SAN JOSE — A new artificial intelligence center of excellence has officially launched in downtown San Jose and picked its first location, a prominent tower at the corner of First Street and Santa Clara Street.
Plug and Play is opening an AI Center for Excellence office on the eighth floor of a tower at 2 West Santa Clara Street, a highrise owned by Divco West, one of the Bay Area’s top real estate development firms.
The city of San Jose, PG&E, San Jose State University and the Plug and Play incubator are teaming up to bolster the launch of the AI Center for Excellence inside the 2 West Santa Clara tower.
The new office should open in May, according to Saeed Amidi, Plug and Play’s founder and chief executive officer.
Plug and Play officials are also looking at creating an AI incubator showroom across the street inside the Bank of Italy historic tower at 12 South First Street, according to Amadi. The principal owners of this tower is an alliance of Canada-based Westbank, a global developer; and San Jose-based Urban Community, which is headed up by Gary Dillabough and Jeff Arrillaga.
“We have an opportunity to create a startup cluster in the downtown core,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in an interview with this news organization. “We already have 20 venture-backed AI startups in downtown San Jose. We want to build on that ecosystem.”
Oakland-based PG&E is playing a major role in the future AI Center of Excellence in the city’s downtown.
“San Jose is one of the greatest cities in the world and we are proud to power the city of San Jose,” said Patricia Poppe, PG&E’s chief executive officer said in an interview with this news organization.
Oakland-based PG&E intends to improve its existing infrastructure and be a partner in new energy endeavors to help bolster a growing demand for electricity on the part of the AI incubator as well as expanding tech companies the San Jose area overall.
“We want to make sure that we are empowering the people of the city of San Jose to be ready and prepared to leverage the future,” Poppe said. “AI is certainly a big part of the future.”
Downtown San Jose was the best choice to create such a new AI Center, in the view of Plug and Play CEO Amadi.
“We feel that this AI Center of Excellence in downtown San Jose can be the biggest platform in the world for both startups that implement AI and for what we call a smart city which includes mobility, real estate and clean energy,” Amadi said in an interview with this news organization.
San Jose State University expects to play a big role in providing tech-skilled students and entrepreneurs as the AI Center for Excellence pushes forward.
“We are very aligned with the vision that Mayor Mahan has for the city to take advantage of this age of intelligence,” San Jose State University President Cynthia Teniente-Matson said in an interview with this news organization. “The city and our university community will be rapidly supporting AI in all forms of intelligence, as well as emerging technologies that we can’t imagine today.”