ENGINEERING THE AI EXPERIENCE
How NEWNOW brought NVIDIA AI Day Ho Chi Minh City to life.
“AI is moving fast — and Vietnam is moving with it.”
On September 23, 2025, NVIDIA AI Day Ho Chi Minh City took place at the Sheraton Saigon Grand Opera Hotel, bringing together more than 700 attendees to explore the latest developments in Sovereign AI, Physical AI, Agentic AI, Generative AI and AI Factories.
The event arrived at a significant moment for Vietnam's growing AI ecosystem. As of September 23, 2025, NVIDIA reported 61,000+ Vietnam-based developers using the NVIDIA platform, 180+ Vietnam-based NVIDIA Inception startups, 21,000+ people enrolled in NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute programs, 39 Vietnam-based enterprises and 9 independent software vendors working with NVIDIA.NVIDIA Blog — What's Next for Vietnam AI
Against this backdrop, NVIDIA AI Day was designed to bring different parts of the AI ecosystem into one conversation — from developers, researchers and startups to enterprises, investors and partners.
For NEWNOW, the opportunity was to turn that ambition into a physical experience: one that could bring together multiple audiences, multiple content formats and multiple layers of engagement while meeting the standards of a global technology brand.
SHAPING THE EXPERIENCE
Turning a complex technology narrative into a cohesive physical experience.
At the heart of NVIDIA AI Day was the conversation around Sovereign AI — exploring how countries can develop AI capabilities that respond to their own language, culture, data, infrastructure and economic needs. NVIDIA identified an AI ecosystem of developers, scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, enterprises and government organizations as one of the key components required for sovereign AI to succeed.
Around this central theme, the event expanded into a broad spectrum of technologies, including Physical AI, Agentic AI, Generative AI and AI Factory infrastructure.For NEWNOW, the challenge was to turn this breadth of technical content into one coherent event experience.
The experience was shaped around the way audiences would move through the day — from the main conference and expert discussions to more specialized sessions, hands-on learning and ecosystem activities. Instead of treating each element as an isolated touchpoint, NEWNOW brought the different layers together as one connected journey.
The audience itself was equally diverse. Developers were looking for technical depth. Enterprises were exploring practical applications. Startups were looking for connections and opportunities. Meanwhile, business and technology leaders were looking at the broader implications of AI for Vietnam. NEWNOW therefore approached the experience as a system — creating an environment that could accommodate different needs while maintaining a consistent, technology-driven expression aligned with NVIDIA.
The result was an event environment where technology was not simply presented from a stage, but became part of the overall experience surrounding the audience.
ORCHESTRATING THE PROGRAM
Creating multiple entry points into the world of AI.
NVIDIA AI Day went far beyond a conventional keynote-driven conference.
The official program ran from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with sessions exploring AI Factories, Agentic AI and Sovereign AI across different sectors. The event also featured 15 breakout sections focused on Physical AI, Agentic AI, Generative AI and AI Factories, giving attendees opportunities to explore more specialized areas of AI.
Beyond the conference sessions, NVIDIA introduced two two-hour hands-on Deep Learning Institute training labs. One focused on the fundamentals of Agentic AI, while the other explored Generative AI model compression through distillation, quantization and pruning. This created a richer progression throughout the event: from understanding the broader direction of AI, to diving deeper into technical subjects, and finally getting hands-on with the technologies themselves.
NEWNOW brought these different formats together into a cohesive event flow, allowing the experience to move naturally between high-level vision, technical knowledge and practical engagement. Rather than creating a conference that only communicated what AI could become, the experience gave different audiences multiple ways to understand, explore and participate in the conversation.
ACTIVATING THE ECOSYSTEM
Creating space for the people building what comes next.
Technology was only one part of NVIDIA AI Day. The other was the ecosystem growing around it.
The event included dedicated meetups for 10 startups, NVIDIA Partner Network members and NVIDIA Cloud Partners, extending the experience beyond the main conference sessions. One of the most distinctive elements was the Inception Pitch and Enterprise Reverse Pitch, designed to connect emerging AI companies with investors, partners and enterprises.
According to NVIDIA's official event page, 10 AI startups from Southeast Asia participated in the Inception Pitch, presenting their innovations to investors, partners and venture capital firms. The event page identifies the participating startups as 6Estates, Ailytics, Akila3D, Botnoi, Eklipse.gg, FinHay, GraphicsMiner, N2TP, Nanyang Biologics and Phenikaa-X Robotics.
The Enterprise Reverse Pitch approached the conversation from the other direction. Representatives from Coca-Cola Beverages Vietnam, OCB, Tasco, FPT Smart Cloud and Tin Men Capital presented real-world AI use cases and invited collaboration from the startup ecosystem. The event also brought together venture capital firms including AppWorks, Hive Ventures, Square Peg, Taiwania Capital, Tin Men Capital and Vertex Ventures.
NEWNOW integrated these different communities into the wider event experience, helping transform the conference from a stage-centered gathering into a space where interaction and connection could happen naturally.
Here, knowledge could lead to a conversation, a conversation could lead to a connection, and a connection could lead to an opportunity.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Turning multiple moving parts into one seamless live experience.
The complexity of NVIDIA AI Day came not only from its scale, but from the number of experiences happening within the same event ecosystem.
A single day brought together the main conference, 15 breakout sections, hands-on training labs, startup pitching, enterprise conversations, partner activities, cloud partner engagement and networking.The official program also included an Inception Showcase, an Ask the Expert opportunity with NVIDIA engineers, and a dedicated NVIDIA Cloud Partner Talk, adding further layers to the attendee experience.
For NEWNOW, bringing these moving parts together meant creating an event environment where different audiences, formats and conversations could coexist without losing their connection to the overall experience.
The role went beyond keeping a conference on schedule. It was about connecting the physical environment, program flow and audience experience into one cohesive whole — from the main stage to the smaller spaces where more focused conversations could take place. NEWNOW brought together event organization, experience and production to support the delivery of this multi-layered conference, translating a complex program into an experience that felt intuitive from the audience's perspective.
The result was a live experience capable of moving between strategic conversations, technical learning, startup discovery and ecosystem networking — while maintaining the precision and professionalism expected of a global technology brand.
MORE THAN A CONFERENCE
NVIDIA AI Day Ho Chi Minh City welcomed more than 700 attendees and brought together technical sessions, expert discussions, hands-on learning and ecosystem activities in one event.But its significance went beyond attendance.
The event reflected the rapid development of Vietnam's AI landscape. NVIDIA highlighted local examples including GreenNode's work on Vietnamese large language models, FPT's domestic AI factory, VNPT AI's AI applications and Zalo's sovereign LLM development. NVIDIA also noted that Vietnam aims to build three national data centers and become one of the top four leading AI nations in Southeast Asia by 2030. NVIDIA Blog — What's Next for Vietnam AI
This made NVIDIA AI Day more than a showcase of global technology. It became a meeting point between global AI innovation and Vietnam's emerging capabilities.
For NEWNOW, the project was an opportunity to create the environment around that conversation — bringing together content, people, technology and experience to make a highly technical subject more tangible, engaging and connected.
From shaping the experience and orchestrating the program to activating the ecosystem and bringing the production together, NEWNOW helped turn NVIDIA AI Day HCMC into a platform where the people building the future of AI could learn, connect and move ideas forward together.
PROJECT INFOMATION
Client
NVIDIA
Project
NVIDIA AI Day Ho Chi Minh City
Date
Venue
Sheraton Saigon Grand Opera Hotel, Ho Chi Minh City
NEWNOW Role
Event Organization · Experience · Production
Scope of Work
Event Planning & Management · Event Experience · On-site Production · Program Coordination · Event Operations
Event Scale
700+ attendees · 15 breakout sections · 10 AI startups
