TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 will take place on October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. The event will feature more than 200 sessions, more than 250 speakers, and more than 300 exhibiting startups across six industry stages; more than 10,000 founders, investors, executives, and technology leaders are expected to attend. This year’s headline agenda is model selection for AI startups: open models are improving, frontier APIs continue to advance, and some companies are building products that use multiple models rather than committing to a single one. This presents founders with new decisions about where to spend, what to own, and how much flexibility to retain. Four sessions will examine these decisions from different layers of the AI stack:
- “The Real Tokenmaxxing: How the Best AI Companies Navigate a Multi-Model World” (Builder’s Stage): CapitalG partner Mo Jomaa, Together AI co-founder and CEO Vipul Ved Prakash, and Pathway co-founder and CEO Zuzanna Stamirowska will discuss why companies use multiple models, the cost-performance-flexibility balance, and when open models overtake their closed alternatives.
- “Which AI Should Your Company Actually Deploy: Rent, Customize, or Build” (Real World AI Stage): Oumi co-founder and CEO Manos Koukoumidis will address whether startups should develop their own models, when customization turns into a competitive advantage, and the open-versus-closed model choice, using audience polls and startup scenarios. Attendees will leave with three decision principles.
- “Building AI Startups Worth Betting On” (Builders Stage): Nvidia Director of Developer Technologies Nader Khalil and Nvidia Head of Global VC Partnerships Sydney Sykes will examine founders’ current choices, the trade-offs between frontier APIs and open-weight models, and their impact on product strategy and long-term differentiation.
- “When AI Starts Designing Its Own Hardware” (Disrupt Stage): Ricursive Intelligence founder and CEO Anna Goldie and co-founder and CTO Azalia Mirhoseini will explain how AI optimizes chip and hardware design and why model architecture and hardware are becoming increasingly interconnected.
The event will also offer matchmaking, deal talks and networking opportunities. Discounts of up to $100 are being applied to tickets; a second ticket is 50% off. For those affected by layoffs, the Expo+ Pass is $75 for a limited time. The last day to reserve an exhibit table is October 2.
Background
Disrupt is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 17 stories mentioning this name in the last 90 days; the most recent is dated October 5, 2026.