Hear from Ambrosia Energy and Bloom Energy execs on where the AI infrastructure boom is creating opportunity at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

AI may be built in software, but the bottleneck is increasingly physical. Every new model, agent, and application needs somewhere to run, plus the systems that keep it alive. That’s the frame for a Smart Systems Stage session at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where Ben Longmier, CEO of Ambrosia Energy, and Bill Thayer, SVP and Head of Datacenter Solutions at Bloom Energy, will talk through where the AI infrastructure boom is creating winners.

The conversation is built around a simple but messy problem: compute demand is rising faster than power and infrastructure can be delivered. That puts pressure on the parts of the stack people used to treat as background machinery — power generation, grid connections, data centers, cooling, electrical equipment, and the software that ties it all together. When one layer slows down, the whole system feels it.

And that’s where the opportunity question starts to get interesting. Not every shortage is temporary. Some constraints could shape the market for years, and some of them may become categories of their own. The session will focus on which of those pressures are turning into durable business opportunities, and where founders might actually build something with staying power instead of chasing a burst of demand.

TechCrunch is pitching the discussion as a way to look beyond the usual AI conversation about models, chips, and apps. That matters because the next major AI company may not look like an AI company at all. It could be in energy, cooling, grid tech, electrical equipment, infrastructure software, or a new category that doesn’t have a tidy name yet.

For founders, investors, and tech leaders, the point is to understand where capital is likely to keep flowing as AI moves deeper into the physical world. Disrupt 2026 runs at Moscone West on October 13, with more than 250 speakers across 200+ sessions.