TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 lands Panos Panay, RJ Scaringe, and Benchmark to answer what actually scales in AI

TechCrunch just dropped a speaker lineup for Disrupt 2026 that reads less like a trade show and more like a strategy session for anyone trying to build a real company in the noise of the AI hype cycle. Running October 13–15 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the show is ditching vague prognostication. The promise is direct conversations with operators who are actively figuring out what works right now.

Amazon’s devices chief Panos Panay will tackle the obvious question that nobody has a good answer to yet: what comes after the smartphone? For the first time ever on the Disrupt Stage, all five Benchmark partners will sit down together to debate where the next generation of startups will actually come from and what founders are getting wrong. That’s a rare sight — Benchmark doesn’t do group appearances often, and the firm’s track record from eBay to Uber to Docker means the room will be packed.

Other sessions dig into the friction points that keep founders up at night. Replit CEO Amjad Masad will talk about what happens when AI lets millions of people build software for the first time — and whether that’s a revolution or a mess. Flock Safety’s Garrett Langley steps into the surveillance debate, an unavoidable conversation now that AI-powered cameras are blanketing American neighborhoods. And Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman will address the uncomfortable question hanging over the entire industry: can AI infrastructure keep scaling, or are we about to slam into a wall?

Rivian’s RJ Scaringe closes the logic loop, talking about what it takes to build a company that spans software, robotics, manufacturing, and transportation all at once. That’s the kind of multi-domain complexity that AI-era startups increasingly face. With ticket prices set to jump by $300 once the current window closes in a few weeks, the message from TechCrunch is fairly blunt: if you’re building in this space, you need to be in that room.