Atlanta's bid to join the nation's top five technology hubs gets a two-day showcase next week when Avant South returns to Tech Square on Oct. 12 and 13, bringing founders, researchers, policymakers and students together under the theme “AI in Action.” The conference will feature a 400-petaflop supercomputer demonstration, a student innovation challenge judged by an NVIDIA executive, and a lunch keynote pairing Atlanta's mayor with a Grammy-winning music producer to talk about artificial intelligence's reach into the city's signature industry.
The event, held at the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center and the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, is designed to convene founders, executives, policymakers, investors, researchers, creators and students, according to Georgia Tech. Sessions will run as panel discussions, keynotes and fireside chats, the university says, alongside AI activations, simulations and a student founder pitch competition. As WABE reports, the City of Atlanta launched Avant South as part of a broader push to build technology in the city that improves residents' quality of life, and local founders and builders need access to talent, capital and customers to make that happen.
Donnie Beamer Jr., the city's first senior technology advisor and the official who oversees Avant South, told WABE that technology should provide new ways to solve old problems. Beamer, who also heads Atlanta's technology and innovation office, appeared as a featured guest on Closer Look, hosted by Rose Scott, where he discussed the conference and the city's wider tech ambitions. Beamer told WABE that Atlanta aims to become one of the top five tech hubs in the nation.
Supercomputer and Student Innovation Challenge Take Center Stage
One of the conference's marquee attractions is the Nexus AI Supercomputer, which is now running at Georgia Tech with 400 petaflops of AI-focused computing power, according to the Avant South schedule. The $20 million, National Science Foundation-funded system is described as opening up to researchers across the country, per the same schedule.
Students will get their own spotlight through the Atlanta Innovation Cup, which brings together participants from multiple institutions forming interdisciplinary teams for an eight-day innovation challenge that culminates in a live showcase at Avant South. The event's celebrity guest judge will be Howard Wright, NVIDIA's vice president of startup ecosystem, the schedule notes.
Mayor and Music Producer to Discuss AI's Role in the Industry
A featured lunch keynote titled The Atlanta Effect: AI and the Music Industry will bring together Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Dallas Austin, according to Georgia Entertainment. The conference is presented by the City of Atlanta in collaboration with local colleges and universities, the outlet reports.
Beamer told WABE that Atlanta is seeking a balanced approach to data centers amid the evolution of AI and rapid data-center growth, and that the city wants a more measured approach to discussing the facilities. The city is publishing a white paper about data centers and their role in the community, per WABE's reporting. That framing lands against a broader regional backdrop: the data-center business is growing faster in metro Atlanta than anywhere else in the country, according to WABE's separate reporting on the sector, which notes continuing concerns about where facilities are sited and their water and energy use.
Investments and Hiring Fuel the Top-Five Push
Atlanta's Office of Technology and Innovation has invested more than $37 million in the city's tech ecosystem since its inception, according to the Atlanta Voice. Companies supported by the office have produced 1,155 organic new hires, the outlet reports, part of a stated goal to become one of the nation's top five tech hubs and one of the best places to build a technology company. The city has also attracted roughly $12 billion in venture capital over a five-year period, per the same report.
A separate account from Saporta Report found that the Atlanta Tech Hub supported 146 companies in 2025, adding 1,155 new hires and generating nearly $70 million in salaries, with 92% of those companies predicting they would hire more over the following 12 months. The city's technology office has also moved to formalize its university ties by creating the Atlanta Collegiate Entrepreneurship Syndicate, with Clark Atlanta University, Emory University, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine and Spelman College identified as initial participants, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Underlying the conference's agenda is a broader claim from Avant South's own materials: AI is changing work faster than traditional education and workforce systems can adapt, and it is already making decisions, creating content, interacting with consumers and changing how businesses operate. That tension between speed of change and the city's capacity to prepare its workforce is expected to run through many of the panels, keynotes and fireside chats scheduled across the two days in Tech Square.
