Thanks to everybody who made this 12 months’s San Francisco event what it was — and to the 10,000 of you who crammed the halls, made the connections, and left with greater than you got here with. Couldn’t make it? The pictures beneath provide a glimpse into what you missed.
Till next year.
Vinod Khosla, telling attendees he doesn’t purchase the argument that powering AI will doom local weather efforts. Geothermal vitality is almost right here, he mentioned, whereas fusion stays additional out. He additionally touched on his alignment with President Donald Trump (deregulation) and his disagreement (immigration): “The one factor I’ll say is this administration gained’t final ceaselessly,” he mentioned with a smile.
That’s Roelof Botha on the stage, and that’s the crowd that got here to cling on his each phrase. The Sequoia associate talked via how his agency picks winners and what authorities possession in startups might imply, and warned founders not to get cute with timing, telling them to elevate now in the event that they’ll want cash six months from now. Bubbles pop.
Kevin Damoa of Glīd Applied sciences, winner of this 12 months’s Battlefield competitors, with Battlefield chief Isabelle Johannessen. She and TC’s Michael Schick work with many dozens of startups for months to put together them for this stage. The hug is earned.
Roy Lee, the founding father of Cluely, the app finest identified for its mantra “cheat at every little thing,” entertains the crowd along with his f-bomb-laden take on how to win at advertising. “Each day, individuals are doing crazier and crazier issues, which is why to stand out, you’ve got to do one thing even crazier.” (Pictured left, Maxwell Zeff, holding his personal.)
If former Cleveland Cavaliers Tristan Thompson misses the NBA, he’s not exhibiting it. He’s constructing a enterprise empire and elevating pointed questions on the league he left behind. When requested about whether or not gamers might manipulate Basketball Enjoyable — a web3 platform that turns NBA gamers into tradable tokens — he provided a counterpoint: “It’s the identical query we ask about referees. Are they not gaming the system?” When moderator Rebecca Bellan pressed whether or not he meant NBA referees take bribes, Thompson shrugged. “It’s only a query to be requested,” he mentioned.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
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October 13-15, 2026
Our personal Sean O’Kane shares a second with Wayve co-founder and CEO, Alex Kendall. Kendall may additionally be smiling as a result of his U.Ok.-based self-driving startup — whose software program acts as “brains for vehicles” — is in talks to elevate a contemporary $2 billion from SoftBank and Microsoft at an $8 billion valuation.
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, founders of the AI-powered buying assistant Phia, dazzled the viewers at Disrupt with their enthusiasm for making high-quality, secondhand clothes rather a lot simpler to discover. Gates, daughter of Invoice and Melinda Gates, was additionally sporting when requested by moderator Amanda Silberling what her well-known mother and father have realized from her. Stated Gates with amusing, “Hopefully model! I don’t even contemplate myself that fashionable; I identical to constructing in the client house, however now I get random emails from my household asking, ‘Ought to I put on this to this?’”
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana with TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec, fielding questions on autonomous autos, together with whether or not society will settle for deaths attributable to self-driving vehicles. “I believe that society will,” Mawakana mentioned. “The problem is ensuring society has a excessive sufficient bar on security that firms are held to.”
Kevin Rose speaking Digg’s reboot and the way forward for enterprise capital (Rose is additionally a common associate at the early-stage enterprise agency True Ventures). I’m smiling as a result of that’s what you do when somebody gained’t reply your questions on a buzzy, wearable startup that’s nonetheless in stealth. (We’ll have extra on Sandbar quickly.)
Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf hydrating between questions on constructing the way forward for AI, together with because it relates to LeRobot, the Hugging Face undertaking that’s attempting to democratize robotics with inexpensive {hardware}, open supply instruments, and shared datasets.
Finals judges Marlon Nichols of MaC VC and Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures throughout the final levels of our extremely aggressive Startup Battlefield. Someplace off-camera, a founder is sweating via their pitch deck.
Aaron Levie of Field in dialog with TC’s Russell Brandom. Levie has graced the Disrupt stage quite a few instances over TC’s 20 years at the middle of the startup ecosystem, and he all the time brings it.
Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone on the streamer’s expanded remit from easy binge-watching to interactive programming (assume voting on stay reveals and gaming by way of your cellphone): “It hasn’t modified the manner we inform tales,” she advised a rapt crowd.
TC’s Dominic-Madori Davis speaking group constructing with Tade Oyerinde of Campus, who’s rethinking group faculty, and Teddy Solomon of Fizz, the nameless social app that’s spreading throughout faculty campuses and infrequently getting banned, which some would possibly view as a badge of honor.
A whiteboard of desires: builders wanted, contacts provided, offers proposed. We adore it when founders lean into old-school techniques. (Some nonetheless work!)
David George, who leads the progress investing crew at Andreessen Horowitz, got here to the present to discuss with Julie Bort about what startups want to weigh as they’re eyeing the public market. It was his birthday, because it seems; the crowd takes a second right here to have a good time it with him.
Right here’s San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie discussing his name with President Trump concerning why not to ship the Nationwide Guard to the metropolis — a proposal floated by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “What I mentioned to him was what I say to all people: This is a metropolis on the rise,” Lurie mentioned. “Three days of Disrupt right here ought to show that.” On whether or not he made concessions with the deal-making Trump, he was definitive. “No, completely not. No ask.”
Lots of people come from round the world for programming about how to put their startups collectively. We lined all the bases on our Builders Stage, which was packed on daily basis, all day.
Publish-show elation from TC’s Jessica Barrera, who dealt with ticketing for 10,000 attendees. She saves our bacon routinely.
For a lot of extra images from the occasion, go to our Flickr stream.
You may as well discover our full video protection: right here is Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
Disclaimer: This article is sourced from external platforms. OverBeta has not independently verified the information. Readers are advised to verify details before relying on them.
