The RMA counterparties gather in three clusters this fall, not one
BLUF: Twenty-four relevant conferences land between September 2026 and February 2027, and they sort into three distinct crowds that barely overlap: the silicon crowd (SEMICON, IEDM, electronica — where the vendors and OSATs are), the data-center crowd (OCP, 7x24, SC26, DCD — where the operators and their trapped inventory are), and the returns crowd (E-Scrap, NRF Rev, CSCMP EDGE, Manifest — where the 3PLs and reverse-logistics providers are). RMAgent’s whole premise is the seam between those crowds, and no single event convenes all three. That’s either the problem or the opportunity. Two weeks matter most: Oct 12–15 (OCP + SEMICON West, back-to-back, 40 miles apart) and Oct 25–29 (four events in five days, including the single most on-thesis event on the list).
Scope note. This is a calendar, not a market analysis — no assumption-ledger required. But every date below carries a confidence label, because a wrong date here costs a plane ticket. Dates marked
[Confirmed]were verified against the official event site or a first-party announcement;[Aggregator]came from a third-party listing only and should be re-checked before anyone books.Per RDI, this ends in questions, not a recommendation. Which of these to attend is a founder call.
The three clusters, and why the split matters
Per the charter’s two screening questions — can we automate them standalone, and how many counterparties do they touch — the clusters score very differently.
| Cluster | Who’s in the room | Standalone automatability | Seam density |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silicon (SEMICON, IEDM, electronica, ECIA) | Vendors, OSATs, distributors, component brokers | Moderate — RMA is a cost center, not their core | High — a distributor touches hundreds of counterparties |
| Data center (OCP, 7x24, SC26, DCD) | Operators, hyperscalers, colo, ITAD | High — trapped inventory is felt on day one | Moderate — few, but very large, counterparties |
| Returns (E-Scrap, NRF Rev, CSCMP EDGE, Manifest) | 3PLs, reverse-logistics providers, repair depots | High — this is their core workflow | High — a 3PL is a hub by definition |
The returns cluster scores highest on both axes and is the least-attended by anyone selling to semiconductors. Worth noting that it’s also the cluster where TBD has the thinnest existing network.
September 2026 — the silicon and AI-infra openers
SEMICON Taiwan 2026 — Sept 2–4 [Confirmed]
Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center (TaiNEX), Taipei, Taiwan
The largest single concentration of foundry, OSAT, and packaging decision-makers on earth: ~1,300 exhibitors, 4,300 booths, 100,000+ attendees from 65 countries. Forums start Aug 31 during International Semiconductor Week. If the question is “who are the OSATs and what do their returns flows look like,” this is the densest room in the window — but it’s also the hardest to work cold, and it’s next week.
→ semicontaiwan.org
AI Infra Summit 2026 — Sept 15–17 [Confirmed]
Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
The renamed AI Hardware & Edge AI Summit, ~8,000 attendees, repositioned around data-center infrastructure. Attendees are the people specifying and buying GPU compute — the layer directly above the failure/return event RMAgent automates. Local, cheap to attend, and the audience overlaps our existing NVIDIA thread.
→ ai-infra-summit.com
Data Center World Power — Sept 21–23 [Aggregator]
Dallas, TX
A power-and-energy-focused spinoff of the main Data Center World franchise. Narrower than the flagship (which is May 2027 in Nashville). Lower priority unless someone is already going to be in Dallas.
→ datacenterworld.com/power
productronica India — Sept 16–18 [Confirmed]
India (venue unconfirmed)
Regional electronics-manufacturing fair. Listed for completeness; low relevance unless India-based CM/EMS coverage becomes a priority.
October 2026 — the dense month, and two collision weeks
Week of Oct 12: OCP and SEMICON West, back to back
OCP Global Summit 2026 — Oct 12–15 [Confirmed]
San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA
Theme: “Scaling Innovation for the AI Era.” The Open Compute Project is where hyperscalers, ODMs, and hardware vendors co-design the actual boxes that fill data centers — which makes it the rare event where both the operator side and the ODM/CM side of the RMA seam are physically present. Highest structural fit of any data-center event in the window.
→ opencompute.org/summit/global-summit
SEMICON West 2026 — Oct 13–15 [Confirmed]
Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
SEMI’s North American flagship, themed around the industry’s path beyond $1 trillion. Note this is back in San Francisco after the Phoenix detour. It overlaps OCP almost exactly and sits 40 miles up the road — a genuine scheduling conflict, or a chance to cover both with two people.
→ semi.org
ECIA Executive Conference — Oct 19–21 [Confirmed]
Westin O’Hare, Rosemont, IL
Theme: “Delivering Clarity in Chaos.” ~425 senior executives from electronic-component manufacturers, distributors, and reps. Small, senior, and relationship-driven — the opposite of SEMICON’s scale. Distributors are among the highest seam-density nodes in the whole value chain, and this is where their executives are.
→ eciaexecconference.org
Week of Oct 25: four events in five days
E-Scrap 2026 — Oct 26–28 [Confirmed]
Hyatt Regency New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
~1,200 leaders of the North American electronics-recycling and ITAD sector: processors, ITAD firms, material traders. Resource Recycling ran a piece in August 2026 specifically on data-center evolution creating ITAD opportunity — meaning this audience is actively turning toward our exact customer. On seam density plus standalone automatability, this is arguably the single most on-thesis event in the window, and almost certainly the one our competitors don’t attend.
→ e-scrapconference.com
7x24 Exchange Fall 2026 — Oct 25–28 [Confirmed]
JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country, San Antonio, TX
Theme: “The Intersection of AI & Traditional Data Centers.” 7x24 is the end-to-end data-center operations community — the people who actually own the failed-hardware problem rather than the people who sell the hardware.
→ 7x24exchange.org
SMTA International 2026 — Oct 25–29 (expo Oct 27–29) [Confirmed]
Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, IL
90+ technical presentations on electronics assembly and manufacturing, co-located with The ASSEMBLY Show. Deeply technical, engineer-heavy. Relevant for understanding failure modes and repair processes; less so for commercial conversations.
→ smtai.org
Field Service Europe 2026 — Oct 26–28 [Aggregator]
Hotel Okura, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Service directors and aftermarket leaders. The aftermarket-service community is adjacent to RMA but oriented toward field repair rather than cross-firm returns coordination. European, so lower priority.
→ fieldserviceeu.wbresearch.com
CSCMP EDGE 2026 — Oct 4–7 [Confirmed]
Gaylord Opryland Resort, Nashville, TN
The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ flagship. Broad supply-chain audience across every industry, heavy 3PL presence. Good for 3PL relationships, diluted by the breadth of verticals in the room.
→ cscmpedge.org
November 2026 — Europe and the HPC crowd
Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit — Nov 2–3 [Confirmed]
Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, Denver, CO
Note: Denver, not Las Vegas. Analyst-led, enterprise supply-chain planning leaders. Useful for reading how the analyst layer is framing agentic supply chain — which shapes how our buyers will be told to think about us.
→ gartner.com
DCD Virginia — Nov 2–3 [Aggregator]
Lansdowne Resort and Spa, Leesburg, VA
Northern Virginia is the densest data-center market in the world. Regional, operator-heavy, and a short trip from the East Coast.
→ datacenterdynamics.com
electronica 2026 — Nov 10–13 [Confirmed]
Messe München, Munich, Germany
The world’s leading trade fair for electronic components, systems, and applications — biennial, even years, 50+ countries. Careful: productronica does not run in 2026. It is biennial on odd years and next runs Nov 16–19, 2027. Several third-party listings incorrectly show a productronica 2026; they’re wrong.
→ electronica.de
SEMICON Europa 2026 — Nov 10–13 [Confirmed]
Messe München, Munich, Germany
Theme: “Global Collaborations for European Economic Resilience.” Co-located with electronica on the same dates and campus — one trip covers both the component and the semiconductor-equipment sides of Europe.
→ semiconeuropa.org
SC26 (Supercomputing 2026) — Nov 15–20 (exhibits Nov 17–19) [Confirmed]
McCormick Place, Chicago, IL
The premier HPC, networking, and storage conference. Thousands of researchers plus a very large industry exhibition. The HPC crowd runs enormous fleets of accelerators and feels hardware failure acutely, but skews research rather than commercial procurement.
→ sc26.supercomputing.org
DCD London — Nov 23–24 [Aggregator]
London, UK
European counterpart to DCD Virginia.
Also listed by aggregators but unverified: DCD Napa (Nov 4–8) and DCD Sevilla (Nov 9–11). Both came from a single third-party listing and the Napa date range looks wrong for a DCD event — confirm directly before acting.
December 2026 — Asia and the research calendar
SEMICON Japan 2026 — Dec 9–11 [Confirmed]
Tokyo Big Sight, Tokyo, Japan
SEMI’s Japan flagship, covering the electronics manufacturing supply chain from components through automotive and IoT applications.
→ semiconjapan.org
IEDM 2026 — Dec 12–16 [Confirmed]
Hilton San Francisco Union Square, San Francisco, CA
The IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting: the premier device-physics research conference. Almost purely academic and R&D. Included for completeness — no realistic RMAgent commercial value.
→ ieee-iedm.org
January–February 2027 — the returns crowd, finally in one room
CES 2027 — Jan 6–9 [Confirmed]
Las Vegas, NV
Enormous, consumer-facing, and mostly noise for our purposes — but nearly every hardware executive in the industry passes through, which makes it efficient for pre-booked meetings rather than floor work.
→ ces.tech
NRF 2027: Retail’s Big Show — Jan 10–12 [Confirmed]
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York, NY
Important structural change: the Reverse Logistics Association has been absorbed into NRF. The standalone RLA Conference & Expo no longer exists; its successor, NRF Rev, ran Jan 2026, and for 2027 that content is folded into Retail’s Big Show as a dedicated Reverse Logistics Stage and Reverse Logistics Pavilion. A “Supply Chain at Big Show” session on Sun Jan 10 (3:00–7:30pm, Lavan New York) covers returns, reverse logistics, and circularity.
The catch: NRF is a retail show. The reverse-logistics practitioners there think in consumer returns, not data-center hardware. Whether that community’s tooling and vocabulary transfer to our seam is an open question, not an assumption.
→ nrfbigshow.nrf.com
DesignCon 2027 — Feb 2–4 [Confirmed]
Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
High-speed design and signal-integrity engineering. Technical, upstream of returns. Low priority.
→ designcon.com
Manifest 2027 — Feb 8–10 [Confirmed]
The Venetian, Las Vegas, NV
7,200+ leaders, 400+ speakers, 60+ countries — the largest supply-chain-and-logistics innovation event, heavily attended by investors and startups alongside operators. This is where logistics technology gets bought and funded, and the closest thing to a home venue for a company positioned as we are.
→ manife.st
Flagged: events we could not confirm
- ITAD Connect (ASCDI) — ran Feb 10–11, 2026 at ITEXPO in Fort Lauderdale, FL. A 2027 edition is plausible given the pattern but unconfirmed. ASCDI’s membership — secondary-market IT equipment dealers — is squarely on-thesis, so this is worth a direct email to the organizers rather than waiting for a listing.
- Field Service Next West 2027 — Hilton Bayfront, San Diego, CA. Dates not published as of today.
- E-Waste World / ITAD & Circular Electronics Expo — the Frankfurt edition runs June 17–18, 2026 (past) and the next global edition is May 12–13, 2027 (outside this window). No fall 2026 edition found.
- productronica 2026 — does not exist. Next edition Nov 16–19, 2027, Munich. Multiple aggregators list a 2026 date incorrectly.
Open questions for the founders
- Does the returns crowd translate? E-Scrap and NRF Rev are the two most on-thesis events by seam density, and both are dominated by consumer-electronics and retail returns rather than data-center hardware. Do those practitioners share our customers’ problem, or just share our vocabulary? One conversation at E-Scrap would settle it cheaply.
- Oct 12–15 forces a choice. OCP (operators + ODMs, the actual seam) and SEMICON West (vendors, scale) collide. Split the team, pick one, or skip both in favor of the Oct 25–29 cluster?
- What’s the goal — learning or selling? The RDI Phase 3 answer points at E-Scrap, ECIA, and 7x24, where rooms are small and conversations are possible. A pipeline answer points at OCP and Manifest. These lead to different calendars.
- Is there an event where all three clusters actually meet? Nothing in this window qualifies. If that’s structurally true rather than a gap in this research, it’s some evidence for the thesis that no incumbent owns the cross-firm layer — and possibly a reason for TBD to convene something itself.
Sources: official event sites for all [Confirmed] entries (SEMI, OCP, 7x24 Exchange, E-Scrap/Resource Recycling, ECIA, SMTA, CSCMP, Gartner, SC26, Messe München, NRF, CTA, DesignCon, Manifest, AI Infra Summit); third-party listings for [Aggregator] entries. Compiled 2026-08-26. Re-verify any date before booking — several aggregators carried a phantom productronica 2026.