TechCrunch Sessions: AI Agenda
New sessions are always being added. Check back for updates.
June 5th
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Building Your AI Engine: How OpenAI Works with Startups
In the rapidly evolving AI landscape, startups can gain a competitive edge by collaborating closely with model providers. Join Hao Sang from OpenAI’s Startups Team for a session that demystifies OpenAI’s resources for startups, from technical guidance to advanced model access. Discover how feedback from startups helps shape OpenAI’s roadmap, ensuring that their products evolve to meet your needs.
The Frontier of AI: A Fireside Chat with Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan
In this fireside chat, Anthropic Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan will share his vision for how AI will change the way humans interact with computers, work, and each other. In a wide-ranging conversation, he’ll dive into Anthropic’s approach to building trusted AI agents for enterprises, share an insider’s perspective on building at the frontier of AI, and offer tactical take-aways for businesses of all sizes to implement AI and maximize its impact. You won’t want to miss it.
Behind Your Firewall: Secure Generative AI for Regulated Enterprises
Ever wonder how to use advanced generative AI in healthcare or finance without breaking a sweat over data privacy? Join us for a lively breakout session at TC Sessions: AI, where Yann Stoneman (Solutions Architect at Cohere) and three additional panelists will lead an interactive, 50-minute conversation. We’ll show you how to deploy secure, customized AI models on your own turf—no external cloud needed—through real-world use cases from Cohere’s North (an agentic AI workspace) and Compass (multimodal retrieval). You’ll walk away with practical tips for tackling compliance challenges, unlocking internal data safely, and delivering tangible value through private AI systems. Expect a dynamic mix of demos, Q&A, and audience interaction that will leave you ready to build AI solutions behind your own firewall.
From Seed to Series C: What VCs Want to See from Founders
AI has dominated venture funding, with investments soaring 62% to $110 billion in 2024—even as overall startup funding declined. But slapping “AI” onto a pitch deck isn’t enough. As the hype around foundation models fades, investors are zeroing in on real-world applications, AI agents, and sustainable business models. In this talk, top VCs will share what it really takes to get funding at each stage, from seed to Series C, and what they want to see in AI startups now.
Your Next Co-Founder Will Be AI
“Founder mode” once defined startups: raw, relentless, human. But today’s founders face a paradox. Hierarchies became SaaS tools, middle managers became kanban boards—yet leadership burdens only intensified. Founders juggle investor updates, product roadmaps, and endless context-switching. The bottleneck isn’t your vision; it’s biology. Imagine an AI co-founder who remembers every conversation, crafts pitch decks, automates follow-ups, writes product docs, builds prototypes, tracks tasks, monitors teams, and recommends clients and talent—all without equity. All while you recharge. With experience at Meta and TikTok, and multiple startups including Tanka, and across different cultures, Kisson has always been passionate about the future of team dynamics. Join her vision for AI-native startups where solo founders achieve unprecedented scale and agility.
A Focus on AI Ethics and Safety
Generative AI media startup ElevenLabs’ head of AI safety, Artemis Seaford, joins Databricks Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Ion Stoica for a panel spotlighting the ethical and safety issues with AI today. The two will discuss deepfakes — an increasingly hot topic as AI tools become cheaper and easier to use — as well as possible mitigations that can be put in place to help developers and companies deploy AI more responsibly.
AI Transformation for Business Growth: A Practical Roadmap for SMB
This session will explore how Agentic AI can empower small and mid-sized businesses to optimize their workflows. Forget reactive tools, Agentic AI brings intelligent digital agents that can perceive what’s happening, reason through decisions, and take action across systems without constant human input. We’ll break down what sets these agents apart, why this technology is taking off now, and how it’s finally within reach for growing businesses. Through real use cases, from automating repetitive tasks to improving customer engagement, you’ll see how SMEs are already benefiting. You’ll also get a simple, step-by-step roadmap to start small, validate quickly, and scale confidently. Whether you’re AI-curious or ready to experiment, this session is built to help you understand the possibilities and get started without big budgets or big teams.
Lunch Break + Networking
So You Think You Can Pitch?
Please join us for “So You Think You Can Pitch” where three promising early stage AI startups will have 4 minutes to wow a panel of judges, who will then provide feedback.
The AI Policy Playbook: What Global Startups Need to Know
AI is revolutionizing how startups operate, but navigating policy, regulation, and global expansion remains a challenge. In this breakout session, we will explore how startups can leverage AI-driven tools for digital trade, compliance, and scaling across borders. Attendees will gain insights into key policies shaping AI startups, strategies for navigating data regulations, and how to leverage AI for international growth. Whether you’re a founder, investor, or policymaker, this session will provide actionable takeaways to turn AI into a competitive advantage in a fast-changing global landscape.
How Founders Can Build on Existing Foundational Models
There seems to be a new, more impressive AI model every week. In this talk, we’ll speak with leaders at industry leading AI companies to discuss how startups can build on top of AI foundation models. Given the rapid pace of development, we’ll discuss how to grow with the AI industry, and not get left behind.
How Toyota Repair Technicians Leverage AI with NLX
Amid brands struggling to bring AI concepts and prototypes into full-scale production, NLX and Toyota will share their experiences with actionable advice on using AI to solve significant business problems and navigating the process from executive buy-in, to technology integration to change management. NLX cofounder and CEO Andrei Papancea and Kordel France, Principal AI Engineer at Toyota North America, will discuss a compelling and unexpected use case for AI-powered conversation experiences–car repair. NLX and Toyota created an experience that lets technicians quickly access technical information from millions of pages of repair manuals, diagnostic procedures, and wiring diagrams in a conversational experience that gives answers, instructions, and guidance. Since deployment, Toyota has improved technician productivity and overall Fixed Operations Efficiency, a key success metric for car dealerships.
Building Richer and More Scalable GenAI Applications for Startups and Developers
Learn how MySQL HeatWave empowers you in building AI-based solutions in areas such as personal productivity, automating workflows for compliance, service, or support, and increasing efficiencies in healthcare, among others. By leveraging HeatWave’s built-in vector store, in-database LLMs, in-database machine learning capabilities, and massively parallel processing architecture, teams can develop richer GenAI applications that incorporate real-time data, advanced personalization, and complex retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques without the need for separate, specialized databases or complex ETL processes. This approach simplifies the GenAI development stack, accelerates time-to-market, and allows startups and developers to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure management, ultimately enabling the creation of more powerful, responsive, and scalable GenAI solutions.
Democratizing AI and Building Collaborative Systems with AI Agents
This session explores the emerging field of collaborative AI agents and the strategic importance of democratizing their development for organizational advancement. We will examine practical approaches to enable individuals and teams to design and implement intelligent agents capable of seamless interaction with both human experts and other AI systems. Whether you possess extensive AI experience or are in the early stages of exploration, this session will provide valuable insights into the potential of AI agents to enhance collaborative workflows and build sophisticated intelligent systems for the future.
Suite AI: How SAP is Bringing AI to the Enterprise
As the adoption of AI increases, hear how SAP is expanding its AI capabilities across the business suite. Start planning how to leverage upcoming innovations to boost efficiency, streamline processes, and drive greater engagement across your business. Learn about SAP’s AI agent Joule, embedded AI capabilities, and custom AI development.
How to Launch a Product Against Entrenched Incumbents
It’s tough to break out in the AI sector, in large part because it’s dominated by well-funded incumbents. However, this doesn’t mean new companies are doomed to fail. In this talk, founders at breakout AI startups discuss how they’ve managed to find success while fending off formidable rivals in the industry.