SF Bay Area Tech Events: May 19–20
A curated morning digest of 15 tech and AI events happening tonight (Tuesday, May 19) and tomorrow (Wednesday, May 20) across SF, San Jose, Mountain View, and Palo Alto. Tonight highlights: Agentic AI Founders' Night-Out (YC W26 speaker + ByteDance, 3rd edition), WorkOS Applied AI Showcase (3 live internal tool demos), and a Neo4j context-graph hack day at the AWS Builder Loft. Tomorrow: invite-only Agents & Bagels breakfast and an AI Agents Full-Stack Demo Night from Convex + PostHog + AgentMail (YC S25).
Fifteen events across San Francisco, San Jose, Mountain View, and Palo Alto — the two-day window is heavy on agentic AI infrastructure, with a founder dinner that goes beyond the usual pitch format, three live demo nights, two invite-only gatherings, and a few off-the-beaten-track picks for when you need a change of scenery.
Coverage window: tonight (Tuesday, May 19) and tomorrow (Wednesday, May 20).
Tonight — Tuesday, May 19
Agentic AI Founders' Night-Out — Beyond Copilots
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | 465 California St, 7th floor, San Francisco, CA 94104 |
| Host | UpScaleX (SF/Palo Alto seed fund) |
| Category | Founder dinner |
| Access | RSVP required — limited capacity |
| Register | lu.ma/hb9qgvun |
The third edition of UpScaleX's curated dinner on agent orchestration. The format runs a welcome reception at 5:00 PM, a fireside chat at 5:40 PM, then dinner and open networking from 6:15 PM. 1
The two confirmed speakers give this one more than the usual founder-mixer pedigree. Neel Sharma, co-founder of Sentrial (YC W26), is speaking to production AI agent failures — what breaks when agents leave the demo environment. Gary Qi, Developer Operations Manager at TRAE (ByteDance's AI-native developer platform), covers the developer ecosystem side. Mark Liu from UpScaleX moderates. 1
The venue — a 1904 landmark building at 465 California St — is a deliberate choice for a dinner that trades polished decks for honest operator talk.
WorkOS Applied AI Showcase
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | WorkOS, 660 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94104 |
| Host | WorkOS Applied AI team, Michael Grinich |
| Category | AI demo day |
| Access | Free, RSVP required |
| Register | lu.ma/aai-showcase |
Three internal AI tools demoed live at WorkOS's downtown SF office: the Autonomous Agent Harness CLI (takes GitHub issues all the way to merged PRs and learns from corrections), a GTM Intelligence Platform (enriches and scores accounts on demand via Slack, dashboards, and MCP), and Horizon — an agentic coding platform running in secure cloud sandboxes that orchestrates across Linear, GitHub, and Slack. 2
WorkOS (the enterprise SSO/auth platform behind many SaaS apps' "Sign in with Google/GitHub" flows) built all three tools for internal use and is shipping a lessons-learned session alongside the demos. Michael Grinich, WorkOS's founder and CEO, is hosting. 2
Hack Day: Context Graphs for Multi-Agent AI
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 3:00 PM – 8:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | AWS Builder Loft, 525 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94105 |
| Host | Neo4j (Nyah Macklin, Jeremy Adams, William Lyon, Adam Chan) |
| Category | Hackathon |
| Access | RSVP required |
| Register | lu.ma/bchosur4 |
Neo4j's focused hack day on context graphs for multi-agent systems. The theme is directly applicable to production agent work: how do you give agents the right memory and context retrieval without blowing up latency or losing coherence across turns? The AWS Builder Loft is a practical venue with solid Wi-Fi and table space, which matters for a hands-on build event. 3 Neo4j is a publicly traded graph database company. Roughly 55 attendees registered as of the research pull. 4
Note: this event overlaps with the WorkOS showcase time window. Plan accordingly if you want both.
Arm | NVIDIA Developer Meetup
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | San Jose, CA (register to see exact address) |
| Host | Arm and NVIDIA (co-sponsored) |
| Category | Technical talk / panel |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — limited space |
| Register | lu.ma/ArmNV |
A co-sponsored evening from Arm and NVIDIA with a 6:30 PM panel titled "Stop leaving performance on the table." Panelists Prashant Sharma and Laurence Moroney (Arm) and Dr. Mitesh Patel (NVIDIA) will work through the architectural pitfalls that increase latency and drain battery life in AI workloads — specifically, quantization techniques, optimization strategies, and edge vs. cloud AI tradeoffs. 5 There's a raffle during the event. Engineers working on on-device or production inference should find the content directly applicable. Location is in San Jose; register for the exact address.
Break My AI (May edition)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM PDT (check-in 5:00–5:30 PM, live testing 5:30–7:00 PM) |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (register to see exact address) |
| Host | Novita AI (Johnny Chin) |
| Category | AI demo day — live user testing format |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — bring a laptop |
| Register | lu.ma/xtbpdx4q |
No decks, no slides — builders bring working products and real users attempt to break them. The monthly series, hosted by Novita AI (an AI infrastructure company), operates on a simple premise: if your product only works when you're the one running it, it's not a product yet. 6
Both sides of the room need a laptop: builders to run their tools, testers to attempt the breaking. Useful for anyone at the "I think this works" stage of a product.
SF Voice AI Meetup: Build a Voice Agent in 1 Hour
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (register to see exact address) |
| Host | AssemblyAI and Sahar Mor (Bond AI) |
| Category | Workshop |
| Access | RSVP required |
| Register | lu.ma/v2bksbb8 |
A hands-on session from AssemblyAI (the speech AI API company, $150M+ funded) walking through how to build a voice AI agent in an hour. 3 If you've been meaning to add voice interaction to an agent but haven't started, this is a structured on-ramp. Note this overlaps with Break My AI — both are at 5 PM.
Zen & AI — An Evening with Oliver Zahn
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM PDT |
| Venue | Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center, 1972 Rock St, Mountain View, CA 94043 |
| Host | Zen Work Lab |
| Category | Talk / community |
| Access | Free, RSVP required |
| Register | lu.ma/f0nl3h4p |
Oliver Zahn — former UC Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics research lead, former Google Head of Data Science, now building an AI company, lifelong Zen practitioner — speaks at Kannon Do about how his Zen practice shaped his approach to AI. The format is 10 minutes of silent meditation, a guest talk, group discussion, and tea. 7
Kannon Do has a quiet reputation in Silicon Valley; the center's event page notes it has hosted some of the Valley's most recognizable names, including Steve Jobs. 7 About 30 people were registered at the time of the research pull. 7 Decompression from an afternoon of agentic AI demos, if you need it.
AI Governance After Hours
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT (brief remarks 6:30 PM, open networking after) |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (register to see exact address) |
| Host | AI Realized (Christina Ellwood) and AiGovOps Foundation (Ken Johnston) |
| Category | Networking mixer |
| Access | Free, no ticket — no-host bar (cover your own drinks) |
| Register | lu.ma/sfaigovops |
No panels, no pitch decks, no slides. The first SF event for Seattle-based AiGovOps Foundation — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that ships AI policy frameworks as executable, auditable code rather than PDF documents. The target room: CTOs, CIOs, AI/ML leads, compliance leaders, founders, and investors who are working on the gap between how fast AI ships and how slowly governance keeps up. 8
Ken Johnston brings 20+ years of cloud/ML/ethical AI engineering executive experience to the format; Christina Ellwood is a Silicon Valley tech executive and startup advisor. If AI governance is part of your job, this is the first chance to find a West Coast community around it.
Tomorrow — Wednesday, May 20
Agents & Bagels #2 — weekly breakfast for agent builders
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PDT |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (location shared with approved attendees) |
| Host | Scalekit |
| Category | Networking — breakfast |
| Access | Invite-only, limited seats — apply via lu.ma |
| Register | lu.ma/bgrvu1wb |
The second weekly edition of Scalekit's invite-only breakfast for people shipping production AI agents. Past attendees have come from OpenAI, NVIDIA, Meta, and Walmart, plus YC founders. No pitches, no panels — just a curated room of agent builders talking about the things that come up three months into a production deployment. 9
Scalekit builds the connectivity layer between AI agents and enterprise apps. Each week the event partners with one AI company building for agent builders. Apply via lu.ma; attendance is subject to approval.
AI Agents + Full-Stack Demo Night with Convex, PostHog & AgentMail
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM PDT |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (register to see exact address) |
| Host | Convex, PostHog, AgentMail (YC S25), executor.sh |
| Category | AI demo day |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — food and drinks provided |
| Register | lu.ma/mayconvexagentsdemonight |
Four demos from the full-stack agent tooling layer, running 15 minutes each with Q&A:
- Richard Solomou (PostHog) — new Convex + PostHog integration with first-party PostHog Logs support
- Nipunn Koorapati (Convex) — backend infrastructure for agents
- Rhys Sullivan — executor.sh, the execution layer for AI agents
- Joseph M (AgentMail, YC S25) — email inbox API for AI agents
Schedule: 5:30 PM check-in, 6:10 PM welcome, 6:15 PM demos start, 7:30 PM open networking with food and drinks. Convex (YC-backed backend platform) and PostHog (YC W20, open-source product analytics) both have large engineering communities in SF; this is a practical session for full-stack engineers building or evaluating agent infrastructure.
Building data infrastructure for AI agents
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM PDT (networking 5:30–6:00 PM, talks 6:00–7:30 PM) |
| Venue | Trellis Coworking & Events, San Francisco |
| Host | Savannah (via lu.ma) |
| Category | Technical talks |
| Access | RSVP required |
| Register | lu.ma/5zskcl5y |
Three speakers focused on the data layer underneath AI agents:
- Jaz Ku (PuppyGraph, a graph query layer that lets agents run Cypher-style queries on relational data) — "When Text-to-SQL meets graphs: designing data infrastructure for agents"
- Linghua Jin (CocoIndex, an incremental data indexing framework for AI context) — "Incremental context engine for long-horizon agents"
- VeloDB (the company behind Apache Doris, an open-source real-time analytical database) — Apache Doris as a unified engine for the agentic stack
Drinks and hors d'oeuvres during the 5:30 PM networking block before the talks. If your agent stack has latency or staleness problems in its data retrieval layer, the content here is more applied than the typical developer meetup.
Note: this overlaps with the Convex / PostHog demo night. Both start at 5:30 PM.
CMO Dinner + Mixer: marketing leaders in the agentic era (Palo Alto)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | Dinner 5:00–7:30 PM PDT / Mixer 7:30–9:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | Palo Alto, CA (register to see exact address) |
| Host | The CMO Community (Murray, Fangfang Tan), AgentWeb, Open Future Forum |
| Category | Executive dinner + standing mixer |
| Access | Invite-only — approval required for both events |
| Register | Dinner: lu.ma/zs29d7pl / Mixer: lu.ma/628z79ci |
Two back-to-back events from The CMO Community running the same evening in Palo Alto: an invitation-only executive dinner on "The New CMO Mandate: Marketing in the Agentic Era" from 5:00–7:30 PM, followed by a standing mixer for the same audience from 7:30–9:00 PM. 1213
Attendance at both is subject to approval. The room is intended for CMOs and VP-level marketing leaders at funded or growth-stage companies navigating the transition to agentic marketing workflows. If that description matches, apply to both — the mixer is where the actual conversation happens.
Scrappy (AI) Founders Go Karting
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:00 PM – 8:30 PM PDT |
| Venue | South San Francisco, CA (register to see exact address) |
| Host | Denis Belyavsky / 12 Scrappy Founders community |
| Category | Social — outdoor event |
| Access | Paid, RSVP required — nearly sold out (4 spots remaining at research time) |
| Register | lu.ma/r68epw5k |
Go-kart racing with after-race dinner, organized by Denis Belyavsky's 12 Scrappy Founders community — a recurring group for pre-seed+ founders with early users or revenue that runs hikes, camps, dirt-biking, pickleball, and poker nights alongside the startup track. 14 Only 4 spots were available as of the research pull; check the registration page for current availability.
Women Who Build: San Francisco craft night
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM PDT |
| Venue | 214 Grant Ave, San Francisco (Anything office) |
| Host | Anything (AI product engineer platform) and Casey's Craft Club |
| Category | Community — social |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — limited spots |
| Register | lu.ma/2tfrpcyt |
Claw clip bedazzling night for female builders, engineers, and women working in tech and AI. All supplies provided (beads, rhinestones, embellishments, clips); no experience needed. 15
Anything is an AI product engineer platform that generates production-ready mobile apps, web apps, and backend infrastructure from plain English. Casey's Craft Club runs monthly crafting events around SF and the Bay Area. The event is at Anything's office at 214 Grant Ave.
Quick-reference table
| Event | Day | Time (PDT) | Location | Access | Register |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agentic AI Founders' Night-Out | Tue 5/19 | 5:00–8:00 PM | 465 California St, 7F, SF | RSVP (limited) | lu.ma/hb9qgvun |
| WorkOS Applied AI Showcase | Tue 5/19 | 5:30–8:00 PM | 660 Market St, SF | Free RSVP | lu.ma/aai-showcase |
| Hack Day: Context Graphs | Tue 5/19 | 3:00–8:00 PM | AWS Builder Loft, 525 Market St, SF | RSVP | lu.ma/bchosur4 |
| Arm | NVIDIA Developer Meetup | Tue 5/19 | 6:00–8:00 PM | San Jose (see lu.ma) | Free RSVP (limited) | lu.ma/ArmNV |
| Break My AI (May) | Tue 5/19 | 5:00–7:00 PM | SF (see lu.ma) | Free RSVP | lu.ma/xtbpdx4q |
| SF Voice AI Meetup | Tue 5/19 | 5:00–8:00 PM | SF (see lu.ma) | RSVP | lu.ma/v2bksbb8 |
| Zen & AI — Oliver Zahn | Tue 5/19 | 6:30–8:30 PM | Kannon Do, 1972 Rock St, Mountain View | Free RSVP | lu.ma/f0nl3h4p |
| AI Governance After Hours | Tue 5/19 | 6:00–9:00 PM | SF (see lu.ma) | Free, no ticket | lu.ma/sfaigovops |
| Agents & Bagels #2 | Wed 5/20 | 8:00–9:00 AM | SF (approved attendees only) | Invite-only | lu.ma/bgrvu1wb |
| AI Agents + Full-Stack Demo Night | Wed 5/20 | 5:30–8:30 PM | SF (see lu.ma) | Free RSVP | lu.ma/mayconvexagentsdemonight |
| Building Data Infrastructure for Agents | Wed 5/20 | 5:30–7:30 PM | Trellis Coworking, SF | RSVP | lu.ma/5zskcl5y |
| CMO Dinner — Palo Alto | Wed 5/20 | 5:00–7:30 PM | Palo Alto (see lu.ma) | Invite-only | lu.ma/zs29d7pl |
| CMO Mixer — Palo Alto | Wed 5/20 | 7:30–9:00 PM | Palo Alto (see lu.ma) | Invite-only | lu.ma/628z79ci |
| Scrappy Founders Go Karting | Wed 5/20 | 5:00–8:30 PM | South SF (see lu.ma) | Paid — nearly sold out | lu.ma/r68epw5k |
| Women Who Build: Craft Night | Wed 5/20 | 6:30–8:30 PM | 214 Grant Ave, SF | Free RSVP (limited) | lu.ma/2tfrpcyt |
Coverage window: tonight (Tuesday May 19) and tomorrow (Wednesday May 20, 2026). Verify times, addresses, and registration status on each event's page before heading out.
References
- 1
- 2
- 3Bay Area Events Week of May 18 – Bay Area Founders Club
bayareafoundersclub.substack.com
- 4AI Events Calendar – Mimetic
trymimetic.com
- 5
- 6
- 7Zen & AI – lu.ma
lu.ma
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12CMO Dinner – lu.ma
lu.ma
- 13CMO Mixer – lu.ma
lu.ma
- 14
- 15
This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.