Disrupt 2026: Day 2 | TechCrunch

Day 2 of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is here at San Francisco’s Moscone West. Explore innovative startups and solution providers in the Expo Hall, discover emerging technologies through live startup pitches, and use AI-powered matchmaking to connect with a community of 10,000+ founders, investors, startup teams, and technology leaders.

Whether you’re looking for your next investment, discovering solutions for your business, or gathering ideas to take back to your team, there’s plenty to explore today.

Today’s focus spans AI, with speakers including leaders from Nvidia, Waabi, Flock Safety, and Ricursive Intelligence, alongside Benchmark’s full partnership. Conversations will cover robotics, AI hardware, public safety, and venture investment.

Still deciding whether to come? Get your pass and join us at 50% off the original walk-up rate. Make discovery and networking your focus with an Expo+ Pass, or choose an eligible conference pass to add stage sessions, interactive roundtables, and Q&A breakouts.

Day 2 highlights

Registration: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Badge pick-up and in-person registration in the Level 1 lobby. All times below are Pacific Time.

Expo Hall

Open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Level 2. Explore 300+ startups alongside tech partners and solution providers across the Expo Hall. See products in action, discover tools that could help your business grow, and speak directly with the teams behind them.

Meet potential customers and partners, scout investment opportunities, or compare solutions to the challenges your team is facing. Give yourself time to explore companies beyond your usual area of interest.

Pitch Showcase Stage

Catch today’s enterprise fast pitches to discover emerging startups and see how founders make their case. Whether you’re building a company, scouting investments or working in a startup team, find inspiration in how others explain their products, demonstrate value, and capture attention.

Note the companies and approaches that stand out, take fresh ideas back to your team, and meet the founders afterward to explore potential opportunities.

Stage sessions

With an eligible conference pass, explore the ideas, business strategies, and technologies shaping the startup ecosystem. Check the full agenda for session times and the complete Day 2 lineup.

Disrupt Stage

Hear perspectives that could inform your next business decision, investment thesis, or product strategy. Today’s highlights include:

AI, Surveillance, and the Future of Public Safety: Garrett Langley, Flock Safety

What We Believe Now: Benchmark’s Jack Altman, Peter Fenton, Chetan Puttagunta, Everett Randle and Eric Vishria

When AI Starts Designing Its Own Hardware: Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini, Ricursive Intelligence

Startup Battlefield 200

Startup Battlefield continues with healthtech and life sciences, plus enterprise and security, as contenders pursue a place in the final and $100,000 in equity-free funding.

Discover companies to follow, see how teams respond to investor scrutiny, and gather ideas for presenting your own products or evaluating new opportunities.

Builders Stage

Explore what it takes to fund and grow a startup. Founders can sharpen their plans, investors can compare perspectives on what makes a business fundable, and startup teams can better understand the priorities shaping their next stage of growth.

Consider what the discussion means for your business, portfolio, or team, and compare perspectives with other attendees afterward.

The Series A in 2027: Jahanvi Sardana, Index Ventures; Shailendra Singh, Peak XV; and Janelle Teng Wade, Bessemer Venture Partners

How to Win When You’re Not Building AI: Yuri Sagalov, General Catalyst; Shan Shan, Baillie Gifford; and Chris Yu, ALSO

Build Mode Live: Building From Zero to One:Juliana Di Simone, Forela; Arul Nigam, Circuit Breaker Labs; and Courtney Young, MyoGene Bio

Revealing AI Disruptors 60: What Can AI Do Next?:Parag Agrawal, Parallel Web Systems; Shay Grinfeld, Greenfield Partners; Anand Kannappan, Patronus; Alberto Taiuti, Reactor

The Real Tokenmaxxing: How the Best AI Companies Navigate a Multi-Model World: Mo Jomaa, Capital G; Vipul Ved Prakash, Together AI; and Zuzanna Stamirowska, Pathway

Building the Next Generation of AI Giants:Jas Khaira, Blackstone N1

The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget:Crystal Huang, GV (Google Ventures); Grant Lee, Gamma; and Elia Wallen, Engine

So You’ve Got a Hit Product. How Does Your Company Do It Again?:Maddi Holman, Daring Ventures; Filip Kaliszan, Verkada

Tamar Yehoshua, Chief Product and AI Officer, Atlassian: Maddi Holman, Daring Ventures; Filip Kaliszan, Verkada; and Tamar Yehoshua, Atlassian

Real World AI Stage

Discover how AI is moving into physical products and environments, with opportunities to explore practical applications, emerging markets, and the challenges of deployment. Plus, witness a live robot demonstration.

Building AI Systems When Failure Is Not an Option: Nathan Michael, Shield AI; Mikell Taylor, General Motors; and Raquel Urtasun, Waabi

Come, Meet Stretch. The Robot Built for Real Life, Not a Demo Reel: Aaron Edsinger, Hello Robot

Robots Are Waiting for Their ChatGPT Moment. Here Is What Is Standing in the Way: Les Karpas, NVIDIA

Operating at the Edge: How AI Works When the Cloud Doesn’t:Ali Agha, FieldAI; Michelle Lee, Medra; and Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Eclipse Ventures

Launching AI’s Orbital Infrastructure:Devin Coldewey and Blake Bullock, The Aerospace Corporation, Jeff Thornburg, Portal Space Systems; and Jonny Dyer, Muon Space

Humanoid Robots Have Arrived: Live and On Stage:Jonathan Hurst, Agility Robotics; and Digit, Humanoid Robot

From Prototype to Production: Can it Scale in Reality?:Kevin Peterson, Bedrock Robotics and Adrian Macneil, Foxglove

The Race to General-Purpose Robots with Skild AI: When AI Meets the Physical World:Varun Jain, SE Ventures; Deepak Pathak, Skild AI

Can We Engineer Nature’s Comeback?: Ben Lamm, Colossal Biosciences.

Why and How Every Company Will Build Its Own AI:Manos Koukoumidis, Oumi (Open Universal Machine Intelligence); Matt Burns, Insight Media Group

AI Stage

The Agent Security Problem Nobody Is Talking About:Gavriel Cohen, NanoCo; and Ric Smith, Okta

Rewriting SaaS: Why AI Breaks the Old Business Model:Cathy Gao, Sapphire Ventures; Aaron Jacobson, NEA; and Barr Moses, Monte Carlo

Before You Let AI Do the Job, How Do You Know It Actually Can:Irene Solaiman, Hugging Face

The $63 Billion Case for Storagemaxxing Your AI Stack:Pinaki Mukherjee, Wasabi Technologies; Stephanie Walter, HyperFRAME Research; Kevin Cochrane, Vultr; and Jake Lee, L2 Point Management

What Comes After the Chatbot:Alexander Embiricos, OpenAI

The GTM Engineer: How AI Created Tech’s Next Big Job Category:Kareem Amin, Clay

Model Behavior: How Top Startups Get Real Value From AI Adoption:Cat de Jong, Anthropic; Grant Lee, Gamma; and Kareem Amin, Clay

Proxy, Host, Operator: Who Can Read Your Agent’s Prompts?:Richard Rizk, BLACKBOX AI

Securing the AI Enterprise: Why the Cloud Just Got a Lot More Complicated:Katie Moussouris, Luta Security; Wendy Nather, Cybersecurity Veteran; and Rudy Mitra, AWS

The Enterprise Isn’t Broken. Your Assumptions About It Are:Arsalan Tavakoli, Databricks

Breakout sessions

Use the audience Q&A to explore a decision you’re facing, ask how an idea could apply to your business, or better understand the implications for companies you’re evaluating.

Building Then vs Now: Payal Kadakia, ClassPass; Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Humane Intelligence; Cassie Kozyrkov, Kozyr; and Holly Ransom, Emergent

Infrastructure at the Speed of Demand: Power and Freight Without the Wait: Kofi Asante (Bluecore Energy), Kevin Damoa (Glīd)

Best Practices for Running a Successful Fundraise: From Preparation to Investor Engagement: Maggie Sin (Fidelity Private Shares), Bill Tai (HUT 8 Corp), Robin Uata (Fidelity Private Shares)

From Founder to Investor: The Next Act – What Happens After You Win?: Bruce Lee (Keebeck Wealth Management), Abhi Tiwari (Blank Ventures)

Breaking Into Space: The AI Builder’s Opportunity: Dr. Brian Cameron (The Aerospace Corporation), Timothy Graves (The Aerospace Corporation), Bosco Lai (Little Place Labs), Col. Aaron Stevenson (United States Space Force)

Sovereign AI: Who Will Build the Infrastructure and Intelligence of the Next AI Economy?: Özgür Altun (Turkcell), Suresh Babu (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), Bekir Polat (Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye)

Fundraising Mistakes That Will Kill Your Round, and How to Avoid Them: Dr. Irena King (Surgicure Technologies), Dr. Richard Munassi (Tampa Bay Wave), Ashley Paston (General Catalyst), Emily Zhen (HealthQuest Capital)

Roundtables

Take part in these popular small-group discussions. Bring a business challenge, an investment question, or a perspective from your own work. Hear how others approach similar issues and leave with ideas to explore further.

What Comes After ChatGPT? AI for the Physical World: Jack Hidary (SandboxAQ), Stacie Calad-Thomson (NVIDIA)

How Does Agentic AI Change Decision-Making?: Cassie Kozyrkov (Kozyr)

When Frontier Models Are Not Enough: How to Make AI Capable of Breakthrough Scientific Discoveries: Piotr Byrski (Molecule.one), Shane Lewin (Clockwork Bio)

Grow Like a Founder, Think Like a CFO: Balancing Growth and the P&L: Marshall Egger (Spacemilk)

Agentic AI in the Enterprise: Separating Signal from Noise for GTM and Ops Leaders:Ankita Mehta (Databricks)

The $100 Billion Entry Fee: Can Anyone Still Compete in AI?:Harrison Rolfes (PitchBook)

FDE: The Best Commercial Motion in Enterprise Software You’ve Never Heard Of:Kevin Bai (Anthropic)

The Rise of SoCal Hard Tech: Why VCs and Founders Are Gravitating to Gundo: Drew Boyles (City of El Segundo), Kevin Hawkins (New York Stock Exchange)

“My Company Is a Rocket Ship.” What Comes After the Landing?: Vishal Kumar (Twin Peaks Wealth Advisors), Tushar Kumar (Twin Peaks Wealth Advisors)

How to Land Your First Institutional Check (From the Person Who Writes Them): Aditi Maliwal (Upfront Ventures)

Relationship-Led GTM: Founder + Operator Perspective: Connie Koh (Vectors Capital), George Mitri (2DaLoop)

Open-Weight Models and the New AI Stack: Mercedes Bent (Premise), Vanessa Larco (Premise)

VC Insights for Founders: How to Raise Your First VC Round:Itamar Novick (Recursive Ventures), Brian Sparkes (Silicon Valley Venture, Corp.)

Doing More with Less: Raising Venture Capital in an AI-first World “Helping Entrepreneurs Avoid the Pitfalls of Overcapitalization”: Neil Sequeira (Defy.vc)

Networking opportunities

The Networking Lounge powered by Signify Business Cash World Elite Mastercard® by Wells Fargo is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Use the TechCrunch Events app and its AI-powered matchmaking to schedule meetings.

Connect with people relevant to your goals, from potential customers and solution providers to investors, collaborators, and industry peers. Follow up on an introduction, continue a conversation over coffee, and agree on a next step before you part ways.

Founder / Investor-only networking meetings

The Deal Flow Cafe is available only to Founder Pass and Investor Pass holders for dedicated networking. Explore pass access here.

Investor-only session: StrictlyVC

For Investor Pass holders only, StrictlyVC offers conversations on IPOs, family offices, and limited partner priorities.

Use the afternoon to compare investment perspectives and build relationships with fellow investors. Check the agenda for the latest program times.

The New Rules of Going Public:Ryan Flanagan, ICR

The New Power Players: How Family Offices Are Reshaping Venture Investing:Bruce K Lee, Keebeck Capital Management and Dave Sachse, Family VC

What Limited Partners Want Now:Amit Bhatti, Truebridge Capital and Beezer Clarkson, LGT Capital Partners

Disrupt 2026 Side Events

Keep the conversations going after you leave Moscone West. Some of tonight’s Side Events include:

Ecosystem Mixer, hosted by Peak XV

Liquid Assets, hosted by Augment and Mintz

The Afterburn, hosted by Backblaze and Flamethrower

Explore opportunities to meet people beyond your existing network in a more informal setting. Check the individual listings for entry requirements and RSVP before heading over.

Still time to join Disrupt 2026

Discover a company worth watching, a solution worth exploring or a connection worth following up. Whether you’re building, investing, or helping a startup grow, make Day 2 work for your goals.

Get your Disrupt pass at 50% off the Walk-Up rate and join 10,000+ tech leaders for the next two days of our annual flagship conference.

Source: techcrunch.com