Nvidia’s (NVDA) GTC 2026, the company’s biggest event of the year, kicks off in San Jose, Calif., on Monday with a keynote from CEO Jensen Huang.
The show starts at 1 p.m. ET, when Huang will take the stage at San Jose’s SAP Center to provide developers, analysts, and the press with updates on what the company is preparing for the year ahead.
The leather-jacket-clad CEO’s keynotes are usually littered with a litany of product launches and updates, and we’ll likely see the same at this year’s event.
Nvidia has been on a dealmaking spree over the past several months, ranging from agreements with chip companies to software firms, and we’re all but guaranteed to learn more about how the AI chip giant is integrating those technologies and capabilities into its own offerings.
One of Nvidia’s most interesting deals over the past 12 months was its nonexclusive agreement to use chipmaker Groq’s inferencing technologies in December. As part of the move, Nvidia also hired Groq founder Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and other company leaders.
Groq designs chips it calls language processing units, or LPUs, that are designed for inferencing, or running, AI models. The company claims its processors can run large language and other AI models up to 10 times more efficiently than GPUs.
As the industry continues to evolve from primarily training AI models to inferencing, companies are increasingly looking for chips that can power AI software at lower cost. Nvidia has touted its GPUs’ efficiency, but either integrating Groq’s technology into its own processors or revealing a dedicated inference chip could help dispel concerns that customers will opt for more specialized processors rather than Nvidia’s GPUs in the future.
On a different note, Nvidia could also unveil its long-rumored laptop CPU at GTC. According to The Verge, leaks show that the company is preparing to launch two chips, the N1 and N1X, that would power Windows laptops.
The processors will run on Arm’s architecture, like those from Qualcomm (QCOM), but have a gaming-centric bent. Nvidia’s GPUs are some of the most sought-after in the gaming community, and a CPU could be just as popular.
Nvidia’s chips already power Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Switch and Switch 2 consoles, and they’ve been used in other computers before, so a laptop CPU wouldn’t be all that strange. It would also keep Nvidia in gamers’ good graces amid its massive pivot toward the data center.
But don’t expect the chips to generate the kind of massive revenues that Nvidia’s GPUs and networking products do. Sales of the company’s gaming segment totaled $22.5 billion in 2025, while its data center business brought in $193.5 billion.
