Photo by Erick Davidson
A Night of AI Innovation in the South Bay, hosted in Downtown San Jose
On May 22, 2025, Llama Lounge celebrated its two-year anniversary with 250 AI founders, investors, and corporate partners at Zoom HQ in San Jose — marking one of the largest GenAI startup events in the South Bay to date.
Highlights included:
- Opening remarks by Zoom CEO Eric Yuan
- San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan
- 10 AI startup pitches Led by Product Hunt CEO Rajiv Ayyangar
- Live demo floor, food & drinks, and signature Conch Shell Call
A crowd of AI leaders from Meta, Amazon, Google, Nvidia, Salesforce, Apple, IBM, and dozens more
A packed room of early-stage VCs, corporate venture groups, and technical builders
From immersive learning platforms to agentic search tools and robotic orchestration, the demo companies showcased the frontiers of AI. The event ended with a group photo and open networking until 9PM.
Most attendees were AI founders, in addition:
Corporate AI Leaders in Attendance:
Zoom: Execs, Product team, Ecosystem team
Adobe, Engineering Management
Adobe: Lead software engineer
Albertsons: Sr Machine Learning Engineer
Amazon: SWE
Amazon: Business Leader Amazon Pay Product
Amazon: MLE @ Amazon Search Science & AI
Apple, Global Program Strategy
AWS: Director, AWS AI Devices
Bytedance: Director of global partnership
C3 AI, Vice President and Chief Data Scientist
Cisco: Head of Products AI/ML, Speech and Computer Vision
Cisco: Product Manager
Coupa: AI Center of Excellence
Datadog: Head of AI products
Fujitsu Research of America: Alliances
Google, Open Source
Google, Senior Software Engineer
Google, Sr Engineering Manager at Google Colab
HP: Principal AI Solutions Architecture
HPE: SR Marketing Manager
JETRO: Startup relations
IBM: Vice President, Product Management
IBM: Head of Community, AI Alliance
IBM: Artificial Intelligence Researcher
IBM: Software Engineer II, Enterprise AI
Intel: AI research lab
Intel: Engineering
LinkedIn: Senior Software Engineer
Lucid Motors: Engineering & Program Management
Mazda Motor Corporation, Innovation & New Ventures
Megagon Labs, Head of Product
Meta, Director, AI Infra Ecosystem and Partnerships
Meta, Product Manager Lead
Meta, Product Manager, AI
NRI: Software Architect
Nvidia: Inception program
Nvidia: Software engineers
Oracle: Software Architect
Palo Alto Networks, TPM
Palo Alto Networks: AI Product Leader
Panasonic: Global Strategy & Transformation
QA, Head of Channels and Ecosystems
Rakuten Symphony, President of Unified Cloud Biz
Salesforce, Sr Director Products
Swisscom Outpost, VP Technology & Innovation
Thesis Capital
UCSC: Innovation & Entrepreneurial Development
ViaPath Technologies: VP of R&D
Volkswagen: AI Open Innovation & Technology Strategist
Zoominfo, Enterprise Architect
VCs and Investors in Attendance:
Blitzscaling Ventures
10vc
500 Global
Advantary
AE Investments
Airbus Ventures
AutoTech Ventures
Avenir
BDev Ventures
Berkeley Angel Network
Berkeley SkyDeck
Breakthrough Ventures
Converge VC
Cota Capital
DCG Ventures
DCM Ventures
Dell Tech Capital
Diversity Venture Capital
Dnipro VC
DST Global
Edgerunner Ventures
Embedding VC
Everest AI Ventures
Fetch AI
Forward Deployed VC
G2C Venture Partners
Ganas Ventures
Galaxy Ventures
GIC: Gov of Singapore
HP Tech Ventures
HealthTech Capital
Hesperian Ventures
How Women Invest
Inception Studios
Informed Ventures
Insight Partners
Jolly VC
Juniper Ventures / Perplexity Fellow
KX Horizon (KXVC)
LaMarka
MS&AD Ventures
Omni Ventures
Ottomate Global
Pacific 8 Ventures
PodiumVC
Presidio Ventures
Principal Venture Partners
Qualcomm Ventures
Race Capital
Raydiant
Rebellion Ventures
RingCentral Ventures
SHACK15 Ventures
Scale Ventures
Script Assets
Sequoia Capital
ShuckerVC
SignalRank
Singtel Innov8
Speciale Invest
Standard Investments
Samsung Catalyst Fund
Trampoline Venture Partners
Vangal
Venture Builder
VentureXchange Ltd.
Vibranium Ventures
WAVE Ventures
Wipro Ventures
XY Ventures
Zhenfund
