its price through the paid session tracks and the VIP networking drinks, which matter most if you want direct conversations with speakers and sponsors rather than watching sessions.
There is no StackVerdict-specific discount code, and I will not invent one. What the official site does publish: a group discount for parties of 5 or more, and a pay-by-invoice option for corporate procurement. If you are budgeting for a team of 3-plus, get the group rate before defaulting to individual Gold Passes.
My buy or skip verdict
Buy the Gold Pass if you can name 2 sessions you will actually use back at your job and the co-located access to Cyber Security, IoT, or Data Center content adds real value for your role. Take the free Expo Pass if a paid ticket is not justified yet. You still get the Learning Hub, floor access, and the AI Start-Up Area, which is enough to judge whether next year’s paid tier earns the money. Skip if you are new to enterprise AI work with no team context yet.
The one thing worth confirming before you book: check the official event page for the finalized 2027 speaker roster closer to the date. Names carry over from last edition until the 2027 page is rebuilt. If you want AI event and deal alerts land in your inbox instead of hunting them down, subscribe here. While you plan, the AI tools I have tested for enterprise teams give the sessions more context when you are in the room.
For AI & Big Data Expo California 2028, expect the same San Jose McEnery Convention Center venue and the same TechEx North America umbrella. Dates typically land in late May.