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At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the Smart Systems Stage will be where energy, infrastructure, and technology collide, covering everything from fusion breakthroughs to the grid strain AI is putting on the entire economy.

After two years in stealth, Safe Superintelligence has announced a long-term partnership with Nvidia as it prepares to scale to its next phase.

The massive seed round was led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Sarah Guo's Conviction Partners.

On Monday, the network announced a $1.6 million seed round from top players in the media ecosystem, including Powerhouse Capital, Axel Springer SE (which owns Business Insider and Politico), the popular media publication LadBible, and angel investors from OpenAI and DeepMind. With this fresh capital, the network is announcing its largest expansion yet.

I judged three hackathons over about ten days this July: MLH x DigitalOcean "AI for Social Good" on July 11, the Sports World Cup Hackathon in San Francisco on July 17, and Aethera Hacks, an online event on Devpost, across July 19 to 21. I came in from the sports technology side, building athlete monetization tools, so I was usually the judge asking who pays for this rather than the judge asking what is your bundle size. That turned out to be a useful seat, because the questions that decide scores are mostly not technical ones. Here is the part builders rarely get told: a judge is scoring under a hard constraint. Some number of teams, a fixed window, and by the middle of the block the demos start blurring together. Judges are not evaluating your project against an ideal. They are ranking it against the six they just saw while trying to remember which one had the map. Everything below follows from that. The rubric is real, but it is not what separates teams Most events hand judges four or five categories with numbers next to them. Technical difficulty, originality, design, impact, something about use of a sponsor API. Those categories are real and I filled them in honestly. But they compress. Almost every team lands mid-range on most of them, and the spread that produces a winner comes from two or three things the rubric does not name directly. 1. Whether the demo ran This sounds too obvious to write down. It is the single largest score differentiator I saw. A working demo, live, on the judge's screen or the team's laptop, beats a more ambitious project shown as slides almost every time. Not because judges are impressed by working software as such, but because a live demo removes doubt, and doubt is what a judge is actually managing under time pressure. The practical version: cut scope until something end-to-end runs. One complete path through the product beats four half-built paths. If your architecture diagram has six boxes and two of them work, demo the two and de

The Loneliness Protocol of a Solo Tech Founder Loneliness in entrepreneurship is as predictable as a server crash during peak traffic. For a solo founder, it’s a relentless companion, one that doesn't care if you’re in bustling Davao or isolated at your desk. Here’s the brutal truth: isolation can break you if you let it. You’re not just navigating tech challenges, but also the uncharted waters of solo existence, where human connection feels like a distant luxury. The Core Problem & Why This Matters Let me be clear, as a solo tech founder, loneliness isn’t a sidebar issue—it’s central to your survival. You might be a genius with API integrations or a master of patent applications , but if you’re fighting the darkness of isolation, your innovations suffer. The mental load of building something from scratch is immense. Add to that the silence of not having a co-founder or team to bounce ideas off, and you’re skating on thin ice. Why does this matter? Confidence wanes, decision-making suffers, and burnout creeps in. When productivity is tied to connection, and all your colleagues are digital avatars miles away, your business can quickly spiral downwards. This isn’t just about feeling good. It’s about maintaining a sustainable creative energy . If your innovation pipeline clogs with self-doubt, you lose ground, fast. The Systems Engineering Approach The solution isn't a one-size-fits-all. It starts with engineering systems designed to bring people into your virtual workspace. Think beyond the Zoom calls. We’re talking curated, meaningful interactions. Start with regular, structured virtual check-ins with other industry experts. Set these in stone, like a production deployment—a fixed calendar, strict agenda. Engage in remote communities with shared goals. Platforms like Slack and Discord have niche channels dedicated to tech founders. These aren’t just chat rooms; they’re virtual war rooms for brainstorming, networking, and problem-solving. The key here is participation

SellAI 🚀 Hi DEV Community! Over the past few weeks I've been building SellAI — an AI-powered platform that helps businesses manage sales, customers and analytics from one dashboard. Main Features 🤖 AI Assistant 👥 Customer CRM 📦 Product Management 🛒 Order Management 📈 Business Analytics 💳 Subscription System 🔒 Secure Authentication Built With React Firebase OpenAI Vite Live Demo https://sellai-2ad64.web.app Demo Video https://youtu.be/0I0n0snI37M I'd love to hear your honest feedback! Thanks for reading 🚀

Subscription Goldmine: SaaS Models and Startup Cash Flow Here's the brutal truth: nothing brings a tech solopreneur closer to existential dread than staring down a dried-up cash runway in the office at midnight. This concern is universal for founders, whether you're nestled in a cozy Davao home office or grinding away in a bustling city. The rise of subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) models is shifting this narrative, offering both solutions and new challenges. The stakes are high, but so are the potential rewards. The Core Problem & Why This Matters Startups live and die by their cash flow. Managing liquidity is crucial for keeping the lights on and securing future growth. Traditional software sales were typically characterized by large, one-time purchases. This model, while sometimes lucrative, posed significant challenges for startups that needed a steady influx of cash. The subscription model flips this on its head by transforming how revenue is recognized, providing a more predictable income stream. The consistent monthly inflows from subscriptions give startups the cushion they need to weather the ups and downs of growth periods. But here's the catch: converting users into paying subscribers isn’t a cakewalk. It requires upfront investments in product development, marketing, and customer support. Yet, this model becomes a vital lifeline, especially when venture capital isn't an option. Subscription models necessitate long-term engagement strategies, but they offer a recurring revenue stream that can stabilize an otherwise volatile cash flow. The Systems Engineering Approach Developing a subscription-based SaaS model requires a meticulous systems approach. The first step involves designing a seamless user experience . Every touchpoint must be optimized to retain users and convert trial customers into paid subscribers. From initial sign-up to daily usage, every feature should scream value. Next, focus on robust backend systems. These systems are the

In 2024, everyone and their manager launched an AI wrapper. A thin layer over GPT-4, a nice UI, a subscription fee, and boom: you were an AI company. Product Hunt had hundreds of these launches. Investors poured money into them. And by 2026, most of them are dead. Not all of them though. A handful survived and crossed real revenue milestones. Their stories reveal something important about where the AI market is actually going. The wrappers died but the value moved somewhere real. What Actually Killed the Wrappers The math never worked. An AI wrapper is a startup whose core product is a prompt sent to someone else's model. You pay OpenAI (or Anthropic or Google) for tokens. You charge your users a markup. And you hope the difference covers your hosting, your team, and your coffee. Three things broke that math. First, the model providers kept getting cheaper. OpenAI cut prices multiple times through 2024 and 2025. As TechCrunch reported , each price drop squeezed the wrapper margin another notch. If you were marking up tokens 3x and the base price dropped 50%, your margin went from 200% to 50% overnight. Second, the big models got good enough at general tasks that users stopped needing the specialized UI. Why pay $20/month for a writing assistant that wraps ChatGPT when you can just use ChatGPT directly? The OpenAI GPT Store made this worse: custom GPTs replaced a huge chunk of wrapper functionality for free. Third, users wised up. The initial AI hype in 2023 convinced people to pay for anything with "AI" in the name. By 2025, that was over. G2's research showed that enterprises stopped buying standalone AI tools and started demanding AI features built into their existing software stacks. The result was predictable. Hundreds of wrapper startups shut down, got acquired for pennies, or pivoted to something completely different. What Actually Works Now The survivors fall into three categories. Each one solves the problem the wrappers ignored: building defensible value on

The neolab is betting that automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case.

Money has evolved into far more than the cash in your wallet or your bank account. And at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, we’re devoting an entire stage to that progression.

AI tools have democratized the opportunity to build, shortening the timelines of success and enabling more young people to start successful companies without stepping foot inside a Big Tech company.

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield is coming to Australia — and we're partnering with Stripe to find the country's most exciting early-stage startups.

In the AI-funding frenzy, many startups are raising back-to-back rounds at ever-increasing valuations — but even by those standards, Corgi stands out.

The Series A was led by Battery Ventures, bringing AegisAI total funding to $49 million.

The Media Router is a tool that automatically selects the best image, video, or audio generation model for a request based on whether a developer prioritizes quality, speed or cost.

Imagi announced a $4.5 million seed round, with investors including Brighteye Ventures, Day One Capital, and artist Will.i.am.

Etched, founded by three Harvard dropouts, has created new chips and memory components that speed up inference on any AI model -- no GPUs required, it says.

Volunteer at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 and get a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world's biggest startup conferences gets built.

ServiceNow's investment gives BusinessNext a strategic partner to expand its AI-powered banking software globally.