TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 arrives in San Francisco in seven days, drawing more than 10,000 founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders to Moscone West for three days of talks and networking from October 13 to 15.
Pass holders can currently save $100 on their ticket, with a further 50% discount available on a second pass. The event includes a series of interactive roundtables where you can join founders, investors, and industry experts to discuss specific challenges. Attendees can bring their own questions to gain practical advice on fundraising, artificial intelligence, hiring, enterprise software, physical robotics, and company scaling.
Registration is open to secure the discount and access the full schedule.
Roundtable agenda
Sessions are hosted in two dedicated rooms. The following topics are currently confirmed.
Arm Wrestling Your Data: The Physical AI Challenge
Radha Basu, Founder and CEO, iMerit
Physical AI requires more than larger models. Basu examines the data hurdles for robotics and autonomous systems, covering edge cases, multimodal inputs, and building pipelines that function reliably in the real world.
Is SaaS Dead? AI Is Exposing What Enterprise Software Got Wrong
Rajeev Singh, CEO, Smartsheet
Artificial intelligence is not always replacing SaaS tools. Singh argues it reveals fragmentation beneath the surface. He explores how orchestration, organisational context, and workflow intelligence could define the next generation of enterprise software.
Can AI Take You Public? The New Playbook for IPO-Ready Finance
Eléonore Crespo, Co-founder and Co-CEO, Pigment; and Sofia Fatakhova, Senior Vice President, Finance and Capital Markets, Chime
Preparation for an initial public offering starts earlier than before. The session covers how AI-enabled finance teams can automate tasks, document processes, and build the financial discipline required long before a company files to go public.
Specialty Post-Training Data: Powering the Next Wave of AI
Dani London, Investor, Base10 Partners
As models improve, specialised data becomes a key differentiator. The discussion covers the origins of valuable datasets, which applications require them most, and the businesses forming around this new layer of the AI stack.
AI’s Next Frontier: Modernizing Legacy Industries
Rob Biederman, Managing Partner, Asymmetric Capital Partners
Major opportunities for AI may exist outside the technology sector. Biederman looks at where outdated workflows and underserved industries create space for a new generation of startups.
The Science of Powerful Introductions: How to Be Remembered in an AI world
Cal Amir, Keynote Speaker and Founder, Introduction Lab
Your first minute with an investor, customer, or potential hire counts. Amir explains what makes an introduction memorable, which common approaches fail, and how to stand out without starting with a pitch.
Atoms vs. bits: Physical AI for the Physical World
Jackson Feder, VP, Investment, MetaProp
Artificial intelligence is moving from digital workflows into construction, property, infrastructure, and energy. Feder examines where physical AI creates opportunities and why building for the physical world requires a different approach from traditional software.
Beyond the Demo: Building Physical AI That Actually Works
Logan Farrell, Co-founder and CTO, Rugged Robotics; and Austin Yount, Partner, Brick & Mortar Ventures
A good robotics demonstration does not equal a useful product. The conversation covers reliability, workflow integration, trust, return on investment, and what physical AI must deliver before customers adopt it at scale.
Beyond Inventory: The Commerce AI Playbook for the Intent Era
Srishti Chaudhary, Senior Manager, Product, Walmart eCommerce
Commerce is shifting from understanding search terms to understanding intent. Chaudhary explores what agentic shopping means for personalization, transactions, large language models, and who ultimately owns the relationship with the customer.
The Quantum Revolution: What Investors Need to Know
Speaker details to be announced
Quantum computing is nearing commercial relevance. This session provides investors with a practical understanding of the technology, emerging opportunities, and the milestones that matter when separating genuine progress from hype.
Healthcare Took 40 Years to Adopt EHRs, Then Adopted Generative AI in Three. What Comes Next?
Brian Butler, Partner, Questa Capital
Healthcare’s adoption of generative AI has moved unusually fast. Butler examines why this happened, what barriers remain, and where founders can build durable value as healthcare organisations rethink how they buy technology.
Beyond the Term Sheet: How to Architect a Great Fundraise
Alex Li, Partner, MVP Ventures
Raising capital involves more than a pitch. Li explains how to choose the right investors, secure introductions, manage a competitive process, negotiate terms, and build a cap table that supports future growth.
From Pilot to Production at Scale: Provable, Trusted Agentic AI for the Enterprise
Dr. Maha Achour, Co-founder and CEO, Kodamai; and Pankaj Kedia, Founder and Managing Partner, 2468 Ventures
Many enterprise AI projects remain stuck in pilot mode. The session explores the changes needed to move agentic systems into trusted, verifiable, scaled production environments.
Brutal Truth: 12 Critical Mistakes That Nearly Derailed My CISO Career
Stephen Ward, Founder and Managing Partner, Brightmind Partners
Ward shares lessons from mistakes made during his CISO career, including taking on unsustainable risk and approaching organisational maturity too early. He outlines what other leaders can do differently.
What Comes After ChatGPT? AI for the Physical World
Jack Hidary, CEO, SandboxAQ; and Stacie Calad-Thomson, Global BD Lead, Life Science Labs and Manufacturing, Nvidia
The next wave of AI will not just generate text. Hidary and Calad-Thomson explore AI grounded in physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, and the opportunities opening across healthcare, materials, energy, finance, and industrial systems.
The Rise of SoCal Hard Tech: Why VCs and Founders Are Gravitating to Gundo
Sponsored by New York Stock Exchange
Kevin Hawkins, Head of Partnership Development and Media Distribution, New York Stock Exchange; with Drew Boyles, El Segundo City Councilmember
Why has El Segundo become a magnet for space, defence, and hard tech startups? Hawkins and Boyles discuss what is attracting founders, capital, and talent, and how a city can create an environment where hard tech companies thrive.
The Founder Playbook
Sponsored by Signify Business Cash World Elite Mastercard by Wells Fargo
Cassie Kozyrkov, Founder, Kozyr and former Chief Decision Scientist, Google
Attendees bring a real business challenge. Kozyrkov leads an interactive discussion about making better founder decisions, where AI can help, and where human judgment remains essential.
“My Company Is a Rocket Ship.” What Comes After the Landing?
Sponsored by Twin Peaks Wealth Advisors
Vishal Kumar and Tushar Kumar, Private Wealth Advisors and Co-founders, Twin Peaks Wealth Advisors
An IPO, acquisition, or tender offer creates a new set of decisions. Kumar and Kumar explore tax, concentration risk, lockups, liquidity, and how founders can protect what they have spent years building.
When Frontier Models Are Not Enough: How to Make AI Capable of Breakthrough Scientific Discoveries
Piotr Byrski, CEO and Co-founder, Molecule.one
What happens when AI can test thousands of scientific ideas instead of a handful? Byrski explores autonomous experimentation, AI-driven discovery, and how these systems could change the pace of scientific progress.
How to Land Your First Institutional Check (From the Person Who Writes Them)
Aditi Maliwal, General Partner, Upfront Ventures
Maliwal offers insight into the decision-making process behind early institutional investment. She covers which founder signals matter before traction exists, how to tell your story, and what can kill an investment before it starts.
Grow Like a Founder, Think Like a CFO: Balancing Growth and the P&L
Marshall Egger, Founder and COO, Spacemilk
Growth can look good while quietly draining cash. Egger invites questions to explore forecasting, inventory, retail terms, cash flow, and how to grow without losing sight of the profit and loss statement.
Agentic AI in the Enterprise: Separating Signal From Noise for GTM and Ops Leaders
Ankita Mehta, Senior Product Manager, Databricks
Everyone wants agents, but not every workflow needs one. Mehta explains where companies are seeing measurable value, why pilots stall, and how to evaluate agentic AI before committing infrastructure and teams to it.
Open-Weight Models and the New AI Stack
Mercedes Bent and Vanessa Larco, Co-founders and Managing Partners, Premise
Open-weight models are creating more choice for AI builders. The session covers trade-offs around cost, security, performance, control, and where open models may offer startups a genuine advantage.
The $100 Billion Entry Fee: Can Anyone Still Compete in AI?
Harrison Rolfes, Senior Research Analyst, Private Company Coverage, PitchBook
With extraordinary amounts of capital flowing into frontier AI, is the market already locked up? Rolfes examines where defensibility really sits and what capital concentration means for founders and investors outside the biggest labs.
VC Insights for Founders: How to Raise Your First VC Round
Sponsored by Silicon Valley Venture
Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner, Recursive Ventures; and Brian Sparkes, CEO, Silicon Valley Venture Corp.
Novick and Sparkes cover when to start raising, how to build an investor narrative, generate momentum, and navigate the journey from an initial VC conversation to a closed institutional round.
FDE: The Best Commercial Motion in Enterprise Software You’ve Never Heard Of
Kevin Bai, Member of Technical Staff, Anthropic
Forward-deployed engineers sit somewhere between software engineering, product, and
