TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

October 13 – 15, 2026San Francisco

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Audience Choice

Vote for the sessions you want to see presented at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

Make your voice heard! Audience Choice lets you decide which breakout and roundtable sessions will take place at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on October 13-15. Check out the options below and vote for the session you want to see most.

You can vote for as many sessions as you like — just once per session!

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Meet the finalists

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Kevin Bai
Image Credits:Kevin Bai

Kevin Bai
Founding Forward Deployed Engineer, Rippling

FDE: The Best Commercial Motion in Enterprise Software You’ve Never Heard Of

Learn how Forward Deployed Engineers bridge customer needs and product delivery to drive retention and growth.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Radha Basu
Image Credits:Radha Basu

Radha Basu
Founder and CEO,
iMerit

Arm Wrestling Your Data: The Physical AI Challenge

Learn how expert-driven data strategies help physical AI handle edge cases, scale safely, and perform in the real world.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Ethan Batraski
Image Credits:Ethan Batraski

Ethan Batraski
Partner,
Venrock

Physical AI Isn’t a Model Problem. It’s an Execution Problem.

Join investors backing the AI category to diagnose what separates intelligence that absorbs real-world variability from intelligence that narrates it.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Jack McCauley
Image Credits:Jack McCauley

Jack McCauley
Co-Founder / Board of Trustee,
Oculus VR / UC Berkeley

Business Transformation Leveraging on AI and Cloud Computing

Learn how AI personalizes customer experiences, boosts service efficiency, and drives loyalty and engagement.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Srishti Chaudhary
Image Credits:Srishti Chaudhary

Srishti Chaudhary
Senior Manager, Product,
Walmart eCommerce

Beyond Inventory: The Commerce AI Playbook for the Intent Era

Learn how AI interprets shopper intent, reshapes personalization, and transforms the future of commerce.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Sara Choi
Image Credits:Sara Choi

Sara Choi
Partner, Wing VC

Rebuilding Health Infrastructure with AI

Explore how founders are using AI to build more efficient, personalized, and scalable healthcare solutions.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Sid Coelho-Prabhu
Image Credits:Sid Coelho-Prabhu

Sid Coelho-Prabhu
Head of Business,
Coinbase

Selling to AI Agents: Is Your Business Ready?

Learn how to accept payments from AI agents and prepare your business for agent-driven commerce.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Josh Constine
Image Credits:Josh Constine

Josh Constine
Venture Partner and Solo GP,
SignalFire

How to Launch Your Startup…Without the “Excited to Announce” Clichés

Get a practical playbook for startup launches, media pitching, social growth, and announcement-day success.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Eléonore Crespo
Image Credits:Eléonore Crespo

Eléonore Crespo
Co-Founder and CEO, Pigment

Can AI Take You Public? The New Playbook for IPO-Ready Finance

Get a practical playbook for building AI-powered, IPO-ready finance operations and controls.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Jack Hidary
Image Credits:Jack Hidary

Jack Hidary
CEO, SandboxAQ

What Comes After ChatGPT? AI for the Physical World

Explore the rise of scientific AI and its impact on healthcare, energy, and industrial innovation.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Adarsh Hiremath
Image Credits:Adarsh Hiremath

Adarsh Hiremath
Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Mercor

The Enterprise AI Gap: Why Pilots Succeed and Rollouts Fail

Learn why AI pilots stall in production and how to build systems that scale in real-world environments.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 James Joaquin
Image Credits:James Joaquin

James Joaquin
Co-Founder and Managing Director, Obvious Ventures

I Built Before the Internet. AI Is Different.

Explore how AI is reshaping energy, biology, and industry at a pace unlike any prior platform shift.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Nomi Khedawala
Image Credits:Nomi Khedawala

Nomi Khedawala
Senior Technical Program Manager, Reddit

Talent as the Operating System: How High-Performance Teams Scale in the AI Era

Learn how trust, talent, and alignment drive performance in fast-changing, AI-powered organizations.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Seth Kugler
Image Credits:Seth Kugler

Seth Kugler
Partner, Grellas Shah

The Modern Founder’s Blueprint: Safeguarding IP in the Age of GenAI

Learn how AI creates new IP and trade secret risks and how to protect sensitive business information.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Yufeng Li
Image Credits:Yufeng Li

Yufeng Li
Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI

When AI Agents Write the Code, What Should Developers Write?

Explore how AI coding agents shift developers from writing code to defining specs, guardrails, and quality.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Sachin Malhotra
Image Credits:Sachin Malhotra

Sachin Malhotra
Member of Technical Staff, Anthropic

One Engineer, Six Agents: What AI-Native Development Looks Like From Inside

Learn how coding agents let one engineer operate like a multi-engineer team using specs, swarms, and guardrails.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Aditi Maliwal
Image Credits:Aditi Maliwal

Aditi Maliwal
General Partner, Upfront Ventures

How to Land Your First Institutional Check (From the Person Who Writes Them)

Learn what VCs really underwrite in early-stage deals and how founders should position their story.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Ankita Mehta
Image Credits:Ankita Mehta

Ankita Mehta
Senior Product Manager, GTM and Automation, Databricks

Agentic AI in the Enterprise: Separating Signal From Noise for GTM and Ops Leaders

Learn what’s working in agentic AI deployments, from ROI use cases to adoption and infrastructure challenges.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Keyvan Mohajer
Image Credits:Keyvan Mohajer

Keyvan Mohajer
CEO and Co-Founder, SoundHound AI

The Maintenance Tax: What Nobody Tells You About Shipping AI Agents

Learn the hidden costs of scaling AI agents and what it takes to keep them reliable in real-world environments.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Harrison Rolfes
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Harrison Rolfes
Senior Research Analyst, Late-Stage Company Research, PitchBook

The $100 Billion Entry Fee: Can Anyone Still Compete in AI?

Explore whether the AI frontier is already locked up and where real moats in models, data, and distribution sit.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Nicolas Sauvage
Image Credits:Nicolas Sauvage

Nicolas Sauvage
President,
TDK Ventures

Deeptech Is Eating Silicon Valley: Why the Next $100B Companies Won’t Look Like Startups

Explore why AI is shifting venture capital from software toward deeptech, infrastructure, and physical industries.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Rudina Seseri
Image Credits:Rudina Seseri

Rudina Seseri
Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures

The Inference Economy: Why AI’s Next Trillion Dollars Won’t Look Like Its First

Explore how AI value is shifting from training to inference and what that means for startups and moats.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Avi Shultz
Image Credits:Avi Shultz

Avi Shultz
Director, Industrial Technologies Office,
U.S. Department of Energy

Deciphering Government: How VCs and Startups Can Tap $200M+ per Year in Funding and Technical Expertise From DOE’s Industrial Technologies Office

Learn how DOE programs support startups and investors with funding, validation, and industrial partnerships.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Rajeev Singh
Image Credits:Rajeev Singh

Rajeev Singh
CEO,
Smartsheet

Is SaaS Dead? AI Is Exposing What Enterprise Software Got Wrong

Explore why AI agents aren’t killing SaaS but exposing the need for orchestration across enterprise systems.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Kulveer Taggar
Image Credits:Kulveer Taggar

Kulveer Taggar
Founder,
Phosphor Capital

Your Series A Is Won Before the Pitch

Learn how founders win Series A rounds before the pitch by building momentum, leverage, and investor alignment.


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