Hello everyone! AITX Team here with more updates this week.
If you’re new here, welcome! 👋 At AITX, we aim to:
Connect you with like-minded peers passionate about AI.
Provide a space for sharing ideas and receiving feedback on AI projects you’re building.
Share helpful tools and invaluable resources.
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Before we jump into the regular news, a few housekeeping items:
Upcoming AITX Events:
Hack AI: Thursday, October 16, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM CST | sing up here!
To stay in the loop on all our monthly meetups and other community organized events, subscribe to our AITX calendar here.
Check out our Community Directory:
Where you can fill out your profile and find other members of the AITX community. If you haven’t filled out your profile yet, please follow the link HERE and submit your information.
Episode 4 is Live
This episode features Rick Boone, an accomplished engineering executive, angel investor, and current venture partner at Antler.
We trace Rick’s journey through technology, from growing up immersed in giant mainframes in New York City to engineering leadership roles at some of the biggest names in tech, like Facebook, Uber, and Carta.
Austin Tech Week AI Hackathon by NVIDIA & AITX Community
When: Friday, October 24 5:00 PM - Oct 25, 8:00 PM CST
Where: Location provided upon approval
Join AITX Community for a weekend of heads down building and collaboration with some of the top developers in Austin's growing engineering community.
NVIDIA is a global leader in accelerated computing, known for pioneering the development of high-performance GPUs that drive advances in AI, graphics, and data science. We'll be spotlighting NVIDIA’s Nemotron family of open models throughout the weekend. Hackers get quickstarts, office hours, and a dedicated Nemotron Track, with prizes for the best use of Nemotron.
It all culminates in Hack Fair - a science fair-style showcase where participants will demo their submission to the community, including local investors, operators, and potential collaborators, for a chance to win the Community Choice Prize.
👇 Register Here 👇
A message from NVIDIA:
NVIDIA is thrilled to partner with the AITX Developer Community during Austin Tech Week! We're bringing updates about our latest Nemotron models and some awesome prizes for the most creative and novel submissions in the competition. Dive into the challenge by building with our portfolio of models, and you are included in a prize track for best use of Nemotron Nano 2 9B, a powerful small language model with reasoning capabilities built on the hybrid Mamba-Transformer architecture.
To give your project a head start, we'll have NVIDIA Launchables and Blueprints ready for you to use so you can focus on building something truly innovative. NVIDIA team members will be there to support the builders. Show off your skills and you could even get your project featured on NVIDIA social media and Developer Showcase. We can’t wait to see what you build!
In this week’s edition you’re getting:
5 Upcoming Events
3 AI Community Stories
1 Community Highlight
So let’s jump in!
UPCOMING EVENTS
When: Tuesday, October 7 | 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST
Where: Capital Factory, Voltron Room (1st floor) 701 Brazos Street · Austin, TX
What: Austin Deep Learning Journal Club is group for committed machine learning practitioners and researchers alike. The group typically meets every first Tuesday of each month to discuss research publications.
When: Wednesday, October 1 | 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM CST
Where: Capital Factory 701 Brazos St, 16th Floor · Austin, TX
What: Join us for deep dive tech talks on AI, GenAI, LLMs and Agents, hands-on experiences on code labs, workshops, and networking with speakers and fellow developers.
When: Wednesday, October 1 | 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST
Where: In Person ACC - RGC 3000 1218 West Avenue · Austin, TX
What: The AI Middleware Users Group believes in “Learning in the Open.” Together we explore LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, and the wider AI stack—sharing demos, pitfalls, and wins so everyone levels up.
When: Tuesday, October 7 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM CST
Where: CGCS, ACC Rio Campus Build #3000 1218 West Ave Bldg #3000 · Austin, TX
What: Join us for an exciting evening of cutting-edge talks at the intersection of AI, HPC, and specialized architectures. This joint event between ACM Austin and IEEE Young Professionals will feature expert speakers, networking, and community collaboration.
When: Thursday, October 16 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM CST
Where: Capital Factory 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX
What: This week we are collaborating with the great team at Capital Factory! They have been providing us the space to host our events, and host their own monthly "Member Salon." This month, we are collaborating, and the Capital Factory team will be providing food, bartending, and good vibes to make this evening incredible!
COMMUNITY STORIES
Sam Altman stood in Abilene, TX, unveiling OpenAI’s Stargate project, a data center buildout so massive it could rival Hoover Dam in scale. The goal is to transform AI’s “compute” race from GPUs to gigawatts.
Why it matters: Abilene is now ground zero for the global AI arms race. With Texas hosting the infrastructure that may define the next decade of tech.
Need-to-know:
OpenAI + Oracle are investing hundreds of billions in U.S. data centers, starting with Abilene.
Stargate aims for 10 gigawatts by 2025 (power for ~7.5M homes). Altman’s real target: 250 GW by 2033.
The project cements Texas as a global hub — but raises questions on energy use, water demand, and public awareness.
Learn more here.
AI’s explosive growth is pushing the U.S. power grid (and West Texas gas infrastructure) to the breaking point. Data centers now rival small cities in energy use, creating bottlenecks, higher costs, and urgent calls for grid upgrades.
Why it matters: Texas sits at the center of this crunch: abundant gas but insufficient pipelines, a fragile grid, and a flood of new AI data centers competing for power.
Need-to-know:
AI data centers could consume 22% of U.S. household electricity by end of 2025.
West Texas gas bottlenecks mean cheap gas can’t reach power-hungry facilities fast enough.
Utilities and tech giants are racing to build dedicated plants, nuclear projects, and storage systems to keep AI online.
Learn more here.
Alpha School in Austin ditched traditional teachers for AI-powered lessons and a cash-based reward system. Students spend two hours on laptop modules, then use the rest of the day on “life skills” like public speaking and running businesses.
Why it matters: This is testing how AI could reshape education itself, with global eyes on whether this model works.
Need-to-know:
Alpha students earn “Alphas” (25¢ coins) for completing modules — and can cash out.
School claims kids learn 2–4x faster than in traditional classrooms.
Expansion: now 16 campuses nationwide, with tuition hitting $65K–$75K/year.
Learn more here
Community Highlight
This week, we’re highlighting Tyler Beim, co-founder of NextSignal
Here’s his story:
My name is Tyler, and I’m the founder of Next Signal. I grew up in Seattle, spent much of my career in the Bay Area, and eventually moved to Austin as an entrepreneur in residence. What started as a temporary role quickly turned into a decision to stay and build here - I saw Austin had everything I needed to launch the next chapter.
Throughout my career at the intersection of technology, finance, and strategy, I had a front-row seat to one of the cloud’s biggest blind spots: downtime. I watched teams struggle for years - not because they lacked skill, but because the system itself was broken.
That’s why I started Next Signal. Our platform detects when cloud providers fall short of their SLAs, measures the financial impact, and helps companies recover what they’re owed—without the manual work or endless disputes.
You can learn more about NextSignal here.
Here’s his ask for the community:
We are rapidly growing and fortunate to call some of the biggest names on the S&P 500 our customers. But we need help!
We’re looking for a Founding Engineer; someone who’s excited to shape the architecture of a new category in cloud computing.
That’s all for now, folks!
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