10 Best AI Conferences to Attend in 2025

The AI conference circuit has taken off in recent years, and for good reason. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries, making these gatherings non-negotiable pit stops for anyone serious about staying ahead of the curve. With events spanning from San Francisco to Singapore (covering everything from generative AI to deep learning) and costs ranging from free online sessions to multi-thousand-dollar tickets, you need a plan before opening your wallet.

While we can’t cover every AI conference in the world, we’ve done our research to find the best-of-the-best AI events happening in 2025. We’ve organized these events by experience level (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) to help you find conferences that’ll deliver the most value for your dollar. Read on for practical details like dates, locations, costs, and focus areas to help you plan your professional year.

How to choose the right AI conference

Finding the right AI conference isn’t just about picking the biggest name or following the crowd (or your favorite influencer). It’s about matching an event to your specific goals, budget, and interests. Here are the primary factors to consider before booking your ticket:

Purpose

Ask yourself why you’re attending in the first place. Are you looking to:

• Learn specific technical skills?

• Network with potential employers or partners?

• Scout new technologies for your business?

• Present your research?

• Stay current on industry trends?

Your primary goal should guide your selection process. For example, if you’re after hands-on learning, prioritize conferences with workshops and tutorials over those focused on keynotes and panels.

Expertise

Nothing wastes time and money faster than sitting through advanced sessions that fly over your head—or basic sessions that bore you to tears. Most conferences don’t explicitly label themselves as “beginner” or “advanced,” but you can get a sense by reviewing:

• Session descriptions and technical requirements

• Speaker backgrounds (academic researchers vs. industry practitioners)

• Past attendee feedback

• Target audience mentioned in marketing materials

Content mix

Look beyond flashy keynotes and examine the full agenda. A well-rounded conference typically offers:

• Keynote presentations from industry leaders

• Technical sessions and paper presentations

• Hands-on workshops and tutorials

• Networking events and opportunities

• Expo floors with product demonstrations

Investment

Conference costs extend beyond the ticket price. Factor in:

• Travel expenses (flights, accommodation, local transportation)

• Time away from work

• Opportunity cost of attending one event over another

• Availability of conference sessions on-demand or after the conference

For international conferences, consider visa requirements, language barriers, and time zone adjustments when calculating the total investment.

Beginner AI conference events

Jumping into the world of AI in 2025 can feel exciting and overwhelming. Fortunately, there are conferences designed to welcome newcomers to the field. These events skip the jargon-heavy sessions in favor of accessible talks, practical workshops, and clear explanations of fundamental concepts and applications.

Beginner-friendly conferences focus on bridging the knowledge gap, providing valuable context, and helping you build a framework for understanding more complex AI topics down the road. They’re also great places to meet others at a similar stage in their AI journey.

1. AI & Big Data Expo North America

AI & Big Data Expo North America simplifies AI and big data for newcomers while still offering enough depth to remain valuable. The expo’s multi-track format lets you sample different aspects of AI without committing to a single specialization too early. It puts a bigger focus on practical use cases: you’ll see exactly how businesses implement AI rather than just theoretical possibilities.

• Date: June 4-5, 2025

• Location: Santa Clara, California, USA

• Cost: $449-$899 (Virtual attendance option: $199)

• Focus: Practical AI implementation, business applications, digital transformation, development basics

• Value proposition: Perfect balance of business and technical content, abundant networking with both vendors and practitioners, clear explanations of how AI technologies connect with business outcomes

2. World Summit AI

World Summit AI has become increasingly welcoming to AI beginners through its dedicated “AI Essentials” track. This conference brings together diverse approaches to AI from around the world rather than just Silicon Valley viewpoints. The organizers make complex topics accessible through creative formats like “explain-it-like-I’m-five” sessions, interactive demonstrations, and guided expo tours.

• Date: October 8-9, 2025

• Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

• Cost: €349-€1,499 (Early bird and group discounts available)

• Focus: AI fundamentals, ethical AI, international perspectives, cross-industry applications

• Value proposition: Exceptional curation of global AI trends explained in accessible ways, opportunities to connect with diverse international community, well-structured content progression for beginners

Intermediate AI conference events

For those who’ve moved beyond the basics but aren’t quite operating at the cutting edge, intermediate AI conferences provide the just-right balance of depth and accessibility. These events assume you understand fundamental concepts and are ready to tackle more complex implementations, specialized techniques, and real-world challenges.

Intermediate conferences tend to feature more technical content, hands-on workshops that go beyond “hello world” examples, and discussions that explore the nuances of deploying AI at scale.

3. Data + AI Summit

Databricks’ flagship conference has established itself as the premier gathering for practitioners who’ve graduated from AI basics and are now tackling real implementation challenges. The summit takes a practical, code-first approach: sessions typically include actual implementation examples rather than conceptual overviews.

You get direct access to the creators of widely-used tools and frameworks, allowing you to deepen your understanding straight from the source. The balance of technical depth and industry application bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and production deployment.

• Date: June 9-12, 2025

• Location: San Francisco, California, USA (Hybrid - virtual attendance available)

• Cost: $1,395-$1,895 in-person; Free virtual admission

• Focus: Data engineering, machine learning operations, applied AI, scaling AI systems, data governance

• Value proposition: Great technical depth without requiring PhD-level expertise, direct interaction with tool creators, valuable case studies from companies at similar implementation stages as your own

4. Ai4 2025

Ai4 has carved out a niche by focusing on the practical implementation challenges that intermediate practitioners face daily. Its industry-specific tracks let you dive into AI applications relevant to your particular field rather than generic use cases. The three-day format gives you enough time to progress from foundational concepts to advanced applications within each topic area. Most attendees enjoy the candid “Lessons Learned” sessions where teams share their failures and pivots.

• Date: August 11-13, 2025

• Location: MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

• Cost: $1,695 (Complimentary passes available for qualifying professionals)

• Focus: Industry-specific AI implementations, machine learning operations, responsible AI, scaling challenges

• Value proposition: Outstanding peer learning opportunities, highly relevant use cases for your specific industry, balanced content that addresses both technical and organizational challenges

5. International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)

ICML has deep academic roots, but its increasing industry relevance makes it great for intermediate practitioners. The conference takes a nice balance between theoretical foundations and practical applications—with tutorials designed to bridge this gap. The conference exposes you to cutting-edge techniques just as they’re becoming production-ready, positioning you ahead of implementation trends. And despite its technical depth, many sessions are designed to be accessible to those with solid fundamentals (rather than requiring specialized research expertise).

• Date: July 13-19, 2025

• Location: Vancouver Convention Center, British Columbia

• Cost: $500-$1,200 (Student and early registration discounts available)

• Focus: Machine learning algorithms, reinforcement learning, computer vision, natural language processing, AI research with practical applications

• Value proposition: Perfect bridge between practical knowledge and advanced concepts, exposure to techniques that will become industry standards in 1-2 years, valuable cross-pollination between academic research and industry application

6. PyTorch Conference 2025

The PyTorch Conference brings together the world’s leading AI researchers, developers, and practitioners focusing on PyTorch, the framework behind today’s most innovative AI technologies. The conference features deep technical content while remaining accessible to various experience levels. With expanded offerings including co-located summits on AI intelligence measurement and infrastructure, the multi-track format lets you explore specialized areas of interest while connecting with the broader PyTorch community.

• Date: October 22-23, 2025 (Co-located events: October 21)

• Location: San Francisco, California, USA

• Cost: $249 (Academic) to $999 (Late registration)

• Focus: Technical AI development, scaling models, benchmarking, AI safety and ethical development

• Value proposition: Direct access to AI pioneers, hands-on technical sessions, networking with the community driving AI innovation, and new certification opportunities

Advanced AI conference events

Advanced conferences offer the depth and specificity needed to push boundaries. These events assume substantial technical expertise and focus on emerging techniques, breakthrough research, and the complex challenges of implementing sophisticated AI systems at scale.

These conferences tend to feature difficult technical content, research paper presentations, and discussions between leading experts tackling the field’s most difficult problems. It’s not really for casual interest—they’re intensive learning environments where experts share insights that haven’t yet made it into textbooks or mainstream technical blogs.

7. Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)

NeurIPS leads the way in machine learning research and attracts the field’s most brilliant minds. This conference has an intense paper selection process and emphasis on groundbreaking research that pushes theoretical boundaries. The concentration of specialized expertise paves the way for deep discussions on niche topics that wouldn’t gather critical mass at broader conferences.

Beyond the main sessions, affiliated workshops dive into specific subfields, creating micro-communities around emerging techniques and applications.

• Date: December 2-7, 2025

• Location: San Diego, USA

• Cost: $950-$1,500 (Academic rates available; typically sells out quickly)

• Focus: Cutting-edge ML research, reinforcement learning, neural network architectures, theoretical foundations, computational neuroscience

• Value proposition: Direct access to research breakthroughs months or years before mainstream adoption, opportunities to contribute to foundational discussions, unmatched concentration of specialized expertise

8. AI Infra Summit

AI Infra Summit dives deep into the complex systems engineering that makes large-scale AI possible. This specialized event is perfect for teams building and maintaining substantial AI infrastructure. It primarily focuses on the often overlooked (but critical) challenges of scaling—from distributed training architectures to efficient inference systems. The highly technical content requires expertise in both AI and systems engineering, and that’s what makes it ideal for practitioners operating at the intersection of these domains.

• Date: May 2, 2025

• Location: Santa Clara, California, USA

• Cost: $795-$1,295 (Early registration and group discounts available)

• Focus: ML systems design, computational efficiency, distributed training, hardware acceleration, inference optimization

• Value proposition: Rare concentration of expertise in AI infrastructure, practical solutions to scaling bottlenecks, direct access to engineers who’ve built systems at unprecedented scale

9. ICLR 2025 (The Thirteenth International Conference on Learning Representations)

ICLR 2025, The Thirteenth International Conference on Learning Representations, is the premier gathering for deep learning researchers and practitioners, offering cutting-edge content at the forefront of AI representation learning. ICLR strikes an ideal balance between theoretical advancements and practical applications across computer vision, NLP, reinforcement learning, and emerging fields. The multi-track format allows attendees to explore specific areas of interest while connecting with leaders across the full AI research spectrum.

• Date: April 24-28, 2025

• Location: Singapore EXPO, Singapore

• Cost: $425-$475 (Students), $850-$900 (Academic), $950-$1050 (Industry) with virtual options included

• Focus: Representation learning, deep learning theory, AI applications, fairness, safety, and societal considerations

• Value proposition: Access to groundbreaking research, networking with top AI researchers from academia and industry, workshops tailored to various specializations, and childcare options for working professionals

10. AWS re:Inforce

AWS re:Inforce focuses on the security challenges that inevitably come up when deploying advanced AI systems in production environments. The conference addresses advanced concerns like model robustness against adversarial attacks, privacy-preserving machine learning, and secure AI infrastructure design. They offer plenty of sessions that cover everything from theoretical security models to hands-on techniques for hardening AI systems against increasingly sophisticated threats.

• Date: June 16-18, 2025

• Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

• Cost: $1,249-$1,799 (Early registration and AWS certification holder discounts available)

• Focus: AI security, model robustness, privacy-preserving ML, secure MLOps, compliance for AI systems

• Value proposition: Specialized focus on the critical but often overlooked security dimensions of advanced AI, direct access to AWS security experts, practical techniques for securing complex models and pipelines

Best AI Conferences FAQs

What is the world’s best AI developer’s conference? NeurIPS is what most AI researchers would call their “can’t miss” event of the year. It’s where groundbreaking research drops first. For developers building AI in the real world, Data + AI Summit hits the sweet spot between cutting-edge and actually useful. That said, the “best” really depends on what you’re after—NVIDIA GTC is the go-to for hardware acceleration enthusiasts, while ICML draws the academic crowd.

What is the world’s largest AI summit? NVIDIA’s GTC is the biggest of the bunch, pulling in over 25,000 AI enthusiasts across its in-person and virtual events. World Summit AI in Amsterdam has been growing too, now attracting north of 10,000 attendees from all over the globe. Web Summit isn’t exclusively AI-focused but has massive AI tracks and brings together a staggering 70,000+ tech professionals.

Which AI conferences are best for beginners? NVIDIA GTC does a good job for newcomers with dedicated beginner tracks. AI & Big Data Expo North America keeps things refreshingly accessible while showing real-world applications. World Summit AI has gotten great onboarding beginners with their “AI Essentials” sessions.

Are there AI conferences for machine learning and deep learning? Plenty. ICML and NeurIPS are the heavy hitters where machine learning breakthroughs happen. NVIDIA GTC goes all-in on deep learning across practically every industry imaginable. Just pick your flavor (academic theory or hands-on application) and there’s a conference that’ll fit the bill.

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