OpenClaw, Inference, AI Factories: What We Learned at NVIDIA GTC 2026

At NVIDIA GTC 2026, the conversation shifted from model novelty to enterprise reality. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT Chief AI Advisor Tim Brooks explains why agentic AI, inference-heavy workloads and physical AI are forcing CIOs and CTOs to rethink infrastructure, governance, trust and leadership.Brooks, WWT's Chief AI Advisor, said the industry is moving beyond fascination with model releases and into the harder work of managing inference, agents, infrastructure and trust at scale.The shift matters because enterprise AI is no longer defined primarily by training. Brooks points to an inference inflection point, where production systems, multi-step reasoning and autonomous or semi-autonomous agents are driving exponential token growth. That creates immediate pressure on compute, memory, networking and cost decisions that many organizations are still underestimating.The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.