Overview of Day 2
Day 2 of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is underway at San Francisco’s Moscone West, featuring innovative startups, solution providers in the Expo Hall, live startup pitches, and networking among founders, investors, and technology leaders.
Attendees are gathering to discover new business solutions, investment opportunities, and emerging technologies from across the sector.
The core agenda emphasizes artificial intelligence, featuring speakers from organizations like Nvidia, Waabi, Flock Safety, and Ricursive Intelligence, alongside participation from venture capital partners. Discussions span robotics, AI hardware, public safety applications, and venture investment trends.
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.
Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography
Conference Schedule and Expo
Registration opened in the Level 1 lobby, with schedule events running throughout the day in Pacific Time.
Expo Hall
The Expo Hall on Level 2 hosts over 300 startups, tech partners, and solution providers, giving participants a chance to view products in action and interact directly with engineering and executive teams.
Visitors are using the space to scout investment opportunities, evaluate commercial solutions, and explore companies outside their immediate operational focus.
Image Credits:Eric Slomonson, The Photo Group
Startup Pitches and Stage Sessions
Enterprise fast pitches highlight emerging startups, offering insight into how founders demonstrate product value and articulate market demand under investor scrutiny.
Observers can analyze presentation methods and connect with founders following their stage appearances.
Stage Sessions
Conference pass holders have access to dedicated tracks addressing business strategies, operational hurdles, and technology trends within the startup ecosystem.
Disrupt Stage
Key sessions on the main stage cover artificial intelligence in public safety with Flock Safety, venture outlooks from Benchmark partners, and automated hardware design discussions featuring Ricursive Intelligence.
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
Competitions and Funding
The Startup Battlefield features health tech, life sciences, enterprise, and security contenders competing for a place in the finals and $100,000 in equity-free funding.
The competition offers a transparent look at how early-stage teams handle rigorous investor evaluation.
Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images
Builders Stage
The Builders Stage focuses on scaling operations, securing capital, and understanding the priorities that drive early-stage growth.
Discussions analyze financing environments, operational scaling without native AI products, and multi-model deployment strategies.
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: Mark Crane, 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
Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography / Flickr (opens in a new window)
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, Atlassian
Real-World AI and Robotics
The Real World AI track examines the integration of artificial intelligence into physical environments, featuring live robot demonstrations and analyses of edge computing and deployment barriers.
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
Audience Q&A breakout sessions provide interactive formats to examine specific business challenges, fundraising requirements, and technical implementations.
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)
Image Credits:TechCrunch
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
Small-group roundtable discussions enable attendees to bring specific operational and investment questions to industry peers.
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 and Investor Sessions
Dedicated networking lounges utilize automated matchmaking tools to facilitate scheduled meetings among conference participants.
Participants can connect with investors, potential clients, and industry peers across formal and informal gatherings.
Founder and Investor Networking
Specialized areas like the Deal Flow Cafe provide dedicated meeting spaces for qualifying pass holders.
Image Credits:Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch
StrictlyVC Investor Sessions
Investor-exclusive programs cover initial public offerings, family office allocations, and limited partner priorities.
Sessions provide analysis on changing market conditions for capital deployment.
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
Side Events
Evening side events hosted by industry organizations extend discussions beyond the main conference venue.
Ecosystem Mixer, hosted by Peak XV
Liquid Assets, hosted by Augment and Mintz
The Afterburn, hosted by Backblaze and Flamethrower
These informal gatherings offer further networking opportunities for attendees across different technology sectors.
Conclusion
Day 2 continues to offer targeted tracks for founders, investors, and operators tracking the evolution of artificial intelligence and enterprise technology.
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