The founder’s guide to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Everything you need to know

• Disrupt Stage: The biggest conversations in technology, featuring the founders, CEOs, and industry leaders defining what’s next. These are the conversations you’ll be talking about long after Disrupt ends.
• Builders Stage: The tactical playbook for building a startup. From fundraising and hiring to GTM, product, and scaling, every session is designed to give founders practical advice they can put to work immediately.
• AI Stage: AI isn’t the future — it’s the present. Learn how the fastest-growing startups are building, deploying, and monetizing AI, with practical lessons on agents, models, infrastructure, and what it takes to win in the AI era.
• Real World AI Stage: AI is moving beyond the screen and into the physical world. Explore how robotics, autonomous systems, manufacturing, healthcare, and defense are turning AI breakthroughs into real-world products and businesses.
• Smart Money Stage: Follow the money. From fintech and stablecoins to payments, embedded finance, and AI-driven financial services, this stage explores how technology is reshaping the movement of capital.
• Smart Systems Stage: Every AI breakthrough depends on the infrastructure behind it. Discover the innovations in chips, compute, energy, networking, and data centers that will determine the next generation of technology companies.

• RJ Scaringe (Rivian): Building a generational company. 

• Panos Panay (Amazon): Designing products people love. 

• Paolo Ardoino (Tether): Money, AI, and infrastructure. 

• Toni Schneider and Rose Wang (Bluesky): Can social start over? 

• Amjad Masad (Replit): Every founder becomes technical. 

• Andrew Feldman (Cerebras): Winning the AI compute race. 

Your time at Disrupt is valuable, too, so before you head there, check on our regularly updated schedule of speakers and Side Events, get ahead of competitors’ schedules by booking your networking opportunities in advance, and get your own elevator pitches in order to make the most of those magical Disrupt moments that can come at any point October 13-15!