Because of everybody who made this yr’s San Francisco occasion what it was — and to the ten,000 of you who crammed the halls, made the connections, and left with greater than you got here with. Couldn’t make it? The photographs under inform a part of the story. Till subsequent yr.
Vinod Khosla, telling attendees he doesn’t purchase the argument that powering AI will doom local weather efforts. Geothermal power is almost right here, he stated, whereas fusion stays additional out. He additionally touched on his alignment with Trump (deregulation) and his disagreement (immigration): “The only thing I will say is this administration won’t last forever,” he stated with a smile.
That’s Roelof Botha on the stage, and that’s the group that got here to hold on his each phrase. The Sequoia companion talked by means of how his agency picks winners, what authorities possession in startups might imply, and warned founders to not get cute with timing, telling them to boost now in the event that they’ll want cash six months from now. Bubbles pop.
Kevin Damoa of Glīd Applied sciences, winner of this yr’s Battlefield competitors, with Battlefield chief Isabelle Johannessen. She and TC’s Michael Schick work with many dozens of startups for months to organize them for this stage. The hug is earned.
Roy Lee, the founding father of Cluely, the app greatest recognized for its mantra “cheat at everything,” entertains the group along with his f-bomb-laden tackle the way to win at advertising. “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 personal.)
If former Cleveland Cavalier Tristan Thompson misses the NBA, he’s not displaying it. He’s constructing a enterprise empire and elevating pointed questions in regards to the league he left behind. When requested about whether or not gamers might manipulate Basketball Enjoyable — a web3 platform that turns NBA gamers into tradable tokens — he supplied a counterpoint: “It’s the same question we ask 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 asked.”
Our personal Sean O’Kane shares a second with Wayve co-founder and CEO, Alex Kendall. Kendall may additionally be smiling as a result of his U.Okay.-based self-driving startup — whose software program acts as “brains for cars” — is in talks to boost a recent $2 billion from SoftBank and Microsoft at an $8 billion valuation.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
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October 27-29, 2025
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, founders of the AI-powered procuring assistant Phia, dazzled the viewers at TechCrunch with their enthusiasm for making high-quality, secondhand clothes lots simpler to seek out. Gates, daughter of Invoice and Melinda, was additionally sporting when requested by moderator Amanda Silberling what her well-known dad and mom have discovered from her. Mentioned Gates with fun, “Hopefully style! I don’t even consider myself that stylish; I just like building in the consumer space, but now I get random emails from my family, asking, ‘Should I wear this to this?’”
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana with TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec, fielding questions on autonomous automobiles, together with whether or not society will settle for deaths attributable to self-driving automobiles. “I think that society will,” Mawakana stated. “The challenge is making sure society has a high enough bar on safety that companies are held to.”
Kevin Rose speaking Digg’s reboot and the way forward for enterprise capital (Rose can also be a normal companion on the early-stage enterprise agency True Ventures). I’m smiling as a result of that’s what you do when somebody gained’t reply your questions on a buzzy, wearable startup that’s nonetheless in stealth. (We’ll have extra on Sandbar quickly.)
Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf hydrating between questions on constructing the way forward for AI, together with because it pertains to LeRobot, the Hugging Face mission that’s making an attempt to democratize robotics with reasonably priced {hardware}, open-source instruments, and shared datasets.
Finals judges Marlon Nichols of MaC VC and Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures over the last phases of our extremely aggressive Startup Battlefield. Someplace off-camera, a founder is sweating by means of their pitch deck.
Aaron Levie of Field in dialog with TC’s Russell Brandom. Levie has graced the Disrupt stage quite a few instances over TC’s 20 years on the middle of the startup ecosystem, and he all the time brings it.
Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone on the streamer’s expanded remit from easy binge-watching to interactive programming (assume voting on dwell reveals and gaming through your cellphone): “It hasn’t changed the way we tell stories,” she instructed a rapt crowd.
TC’s Dominic-Madori Davis speaking group constructing with Tage Oyerinde of Campus, who’s rethinking group faculty, and Teddy Solomon of Fizz, the nameless social app that’s spreading throughout faculty campuses and sometimes getting banned, which some would possibly view as a badge of honor.
A whiteboard of needs: builders wanted, contacts supplied, offers proposed. We adore it when founders lean into old-school techniques. (Some nonetheless work!)
David George, who leads the expansion investing staff at Andreessen Horowitz, got here to the present to speak with Julie Bort about what startups must weigh as they’re eyeing the general public market. It was his birthday, because it seems; the group takes a second right here to have a good time it with him.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie on his name with President Trump about sending the Nationwide Guard to the town — a proposal floated by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “What I said to him was what I say to everybody: this is a city on the rise,” Lurie stated. “Three days of Disrupt here should prove that.” On whether or not he made concessions with the deal-making Trump, he was definitive. “No, absolutely not. No ask.”
Publish-show elation from TC’s Jessica Barrera, who dealt with ticketing for 10,000 attendees. She saves our bacon routinely.
For a lot of extra photographs from the occasion, go to our Flickr stream.
It’s also possible to discover our full video protection: right here is Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
