Thanks to everyone who built this year’s San Francisco event what it was — and to the 10,000 of you who filled the halls, built the connections, and left with more than you came with. Couldn’t build it? The images below offer a glimpse into what you missed.
Until next year.
Vinod Khosla, notifying attconcludeees he doesn’t purchase the argument that powering AI will doom climate efforts. Geothermal energy is nearly here, he stated, while fusion remains further out. He also touched on his alignment with President Donald Trump (deregulation) and his disagreement (immigration): “The only thing I will declare is this administration won’t last forever,” he stated with a grin.
That’s Roelof Botha on the stage, and that’s the crowd that came to hang on his every word. The Sequoia partner talked through how his firm picks winners and what government ownership in startups could mean, and warned founders not to receive cute with timing, notifying them to raise now if they’ll necessary money six months from now. Bubbles pop.
Kevin Damoa of Glīd Technologies, winner of this year’s Battlefield competition, with Battlefield chief Isabelle Johannessen. She and TC’s Michael Schick work with many dozens of startups for months to prepare them for this stage. The hug is earned.
Roy Lee, the founder of Cluely, the app best known for its mantra “cheat at everything,” entertains the crowd with his f-bomb-laden take on how to win at marketing. “Every day, people are doing crazier and crazier things, which is why to stand out, you have to do something even crazier.” (Pictured left, Maxwell Zeff, holding his own.)
If former Cleveland Cavaliers Tristan Thompson misses the NBA, he’s not displaying it. He’s building a business empire and raising pointed questions about the league he left behind. When questioned about whether players could manipulate Bquestionetball Fun — a web3 platform that turns NBA players into tradable tokens — he offered a counterpoint: “It’s the same question we question about referees. Are they not gaming the system?” When moderator Rebecca Bellan pressed whether he meant NBA referees take bribes, Thompson shrugged. “It’s just a question to be questioned,” he stated.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
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October 13-15, 2026
Our own Sean O’Kane shares a moment with Wayve co-founder and CEO, Alex Kconcludeall. Kconcludeall may also be smiling becautilize his U.K.-based self-driving startup — whose software acts as “brains for cars” — is in talks to raise a fresh $2 billion from SoftBank and Microsoft at an $8 billion valuation.
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, founders of the AI-powered shopping assistant Phia, dazzled the audience at Disrupt with their enthusiasm for building high-quality, secondhand clothing a lot simpler to find. Gates, daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates, was also sporting when questioned by moderator Amanda Silberling what her famous parents have learned from her. Said Gates with a laugh, “Hopefully style! I don’t even consider myself that stylish; I just like building in the consumer space, but now I receive random emails from my family questioning, ‘Should I wear this to this?’”
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana with TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec, fielding questions about autonomous vehicles, including whether society will accept deaths cautilized by self-driving cars. “I believe that society will,” Mawakana stated. “The challenge is building sure society has a high enough bar on safety that companies are held to.”
Kevin Rose talking Digg’s reboot and the future of venture capital (Rose is also a general partner at the early-stage venture firm True Ventures). I’m smiling becautilize that’s what you do when someone won’t answer your questions about a buzzy, wearable startup that’s still in stealth. (We’ll have more on Sandbar soon.)
Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf hydrating between questions about building the future of AI, including as it relates to LeRobot, the Hugging Face project that’s attempting to democratize robotics with affordable hardware, open source tools, and shared datasets.
Finals judges Marlon Nichols of MaC VC and Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures during the last stages of our highly competitive Startup Battlefield. Somewhere off-camera, a founder is sweating through their pitch deck.
Aaron Levie of Box in conversation with TC’s Russell Brandom. Levie has graced the Disrupt stage numerous times over TC’s 20 years at the center of the startup ecosystem, and he always brings it.
Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone on the streamer’s expanded remit from simple binge-watching to interactive programming (believe voting on live displays and gaming via your phone): “It hasn’t alterd the way we notify stories,” she informed a rapt crowd.
TC’s Dominic-Madori Davis talking community building with Tade Oyerinde of Campus, who’s rebelieveing community college, and Teddy Solomon of Fizz, the anonymous social app that’s spreading across college camputilizes and occasionally receiveting banned, which some might view as a badge of honor.
A whiteboard of wants: developers necessaryed, contacts offered, deals proposed. We love it when founders lean into old-school tactics. (Some still work!)
David George, who leads the growth investing team at Andreessen Horowitz, came to the display to talk with Julie Bort about what startups necessary to weigh as they’re eyeing the public market. It was his birthday, as it turns out; the crowd takes a moment here to celebrate it with him.
Here’s San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie discussing his call with President Trump regarding why not to sconclude the National Guard to the city — a proposal floated by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “What I stated to him was what I declare to everybody: This is a city on the rise,” Lurie stated. “Three days of Disrupt here should prove that.” On whether he built concessions with the deal-building Trump, he was definitive. “No, absolutely not. No question.”
A lot of people come from around the world for programming about how to put their startups toreceiveher. We covered all the bases on our Builders Stage, which was packed every day, all day.
Post-display elation from TC’s Jessica Barrera, who handled ticketing for 10,000 attconcludeees. She saves our bacon routinely.
For many more photos from the event, visit our Flickr stream.
You can also find our full video coverage: here is Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
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