SF Bay Area Events: August 24-30, 2026

The week at a glance

The strongest technical choices cluster from Tuesday through Thursday. Inference infrastructure, physical AI, production agents, and secure connectivity all have named speakers or live demos. Friday and the weekend shift toward hands-on building: an AI hackathon, an open-source summit, and a two-day robotics build.

This is a ranked shortlist for August 24-30, 2026. The ranking weighs topic fit, a concrete program, host credibility, named speakers, visible attendance, and access friction. All times are Pacific. A status such as approval required, waitlist, or sold out is part of the recommendation, because it changes whether an event can fit into your plan.

Rank	When	Event and category	Venue	Host and quality signal	Entry and status
1	Mon, Aug 24, 6:00-9:00 PM	vLLM x NVIDIA Dynamo Meetup · LLM inference and serving	Saluhall SF, 945 Market St Fl 2, San Francisco	vLLM Meetups and Events; vLLM and NVIDIA Dynamo tech talks; 744 going	Approval required; registration is subject to host approval; price not listed 1
2	Tue, Aug 25, 5:30-8:00 PM	Physical AI: What's Working (and What Still Breaks) · robotics and embodied AI	1 Ferry Building, Suite 200, San Francisco	Rally SF with Niantic Spatial; robots on display, three company talks, and a panel; room holds about 75	Approval required; bring the photo ID used in registration; hand-approved guest list 2
3	Wed, Aug 26, 5:30-8:00 PM	Durable AI: Agent Context Is Everything · agent context and infrastructure	San Francisco; exact address shown after registration	Temporal Community; lightning talks and demos from Retriever AI, Entire, Chalk, Neo4j, and PromptQL; 243 going	Approval required; price not listed 3
4	Wed, Aug 26, 8:30 AM-5:00 PM	TailscaleUp · secure connectivity, engineering, and IT	SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin St, San Francisco	Tailscale; speakers from GitHub, AWS, Grafana Labs, and more; 68 going	Ticketed; registration runs through Tailscale's site; the Luma page lists code `BONDAI25` for 25% off 4
5	Fri, Aug 28, 3:00-8:00 PM	Open Source AI Summit SF · open-source AI research and engineering	San Francisco; exact address shown after registration	BuildPlanet with NEAR AI; 10th SF summit; speakers include Matt White, Illia Polosukhin, Dima Dzhulgakov, Lukasz Kaiser, and Bowen Wang; 382 going	Approval required; price not listed 5
6	Wed, Aug 26, 5:30-8:30 PM	Bay Area Frontier Research Club #19 · agents in production and self-improvement	Menlo Park; exact address shown after registration	The Frontier Syndicate; UC Berkeley researchers Melissa Pan and Negar Arabzadeh present Measuring Agents in Production, followed by a self-improvement fireside	Approval required; price not listed 6
7	Thu, Aug 27, 9:00 AM-8:00 PM	Step SF 2026 · AI startups, demos, and fundraising	The Midway, 900 Marin St, San Francisco	Step; founders, investors, builders, operators, demos, pitch stage, and 670 going	Ticketed; choose a ticket on the registration page; the listing runs to 8:00 PM, while its core-conference section says 9:00 AM-5:30 PM 7
8	Tue, Aug 25, 6:00-9:00 PM	San Francisco n8n Community Meetup · workflow automation and MCP	Digital Jungle SF, 972 Mission St, San Francisco	n8n Community Events; founder and CEO Jan Oberhauser fireside, an n8n MCP demo, and 284 going	RSVP required; registration open on the detail page; price not listed 8
9	Tue, Aug 25, 5:00-8:00 PM	Trust3 AI + Snowflake · agent security and governance	Snowflake office, 135 Constitution Dr, Menlo Park	Trust3 AI; Paresh Bhaya of Natoma, now Snowflake, plus Trust3 AI's security team; end-to-end live demo	Approval required; practitioner-focused; price not listed 9
10	Fri, Aug 28, 9:00 AM-7:00 PM	Better Days: A Hackathon · applied AI and social-impact tools	KOHO Co-Creative Hub, 1675 Post St 2nd Floor, San Francisco	ClickHouse; one-day build with four tracks, expert bar, named judges, and cash plus cloud-credit prizes; 366 going	Event full; waitlist only; venue is 18+ 10
11	Wed, Aug 26, 5:00-7:30 PM	AI, X-rays, and Manufacturing · industrial AI and physical products	Lumafield headquarters, 665 3rd St Ste 100, San Francisco	Lumafield; live Go/No-Go recording with Haomiao Huang, Eduardo Torrealba, and Vikram Pavate, plus industrial X-ray CT demos; 208 going	Approval required; bring an object to scan if time permits; price not listed 11
12	Tue, Aug 25, 6:00-8:00 PM	{AI} in Production · production AI engineering	San Francisco; exact address shown after registration	Inngest with Flox, Nebius Token Factory, and MiniMax; lightning talks built around shipped systems, failures, and lessons; 166 going	Approval required; price not listed 12
13	Sat, Aug 29, 9:00 AM-Sun, Aug 30, 7:00 PM	Himalaya Robotics Hack · extreme-condition robotics	San Francisco; exact address not published	Iterate and Robot Everest; onboard autonomy, ice and mixed-terrain locomotion, hardware resilience, and satellite communication; Himalayan expedition, hardware, cash, and credit prizes	Ticket selection shown; price and exact venue not published 13
14	Thu, Aug 27, 5:30-8:30 PM	Who Will Own the Intelligence Layer? · open models and inference economics	San Francisco; exact venue shown after registration	OpenRouter; fireside with Vincent Weisser of Prime Intellect and Jake Randall of OpenRouter; founders, researchers, engineers, and technical leaders	Approval required; price not listed 14
15	Thu, Aug 27, 5:00-8:00 PM	Personalized Health Showcase w/ YC S26 · healthtech and AI-enabled care	San Francisco; exact location shown after registration	Y Combinator; live demos and founder Q&A from RonanRx, Illume Labs, GutGutGoose, Gamgee, and Locale	Approval required; price not listed 15
16	Sat, Aug 29, 9:00 AM-6:00 PM	Agent Harness Hackathon · agents, MCP, and sandboxed execution	Bright Data, 625 2nd St, San Francisco	Bright Data and WeMakeDevs; agent harness build, sandboxed execution, human approvals, and an NVIDIA DGX Spark prize; 500 going	Sold out; no longer taking registrations 16

Monday, August 24

vLLM x NVIDIA Dynamo Meetup

This is the week's clearest choice for people who care about the machinery behind model serving. The program pairs a vLLM talk with a Dynamo talk, then leaves two hours for engineers, researchers, and builders to compare notes over food and drinks. The stated topics include inference optimization, distributed serving, and the practical work of running these systems in production. The event page shows 744 going, but entry still requires host approval. Saluhall SF is at 945 Market St Fl 2. Register on Luma. 1

Tuesday, August 25

Physical AI: What's Working (and What Still Breaks)

Rally SF is putting three physical-AI problems in the same room: Niantic Spatial's real-to-sim work, Coco Robotics' sidewalk delivery hardware, and RLWRLD's dexterity model. Robots are available at demo stations from 5:30 PM. Talks begin at 6:00, followed by a panel and audience Q&A at 6:35. The event closes at 7:45 even though the listing runs to 8:00.

The practical constraint matters. Niantic Spatial's security team requires an approved guest list, the room holds about 75 people, and registration asks you to explain what you are building or why you are curious. Bring the same photo ID used in registration to 1 Ferry Building, Suite 200. Request a spot. 2

Trust3 AI + Snowflake

Trust3 AI is framing agent security as an operating problem: discover the agents running in an organization, observe their prompts and tool calls, and control the actions they take against data. Paresh Bhaya, co-founder of Natoma, now Snowflake, is scheduled to discuss the MCP gateway that governs how agents connect and act. Trust3 AI's Anish Menon and Mark Castillo follow with an AgentDOS walkthrough and a live demo. The audience is data and AI practitioners, and the venue is the Snowflake office at 135 Constitution Dr, Menlo Park. Registration requires approval. Register on Luma. 9

San Francisco n8n Community Meetup

n8n's founder and CEO Jan Oberhauser is the reason this recurring meetup rises above a general automation mixer. Jan will take part in a fireside chat and Q&A. Kaila Love will also demo n8n's MCP with tools such as Lovable and Claude Code, while n8n's Head of Product David Roberts and Community Manager Jacq Vaca join the room. The event page shows 284 going and gives the venue as Digital Jungle SF, 972 Mission St. Register on Luma. 8

{AI} in Production

Inngest's format is aimed at builders who have moved past the demo: short talks from teams shipping AI, followed by questions and conversation. The listed presenters include James Bayer of Flox, Mitchell Alderson of Inngest, and Sujee Maniyam of Nebius. The page calls out real lessons learned, including what worked and what failed, rather than product pitches. The room is approval-only and the address is shown after registration. Request a spot. 12

Wednesday, August 26

TailscaleUp

TailscaleUp is the day's full conference option. The program covers secure connectivity for engineering, security, and IT leaders, with speakers from GitHub, AWS, Grafana Labs, and other companies. The Luma page directs attendees to Tailscale's own registration flow and lists the code BONDAI25 for 25% off tickets. The conference runs at SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin St, from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Register through the event page. 4

AI, X-rays, and Manufacturing

Lumafield's open house is a useful bridge between AI software and physical production. A live recording of the Go/No-Go podcast brings together Matter Venture Partners partner Haomiao Huang, Lumafield CEO Eduardo Torrealba, and Tacta Systems CEO Vikram Pavate. The discussion covers machines that see inside manufactured objects, robotic touch, and the automation of manufacturing knowledge. Lumafield will also demonstrate industrial X-ray CT systems at 665 3rd St Ste 100. Registration requires approval, and the page shows 208 going. Request a spot. 11

Durable AI: Agent Context Is Everything

Temporal Community is keeping the agenda narrow: how production agents retrieve the right context at the right time. The talks cover agent sessions, real-time context, feature infrastructure, and graph-based retrieval. Named speakers include Bhavani Kalisetty of Retriever AI, Lizzie Siegle of Entire, Rishi Kundargi of Chalk, Nyah Macklin of Neo4j, and Jakob Prince of PromptQL. The page shows 243 going; registration is approval-only and the exact San Francisco address appears after registration. Register on Luma. 3

Bay Area Frontier Research Club #19

The Frontier Syndicate is bringing two UC Berkeley researchers to present Measuring Agents in Production. Melissa Pan and Negar Arabzadeh will discuss how deployed agents are built, evaluated, and operated across application domains. The second half turns to self-improvement: Vignesh Baskaran will examine what happens when an automated loop optimizes against a proxy that has drifted away from the outcome people actually want. The format is a short presentation followed by a long discussion, and the paper is circulated in advance. The event is approval-only in Menlo Park. Request a spot. 6

Up After Dark

TailscaleUp's official afterparty is the week's clearest themed tech-social option, with DJs and house music at The Hibernia from 7:00 to 11:30 PM. The public detail page says the party is sold out to non-conference attendees. Conference attendees receive guaranteed admission, and the page lists the venue as The Hibernia, 1 Jones St. Check the event page for the conference route. 17

Thursday, August 27

Step SF 2026

Step SF is the broadest founder-and-capital room in the shortlist. The listing names founders, investors, builders, and operators, with an expo floor, live product showcases, one-to-one founder–VC meetings, mentorship roundtables, and a pitch stage. The Midway is at 900 Marin St in Dogpatch. The event header lists 9:00 AM-8:00 PM, while the day-by-day program describes the core conference as 9:00 AM-5:30 PM; use the registration page for the current schedule and ticket type. Get tickets on Luma. 7

Personalized Health Showcase w/ YC S26

Y Combinator's showcase has a clear demo-and-founder format. RonanRx, Illume Labs, GutGutGoose, Gamgee, and Locale are scheduled to present products spanning personalized GLP-1 treatment, AI health data, microbiome-based probiotics, canine cancer vaccines, and high-protein meals. The agenda starts with a founder panel and Q&A, then moves to demos and one-to-one conversations. The exact San Francisco location is shown after registration, which requires approval. Request a spot. 15

Who Will Own the Intelligence Layer?

OpenRouter is hosting a fireside with Vincent Weisser, CEO and co-founder of Prime Intellect, and Jake Randall, SVP of GTM at OpenRouter. Their stated question is whether AI consolidates around a few frontier labs or becomes an open, competitive commodity. The conversation covers open models, distributed training, compute, model routing, and the economics of choosing among many providers. The event is approval-only at an undisclosed San Francisco venue near the Embarcadero. Request a spot. 14

Friday, August 28

Better Days: A Hackathon

ClickHouse is running a full-day build around problems people face in ordinary life: reading support, loneliness, climate action, and an open track. Teams can work solo or in groups of up to five, with ClickHouse engineers at an expert bar. The published prizes include $1,000 cash plus $500 in ClickHouse Cloud credits for the grand-prize winner, and the page names judges from HoneyHive, Requesty, Oracle, DoorDash, Google Labs, Meta, and other companies.

The event is already full and the public page offers a waitlist. The venue is 18+ at KOHO Co-Creative Hub, 1675 Post St 2nd Floor. Join the waitlist. 10

Open Source AI Summit SF

BuildPlanet's 10th San Francisco summit is a half-day technical seminar co-hosted with NEAR AI. Confirmed speakers include Matt White, former Global CTO of AI at the Linux Foundation and former CTO of PyTorch; Illia Polosukhin, founder of NEAR Protocol and NEAR AI; Dima Dzhulgakov, co-founder of Fireworks AI; Lukasz Kaiser, a former OpenAI technical staff member; and Bowen Wang of River AI. The page shows 382 going, but the exact address appears after approval. Request a spot. 5

Saturday, August 29 through Sunday, August 30

Himalaya Robotics Hack

Iterate and Robot Everest are asking teams to build for a specific environment: the Himalaya. The brief includes inference on Jetson Thor without a cloud connection, footing on ice and mixed terrain, hardware that survives altitude and extreme weather, and satellite telemetry. The prizes include a Himalayan field expedition, robotic arms, cash, and credits. The public page gives the city but leaves the exact venue and price undisclosed. View ticket options on Luma. 13

Agent Harness Hackathon

Bright Data and WeMakeDevs are offering a concrete agent-engineering brief: build an agent that can reach tools, run code in an isolated sandbox, preserve sessions, delegate to subagents, and pause for human approval. The prize for best use of the harness is an NVIDIA DGX Spark personal AI supercomputer valued at $5,000. The venue is Bright Data, 625 2nd St.

The event is already sold out and the page says it is no longer taking registrations. Keep it as a signal of the kind of build format attracting the strongest demand this week, rather than as an event you can currently enter. Check the event page. 16

How to choose

For one serious infrastructure night: choose vLLM x NVIDIA Dynamo for inference and distributed serving, or Durable AI for context retrieval and production-agent infrastructure.
For robots you can actually see: Physical AI is the strongest Tuesday choice. The robots are on the floor before the talks, but the room is small and approval is manual.
For a full conference: TailscaleUp is the focused engineering-and-security option. Step SF is the broader founder, investor, and startup showcase.
For research rather than networking: choose the Frontier Research Club if you want a paper and a long discussion. Open Source AI Summit SF is the wider open-source AI program.
For production lessons: {AI} in Production is a compact builder room. n8n is the better choice if you want workflow automation, MCP, and a founder-led community session.
For a hands-on build: Himalaya Robotics Hack is still the unusual open weekend option. Better Days and Agent Harness are full, so their waitlist or closed status matters before you travel.
For a founder-and-healthtech room: YC's Personalized Health Showcase has named companies, live demos, and founder Q&A, with approval required.
For an AI-themed social option: Up After Dark has the strongest production value, but access currently depends on attending TailscaleUp because the public afterparty is sold out.

Source boundaries

This edition uses first-party Luma event pages for the listed entries. No qualifying Eventbrite, Partiful, or standalone Cerebral Valley detail page with complete date, location, and registration information was accessible for August 24-30, and the official SF Tech Week calendar places San Francisco Tech Week on October 5-11, 2026, outside this issue. 18

Recheck each registration page before leaving. Approval-only rooms, waitlists, sold-out events, hidden addresses, external ticket flows, and the Step SF schedule discrepancy can change during the week.

References

1
vLLM x NVIDIA Dynamo Meetuplu.ma
2
Physical AI: What's Working (and What Still Breaks)lu.ma
3
Durable AI: Agent Context Is Everythinglu.ma
4
TailscaleUplu.ma
5
Open Source AI Summit SFlu.ma
6
Bay Area Frontier Research Club #19lu.ma
7
Step SF 2026lu.ma
8
San Francisco n8n Community Meetuplu.ma
9
Trust3 AI + Snowflakelu.ma
10
Better Days: A Hackathonlu.ma
11
AI, X-rays, and Manufacturinglu.ma
12
{AI} in Productionlu.ma
13
Himalaya Robotics Hacklu.ma
14
Who Will Own the Intelligence Layer?lu.ma
15
Personalized Health Showcase w/ YC S26lu.ma
16
Agent Harness Hackathonlu.ma
17
Up After Darklu.ma
18
Tech Week 2026 calendartech-week.com