The final Disrupt Stage lineup: Three days of conversations you won’t hear anywhere outside of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
TechCrunch TechCrunch Events ● Covered by 3 sources
TechCrunch Disrupt’s main stage runs Oct. 13-15 in San Francisco with RJ Scaringe, Andrew Feldman, and more. It’s a rare peek at what founders and investors think comes next in AI, hardware, and software.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, TechCrunch Events — read the original for the full story.
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TechCrunch is packing its biggest stage with the kind of conversations that usually get traded over dinner, not in public. From October 13 to 15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, the Disrupt Stage will host founders, CEOs, and investors across AI, robotics, transportation, social media, biotech, and venture capital, alongside the Startup Battlefield 200 finalists trying to win live onstage.
The roster leans hard into the questions tech is stuck on right now. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe will talk about building and scaling complex physical products, while Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman takes on the question hanging over the AI boom: whether scaling can keep going as models demand more compute, energy, and capital. Science Corporation founder Max Hodak is set to zoom in on technology that interacts with the human body, and Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley will discuss AI, surveillance, and public safety.
And then there’s Benchmark. All five partners — Jack Altman, Peter Fenton, Chetan Puttagunta, Everett Randle, and Eric Vishria — are appearing together, which is rare enough to matter on its own. Ricursive Intelligence co-founders Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini will also argue for something even more ambitious: AI systems that can help design the hardware they run on, shrinking the gap between software and silicon.
Thursday brings a different set of bets. Amazon’s Panos Panay will ask what comes after the smartphone, and he’ll bring new tech with him. Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider and COO Rose Wang will discuss whether social media can really start over, while Replit CEO Amjad Masad will look at what happens when AI makes software creation accessible to almost anyone. Mark Wahlberg, alongside Keebeck’s Bruce K. Lee, will show up too, as he pushes further into investing.
Startup Battlefield still gets its own spotlight. Founders will compete across space and physical AI, energy and manufacturing, health tech and life sciences, and enterprise and security, with questions from investors and a shot at the final. Cellino CEO Nabiha Saklayen, who won in 2021, returns with a new product. Then three Battlefield alumni — Piotr Byrski of Molecule.one, Demetri Maxim of Nephrogen, and Kevin Damoa of Glīd — come back to talk about what happens after the pitch. One 2026 finalist will leave with $100,000 in equity-free funding and the Disrupt cup.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
I’m the sort of reader who likes conferences when they stop pretending to be prophecy and just show the actual arguments. This lineup does that better than most, especially by putting AI hype next to hardware, public safety, and a few people who’ve already won the pitch and had to live with the aftermath. That’s the useful bit: less victory lap, more reality check.
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