TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Full breakout agenda is out

TechCrunch has published the full breakout session agenda for Disrupt 2026, its three-day conference at Moscone West in San Francisco on Oct. 13-15. TechCrunch reports the event expects more than 10,000 founders, investors, operators and tech leaders.

The breakout rooms are separate from the main industry stages. Each session runs 50 minutes and includes audience Q&A. Capacity is limited and access is first come, first served, so the move is to add sessions to your schedule early.

The big themes

The 2026 lineup centers on questions founders and operators are dealing with now: building with AI agents, where value moves as AI shifts from training to inference, what physical AI really means, how to run a better fundraise, and how AI changes the way companies and teams grow.

Named sessions

• Anthropic's Steve Androulakis and Sachin Malhotra will show how they run multiple Claude agents in parallel, hand off real engineering work, check the results, and recover when agents make mistakes.
• Susan Schofer and Duncan Turner of SOSV HAX will break down what qualifies as physical AI, why it needs a different playbook, and what investors look for.
• Hagay Lupesko of Cerebras Systems and Rudina Seseri of Glasswing Ventures will cover why AI economics are shifting from training to inference, where defensibility comes from when the model is not the moat, and why response time is now part of the product.
• Robbie Goldfarb of Forum AI will talk about turning expert human judgment into scalable evaluations so people can rely on AI for more consequential work.
• Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Payal Kadakia, Cassie Kozyrkov and Holly Ransom will explore where AI can help founders decide faster, and where bias and human judgment still count.
• A session sponsored by Fidelity Private Shares, with speakers to be announced, will walk founders through a successful fundraise from both sides of the table, covering how to target investors, build relationships, keep momentum, and prepare cap tables, data rooms and due diligence.
• Bruce K Lee of Keebeck Wealth Management and Abhi Tiwari of Blank Ventures will discuss what changes when founders move from raising capital to allocating it, and why post-exit strategy should start before an exit.
• Dr. Brian Cameron and Shawn Sloan of The Aerospace Corporation, with Bosco Lai of Little Place Labs, will map AI-style problems like large data flows, self-directed decisions, real-time processing and complex agent systems to space applications.
• Dr. Irena King of Surgicure Technologies, Dr. Richard Munassi of Tampa Bay Wave, Ashley Paston of General Catalyst and Emily Zhen of HealthQuest Capital will get into fundraising mistakes from initial positioning through to execution.
• Patrick Burke of Hostinger will talk about finding distribution channels that are underpriced, closing the gap between market signals and product launches, and using agentic marketing workflows.
• Ethan Batraski of Venrock, Ivan Poupyrev of Archetype AI and Ian Rountree of Cantos will explore the step that connects sensing, deciding, acting and checking in physical AI.
• Nomi Khedawala of Reddit will cover how leaders can keep alignment, trust and execution strong across teams as organizations scale.

What to do

TechCrunch says registration is open, with up to $100 off a pass before doors open and 50% off a second pass for a co-founder, colleague, partner or peer. Groups of four or more save more. If you have been laid off recently, a $75 Expo+ Pass is available while supplies last.

Because breakout attendance is first come, first served, the practical move is to pick sessions before you arrive and get to the room early. The full agenda is on TechCrunch's Disrupt page.

• AI agents
• fundraising
• physical AI
• San Francisco
• startups
• TechCrunch Disrupt